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The micro-discharge effect limits the development of high-frequency microwave power components to miniaturization and integration. Therefore, it has become a focus of research to effectively suppress the micro-discharge effect, increase the micro-discharge threshold, and strengthen the environmental stability of high-frequency microwave devices. In this study, different elemental ratios of carbon (C)/silver (Ag)/titanium (Ti) composite films were obtained by multi-target magnetron co-sputtering technology and then systematically analyzed for micro-discharge effects. When the doping ratio of C/Ag/Ti was 3.538/1/0.013, the corresponding maximum secondary electron emission coefficient (δmax) decreased to 1.01 owing to the suppression of secondary electron emission by the increase in the content of sp2 hybrid bond. The micro-discharge threshold of Ku band waveguide filters coated with moderate C/Ag/Ti composite films showed an optimal performance of 10 000−12 500 W, which was increased by approximately 20 times. Moreover, the microstructure of the composite films exhibited higher density and flatness with a tiny increase in the titanium doping ratio, representing good environmental stability. Thus, the effective suppression of the secondary electron emission yield, significant improvement in the micro-discharge threshold, and enhancement of the environment stability of microwave components could be realized simultaneously by reasonably controlling the content of titanium in silver and titanium co-doped carbon-based composite films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voltage-tunable RF/microwave devices attract great attention due to their low power consumption; however, they still suffer from the fundamental dilemma between large tunability and low insertion loss. In this paper, yttrium iron garnet (YIG) polycrystalline thin films with low microwave loss (<3 × 10−4) were directly deposited on mica substrates via a van der Waals force and then transferred onto PMN-PT substrates. The in-plane magnetic anisotropy of YIG was tuned by the in-plane biaxial stress of PMN-PT, and an improved voltage tunability (175 MHz) of in-plane FMR fr was obtained due to the removal of the substrate clamping effect. Moreover, our samples still represent good frequency stability (4–12 GHz) during the tuning process. It is of significance for exploiting novel, portable, low-loss RF/microwave devices in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless strain sensors have received extensive attention owing to their wide application prospects in structural health monitoring, industrial automation, human activity monitoring, and intelligent robotic systems. Here, a wireless strain sensor prototype based on the magnetoelectric heterostructure of ferromagnetic thin films on a piezoelectric substrate has been developed. The ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) frequency of the sensor is strongly dependent on external strain due to the large magnetostriction of the film. The piezoelectric substrate with a programmable voltage has been used as a strain source for the characterization of the wireless strain sensor. The limit of detection of the wireless strain sensor is 0.54 με, which is comparable with that of commercial metal-foil sensors that need connection wires. More importantly, the FMR strain sensor shows a sensitivity of 65.46 ppm/με, indicating more than a 60 fold improvement than that of traditional wireless strain sensors based on patch antenna and RLC resonators whose frequency shift is mainly due to the strain induced dimension change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversible networks are a key factor for designing self-healing hydrogels with high stretching properties. To achieve that, it is often necessary to modify or graft functional groups to the main chains for inducing the formation of reversible covalent-bond-based chemical cross-linking or hydrogen-bond-based physical cross-linking, thus leading to a complicated chemical process and high cost. Here, we proposed a dynamic sliding physical crosslinking mechanism of chains to design and synthesize hydrogels with both good self-healing ability and extensibility by introducing interstitial phases of small organic molecules into the hydrogel networks to enhance hydrogen bonds, which has been proved to be a quite facile and practical approach to achieve stretchable and self-healing properties. Our work might greatly promote our ability to understand the role of hydrogen bonds that are often overlooked in the design of materials. The as-synthesized hydrogels displayed extraordinary swelling properties with a swelling ratio of 2750% in PBS and of nearly 10 000% in stilled water, respectively, and they also showed excellent performance after many stress cycles under 95% compressive deformation. The use of 10% diethylene glycol could allow the elongation to be increased from 238% to 2705%. Our cell and animal experimental studies indicated that the as-synthesized supramolecular hydrogels have good biocompatibility and bioactivity and show potential for clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and measurement are popular techniques in precision manufacturing processes. In this manuscript, a single image 3D reconstruction method is proposed based on a novel monocular vision system, which includes a three-level charge coupled device (3-CCD) camera and a ring structured multi-color light emitting diode (LED) illumination. Firstly, a procedure for the calibration of the illumination's parameters, including LEDs' mounted angles, distribution density and incident angles, is proposed. Secondly, the incident light information, the color distribution information and gray level information are extracted from the acquired image, and the 3D reconstruction model is built based on the camera imaging model. Thirdly, the surface height information of the detected object within the field of view is computed based on the built model. The proposed method aims at solving the uncertainty and the slow convergence issues arising in 3D surface topography reconstruction using current shape-from-shading (SFS) methods. Three-dimensional reconstruction experimental tests are carried out on convex, concave, angular surfaces and on a mobile subscriber identification module (SIM) card slot, showing relative errors less than 3.6%, respectively. Advantages of the proposed method include a reduced time for 3D surface reconstruction compared to other methods, demonstrating good suitability of the proposed method in reconstructing surface 3D morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]