Empyema necessitans and a persistent air leak associated with rupture of an anaerobic lung abscess due to bacteroides

No abstract available

Mediator-free total cholesterol estimation using a bi-enzyme functionalized nanostructured gold electrode

We report the fabrication of a bi-enzyme functionalized nanostructured Au electrode for the mediator-free determination of total cholesterol. A one-step electrochemical route for the synthesis, functionalization and deposition of Au nanostructures via the electroreduction of gold chloride onto indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass plates has been proposed. The covalent biofunctionalization of the optimized Au electrode was done with cholesterol esterase (ChEt) and cholesterol oxidase (ChOx) to investigate the kinetic parameters and the sensing characteristics. The ChEt-ChOx/Glu-NanoAu/ITO bioelectrode has a surface-controlled electrode reaction with an electron transfer coefficient and a charge transfer rate constant of 0.68 and 7.09 s(-1), respectively. Under the optimal conditions, the bioelectrode undergoes a direct electron transfer reaction and exhibits a high sensitivity of 0.53 mA mM(-1) cm(-2) and a low detection limit of 1.57 mu M for cholesterol ester without the use of any redox mediator. In addition, the kinetic analysis reveals that the bioelectrode exhibits a surface concentration of 8.82 x 10(-12) mol cm(-2). The sensor has also been validated with clinical samples. The proposed biosensor shows good sensitivity, stability and selectivity towards total cholesterol and may thus find implications in the fabrication of biosensing devices

History of materials used for recording static and dynamic occlusal contact marks: a literature review

In the discipline of prosthetic dentistry it is important not only to examine the occlusion, but to be able to record, store, and transfer the information. Over the years many occlusion testing materials have been used. It has been suggested the clinical recording and transfer of information using waxes and other occlusion recording materials have disadvantages relating to inaccuracy and problems of manipulation. Therefore, there has been introduction of many new systems for recording occlusion contacts to overcome such problems. The correct physiological recovery of occlusion posses as much a challenge as ever for every dentist and technician. Even the smallest high spots measuring just a few microns can cause dysfunctions like temporo-mandibular pain. Occlusal proportions are being constantly changed with every procedure. Therefore, an understanding of the synergy of the teeth in static and dynamic occlusion forms the basis of good dentistry. The purpose of this review article is to give and overview of the various materials and methods that have been used to record occlusal contact marks

Prompt emission polarimetry of Gamma Ray Bursts with ASTROSAT CZT-Imager

X-ray and Gamma-ray polarization measurements of the prompt emission of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to be extremely important for testing various models of GRBs. So far, the available measurements of hard X-ray polarization of GRB prompt emission have not significantly constrained the GRB models, particularly because of the difficulty of measuring polarization in these bands. The CZT Imager (CZTI) onboard {\em AstroSat} is primarily an X-ray spectroscopic instrument that also works as a wide angle GRB monitor due to the transparency of its support structure above 100 keV. It also has experimentally verified polarization measurement capability in the 100 $-$ 300 keV energy range and thus provides a unique opportunity to attempt spectro-polarimetric studies of GRBs. Here we present the polarization data for the brightest 11 GRBs detected by CZTI during its first year of operation. Among these, 5 GRBs show polarization signatures with $\gtrapprox$3$\sigma$, and 1 GRB shows $\>$2$\sigma$ detection significance. We place upper limits for the remaining 5 GRBs. We provide details of the various tests performed to validate our polarization measurements. While it is difficult yet to discriminate between various emission models with the current sample alone, the large number of polarization measurements CZTI expects to gather in its minimum lifetime of five years should help to significantly improve our understanding of the prompt emission.Comment: Accepted for Publication in ApJ ; a figure has been update

