Chemiresistive effect of p-type delafossite CuScO2 microsheets to gaseous alcohols.

The chemiresistive effect of an oxide significantly influences its electrical properties, which depend greatly on the interactions between the ambient gas molecules and the solid surface, including the gas adsorption and charge transfer still challenging to be clarified. In this work, we investigate the chemiresistive effect of the p-type delafossite CuScO2 microsheets by comparing their responses to various gaseous alcohols, which increase with an approximately linear relationship with the length of straight carbon chains from methanol to n-hexanol. A new mechanism is proposed to elucidate such a dramatic trend of observed chemiresistive change based on the first-principles calculations and test results.

Synchronization control of pulsatile ventricular assist devices by combination usage of different physiological signals.

Three different types of synchronous control methods based on physiological parameters, electrocardiogram (ECG) and fixed systole, ECG and aortic pressure, and ECG and phonocardiogram (PCG) were used to trigger a proposed intra-ventricular assist device (iVAD). The ECG, aortic pressure, and PCG were processed, respectively, and featured characteristics were extracted to trigger the iVAD-experimented circulation system in the laboratory. The data showed that all three types of synchronous control methods produced trigger pulses synchronously and that the iVAD synchronously beat with the native heart.

Economic fabrication of a novel hybrid planar Grating/Fresnel lens for miniature spectrometers.

We propose a new technique to fabricate a highly specialized optical element, a hybrid planar Grating/Fresnel lens (G-Fresnel), which is particularly useful to improve or enable more-affordable miniature/portable spectrometers. Both the Fresnel and the grating surface are fabricated simultaneously by sandwiching soft PDMS between a hard grating and a pre-replicated negative Fresnel surface. Several adhesion reduction techniques are also investigated that help improve both fabrication and cost efficiency (by reducing the solidification time) as well as the lifetime of the mold.