Thermal Atomic Level Etching of Al2O3, HfO2, TiN and SiGe

With a continuous pursuit of making semiconductor devices and integrated circuits (ICs) faster, better, and more energy efficient, the shrinking of device dimensions became imminent. Today we are approaching the ångström era, where the manufacturability of such devices is becoming challenging. As a result, atomic level processing (ALP) is now most desired. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic level etching are two such ALP methods that take full advantage of surface chemistry and allow growth and removal of atomistically thin layers of material on a substrate, respectively. Atomic level etching broadly describes the etching that maintains the ångström-level (i.e. below 1 nm) etched-thickness control and uses sequential gas-surface reactions that may be self-limiting. Atomic level etching can be either plasma based (plasma atomic layer etching - PALE), or thermal based (thermal atomic layer etching - ALEt, gas-phase pulsed etching - GPPE). PALE has existed at least for three decades. Although thermal atomic level etching is relatively new, it has evolved rapidly over the last seven years. In this thesis work, new thermal atomic level etching processes based on NbF5 , HF, CCl4 , SOCl2 , O2 , and O3/O2 reactants were developed. The materials that were removed selectively over SiO2 and Si3N4 are Al2O3, TiN, and HfO2 . Two types of etching processes were investigated, the first one uses sequential exposures of two or more reactants (ALEt), and the second uses pulsing of a single reactant (GPPE) to etch the target. The processes explored here show that the novel etch chemistries are capable of removing the material in the ångström regime isotropically from 3D structures. Thermochemical analyses of possible reactions based on the atomic-scale surface-gas models were carried out using first-principles calculations in density functional theory (DFT) as well as molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In addition, potential etch reactions were also evaluated using conventional thermodynamic calculations. Finally, the post-etched surfaces were characterized using various surface sensitive techniques such as spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray reflectivity/diffraction (XRR/XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and weighing balance.With a continuous pursuit of making semiconductor devices and integrated circuits (ICs) faster, better, and more energy efficient, the shrinking of device dimensions became imminent. Today we are approaching the ångström era, where the manufacturability of such devices is becoming challenging. As a result, atomic level processing (ALP) is now most desired. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic level etching are two such ALP methods that take full advantage of surface chemistry and allow growth and removal of atomistically thin layers of material on a substrate, respectively. Atomic level etching broadly describes the etching that maintains the ångström-level (i.e. below 1 nm) etched-thickness control and uses sequential gas-surface reactions that may be self-limiting. Atomic level etching can be either plasma based (plasma atomic layer etching - PALE), or thermal based (thermal atomic layer etching - ALEt, gas-phase pulsed etching - GPPE). PALE has existed at least for three decades. Although thermal atomic level etching is relatively new, it has evolved rapidly over the last seven years. In this thesis work, new thermal atomic level etching processes based on NbF5 , HF, CCl4 , SOCl2 , O2 , and O3/O2 reactants were developed. The materials that were removed selectively over SiO2 and Si3N4 are Al2O3, TiN, and HfO2 . Two types of etching processes were investigated, the first one uses sequential exposures of two or more reactants (ALEt), and the second uses pulsing of a single reactant (GPPE) to etch the target. The processes explored here show that the novel etch chemistries are capable of removing the material in the ångström regime isotropically from 3D structures. Thermochemical analyses of possible reactions based on the atomic-scale surface-gas models were carried out using first-principles calculations in density functional theory (DFT) as well as molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In addition, potential etch reactions were also evaluated using conventional thermodynamic calculations. Finally, the post-etched surfaces were characterized using various surface sensitive techniques such as spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray reflectivity/diffraction (XRR/XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and weighing balance

Evaluation of novel metalorganic precursors for atomic layer deposition of Nickel-based thin films

Nickel und Nickel (II) -oxid werden in großem Umfang in fortgeschrittenen elektronischen Geräten verwendet. In der Mikroelektronik-Industrie wird Nickel verwendet werden, um Nickelsilizid bilden. Die Nickelmono Silizid (NiSi) wurde als ausgezeichnetes Material für Source-Drain-Kontaktanwendungen unter 45 nm-CMOS-Technologie entwickelt. Im Vergleich zu anderen Siliziden für die Kontaktanwendungen verwendet wird NiSi wegen seines niedrigen spezifischen Widerstand, niedrigen Kontaktwiderstand, relativ niedrigen Bildungstemperatur und niedrigem Siliziumverbrauchs bevorzugt. Nickel in Nickelbasis-Akkus und ferromagnetischen Direktzugriffsspeicher (RAMs) verwendet. Nickel (II) oxid wird als Transistor-Gate-Oxid und Oxid in resistive RAM genutzt wird. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) ist eine spezielle Art der Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), das verwendet wird, um sehr glatte sowie homogene Dünnfilme mit hervorragenden Treue auch bei hohen Seitenverhältnissen abzuscheiden. Es basiert auf selbstabschließenden sequentielle Gas-Feststoff-Reaktionen, die eine präzise Steuerung der Filmdicke auf wenige Angström lassen sich auf der Basis. Zur Herstellung der heutigen 3D-elektronische Geräte, sind Technologien wie ALD erforderlich. Trotz der Vielzahl von praktischen Anwendungen von Nickel und Nickel (II) -oxid, sind einige Nickelvorstufen zur thermischen basierend ALD erhältlich. Darüber hinaus haben diese Vorstufen bei schlechten Filmeigenschaften führte und die Prozesseigenschaften wurden ebenfalls begrenzt. Daher in dieser Masterarbeit mussten die Eigenschaften verschiedener neuartiger Nickelvorstufen zu bewerten. Alle neuen Vorstufen heteroleptische (verschiedene Arten von Liganden) und Komplexe wurden vom Hersteller speziell zur thermischen basierend ALD aus reinem Nickel mit H 2 als ein Co-Reaktionsmittel gestaltet. Um die neuartige Vorläufer zu untersuchen, wurde eine neue Methode entwickelt, um kleine Mengen in einer sehr zeitsparend (bis zu 2 g) von Ausgangsstoffen zu testen. Diese Methodologie beinhaltet: TGA / DTA-Kurve analysiert der Vorstufen, thermische Stabilitätstests in dem die Vorläufer (<0,1 g) wurden bei erhöhter Temperatur in einer abgedichteten Umgebung für mehrere Stunden wurde die Abscheidung Experimenten und Film Charakterisierungen erhitzt. Die Abscheidungen wurden mit Hilfe der in situ Quarzmikrowaage überwacht, während die anwendungsbezogenen Filmeigenschaften, wie chemische Zusammensetzung, physikalische Phase, Dicke, Dichte, Härte und Schichtwiderstand wurden mit Hilfe von ex situ Messverfahren untersucht. Vor der Evaluierung neuartiger Nickelvorstufen ein Benchmark ALD-Prozess war vom Referenznickelvorläufer (Ni (AMD)) und Luft als Reaktionspartner entwickelt. Das Hauptziel der Entwicklung und Optimierung von solchen Benchmark-ALD-Prozess war es, Standard-Prozessparameter wie zweite Reaktionspartner Belichtungszeiten, Argonspülung Zeiten, gesamtprozessdruck, beginnend Abscheidungstemperatur und Gasströme zu extrahieren. Diese Standard-Prozessparameter mussten verwendet, um die Prozessentwicklung Aufgabe (das spart Vorläufer Verbrauch) zu verkürzen und die Sublimationstemperatur Optimierung für jede neuartige Vorstufe werden. Die ALD Verhalten wurde in Bezug auf die Wachstumsrate durch Variation des Nickelvorläuferbelichtungszeit, Vorläufer Temperatur und Niederschlagstemperatur überprüft.:Lists of Abbreviations and Symbols VIII Lists of Figures and Tables XIV 1 Introduction 1 I Theoretical Part 3 2 Nickel and Nickel Oxides 4 2.1 Introduction and Existence 5 2.2 Material properties of Nickel and Nickel Oxide 5 2.3 Application in electronic industry 5 3 Atomic Layer Deposition 7 3.1 History 8 3.2 Definition 8 3.3 Features of thermal-ALD 8 3.3.1 ALD growth mechanism – an ideal view 8 3.3.2 ALD growth behaviour 10 3.3.3 Growth mode 11 3.3.4 ALD temperature window 11 3.4 Benefits and limitations 12 3.5 Precursor properties for thermal-ALD 13 3.6 ALD & CVD of Nickel – A literature survey 13 4 Metrology 17 4.1 Thermal analysis of precursors 18 4.2 Film and growth characterization 21 4.2.1 Quartz Crystal Microbalance 21 4.2.2 Spectroscopic Ellipsometry 24 4.2.3 X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy 28 4.2.4 Scanning Electron Microscopy 29 4.2.5 X-Ray Reflectometry and X-Ray Diffraction 29 4.2.6 Four Point Probe Technique 20 5 Rapid Thermal Processing 32 5.1 Introduction 33 5.2 Basics of RTP 33 5.3 Nickel Silicides-A literature survey 33 II Experimental Part 36 6 Methodologies 37 6.1 Experimental setup 38 6.2 ALD process 41 6.2.1 ALD process types and substrate setups 41 6.2.2 Process parameters 41 6.3 Experimental procedure 42 6.3.1 Tool preparation 42 6.3.2 Thermal analysis and ALD experiments from nickel precursors 43 6.3.3 Data acquisition and evaluation 44 6.3.4 Characterization of film properties 46 7 Results and discussion 48 7.1 Introduction 49 7.2 QCM verification with Aluminum Oxide ALD process 49 7.3 ALD process from the reference precursor 50 7.3.1 Introduction 50 7.3.2 TG analysis for Ni(amd) precursor 51 7.3.3 Thermal stability test for Ni(amd) 51 7.3.4 ALD process optimization 52 7.3.5 Film properties 54 7.4 Evaluating the novel Nickel precursors 55 7.4.1 Screening tests for precursor P1 55 7.4.2 Screening tests for precursor P2 62 7.4.3 Screening tests for precursor P3 66 7.4.4 Screening tests for precursor P4 70 7.4.5 Screening tests for precursor P5 72 7.5 Comparison of all nickel precursors used in this work 74 8 Conclusions and outlook 77 References 83 III Appendix 101 A Deposition temperature control & Ellipsometry model 102 B Gas flow plan 105Nickel and nickel(II) oxide are widely used in advanced electronic devices . In microelectronic industry, nickel is used to form nickel silicide. The nickel mono-silicide (NiSi) has emerged as an excellent material of choice for source-drain contact applications below 45 nm node CMOS technology. As compared to other silicides used for the contact applications, NiSi is preferred because of its low resistivity, low contact resistance, relatively low formation temperature and low silicon consumption. Nickel is used in nickel-based rechargeable batteries and ferromagnetic random access memories (RAMs). Nickel(II) oxide is utilized as transistor gate-oxide and oxide in resistive RAMs. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a special type of Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) technique, that is used to deposit very smooth as well as homogeneous thin films with excellent conformality even at high aspect ratios. It is based on self-terminating sequential gas-solid reactions that allow a precise control of film thickness down to few Angstroms. In order to fabricate todays 3D electronic devices, technologies like ALD are required. In spite of huge number of practical applications of nickel and nickel(II) oxide, a few nickel precursors are available for thermal based ALD. Moreover, these precursors have resulted in poor film qualities and the process properties were also limited. Therefore in this master thesis, the properties of various novel nickel precursors had to be evaluated. All novel precursors are heteroleptic (different types of ligands) complexes and were specially designed by the manufacturer for thermal based ALD of pure nickel with H 2 as a co-reactant. In order to evaluate the novel precursors, a new methodology was designed to test small amounts (down to 2 g) of precursors in a very time efficient way. This methodology includes: TGA/DTA curve analyses of the precursors, thermal stability tests in which the precursors (< 0.1 g) were heated at elevated temperatures in a sealed environment for several hours, deposition experiments, and film characterizations. The depositions were monitored with the help of in situ quartz crystal microbalance, while application related film properties like chemical composition, physical phase, thickness, density, roughness and sheet resistance were investigated with the help of ex situ measurement techniques. Prior to the evaluation of novel nickel precursors, a benchmark ALD process was developed from the reference nickel precursor (Ni(amd)) and air as a co-reactant. The main goal of developing and optimizing such benchmark ALD process was to extract standard process parameters like second-reactant exposure times, Argon purge times, total process pressure, starting deposition temperature and gas flows. These standard process parameters had to be utilized to shorten the process development task (thus saving precursor consumption) and optimize the sublimation temperature for each novel precursor. The ALD behaviour was checked in terms of growth rate by varying the nickel precursor exposure time, precursor temperature and deposition temperature.:Lists of Abbreviations and Symbols VIII Lists of Figures and Tables XIV 1 Introduction 1 I Theoretical Part 3 2 Nickel and Nickel Oxides 4 2.1 Introduction and Existence 5 2.2 Material properties of Nickel and Nickel Oxide 5 2.3 Application in electronic industry 5 3 Atomic Layer Deposition 7 3.1 History 8 3.2 Definition 8 3.3 Features of thermal-ALD 8 3.3.1 ALD growth mechanism – an ideal view 8 3.3.2 ALD growth behaviour 10 3.3.3 Growth mode 11 3.3.4 ALD temperature window 11 3.4 Benefits and limitations 12 3.5 Precursor properties for thermal-ALD 13 3.6 ALD & CVD of Nickel – A literature survey 13 4 Metrology 17 4.1 Thermal analysis of precursors 18 4.2 Film and growth characterization 21 4.2.1 Quartz Crystal Microbalance 21 4.2.2 Spectroscopic Ellipsometry 24 4.2.3 X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy 28 4.2.4 Scanning Electron Microscopy 29 4.2.5 X-Ray Reflectometry and X-Ray Diffraction 29 4.2.6 Four Point Probe Technique 20 5 Rapid Thermal Processing 32 5.1 Introduction 33 5.2 Basics of RTP 33 5.3 Nickel Silicides-A literature survey 33 II Experimental Part 36 6 Methodologies 37 6.1 Experimental setup 38 6.2 ALD process 41 6.2.1 ALD process types and substrate setups 41 6.2.2 Process parameters 41 6.3 Experimental procedure 42 6.3.1 Tool preparation 42 6.3.2 Thermal analysis and ALD experiments from nickel precursors 43 6.3.3 Data acquisition and evaluation 44 6.3.4 Characterization of film properties 46 7 Results and discussion 48 7.1 Introduction 49 7.2 QCM verification with Aluminum Oxide ALD process 49 7.3 ALD process from the reference precursor 50 7.3.1 Introduction 50 7.3.2 TG analysis for Ni(amd) precursor 51 7.3.3 Thermal stability test for Ni(amd) 51 7.3.4 ALD process optimization 52 7.3.5 Film properties 54 7.4 Evaluating the novel Nickel precursors 55 7.4.1 Screening tests for precursor P1 55 7.4.2 Screening tests for precursor P2 62 7.4.3 Screening tests for precursor P3 66 7.4.4 Screening tests for precursor P4 70 7.4.5 Screening tests for precursor P5 72 7.5 Comparison of all nickel precursors used in this work 74 8 Conclusions and outlook 77 References 83 III Appendix 101 A Deposition temperature control & Ellipsometry model 102 B Gas flow plan 10

Speech and Text-Based Emotion Recognizer

Affective computing is a field of study that focuses on developing systems and technologies that can understand, interpret, and respond to human emotions. Speech Emotion Recognition (SER), in particular, has got a lot of attention from researchers in the recent past. However, in many cases, the publicly available datasets, used for training and evaluation, are scarce and imbalanced across the emotion labels. In this work, we focused on building a balanced corpus from these publicly available datasets by combining these datasets as well as employing various speech data augmentation techniques. Furthermore, we experimented with different architectures for speech emotion recognition. Our best system, a multi-modal speech, and text-based model, provides a performance of UA(Unweighed Accuracy) + WA (Weighed Accuracy) of 157.57 compared to the baseline algorithm performance of 119.66Comment: 11 pages 9 figures, 9 table

Analyzing the effects of individual and team attributes on new product design outcomes - Experimental Protocol Development and Feasibility Assessment

Rapidly changing markets demand quick turnaround from creative concepts into final products. This requires firms to have extensive collaboration in their New Product Development (NPD) teams. However effective management of teams can be difficult. In order to understand the challenges of multidisciplinary product development, this study focuses on student design teams conducting engineering design projects at RIT. This study utilizes a modified team effectiveness model based on existing literature for identifying hypothesized associations using a limited number of teams enrolled in senior design. It proposes an experimental protocol for conducting this study at a larger scale and identifies the appropriate tools needed to measure team constructs. The study provides experimental techniques to collect team characteristic data and it also develops techniques to quantify the design process. This study concludes that the experimental protocol is feasible, but that the use of latent semantic analysis is not a feasible approach to measure team mental models at the scale of the size of the MSD program. In addition, a novel method to measure product development project outcomes is proposed that is based on Axiomatic Design principles. Finally, a preliminary assessment of the expected associations suggests that five out of eight propositions behave as predicted by the team effectiveness model; however, the number of project teams used in the study are too small for these results to be conclusive