Search results for "DEVICES"

Exploring Historical Scientific Instruments by Using Mobile Media Devices

2022

We describe an educational activity that can be completed with mobile media devices in order to understand the working principle of a pair of tuning forks, from the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo, and how they were used to explain acoustic interference and beats with the Lissajous optical method. This approach can be used with any tuning fork and it is a valuable teaching strategy that does not require specific laboratory equipment.

Efficiency of Wave Energy Converters off the Sicilian Channel

2019

This paper presents a preliminary analysis on efficiency of wave energy converters off the Sicilian Channel (Italy) carried out using the SNL-SWAN spectral model (”Sandia National Laboratories – Simulating WAves Nearshore”). This open source numerical code makes possible to calculate the power extracted from wave energy converter (WEC) devices, arranged in arrays. The WEC arrays were located parallel to the coastline, near the 20 m bathymetric isoline. Three devices were tested: Pelamis, Wave Dragon and Oyster 2; one of the input data of the numerical model is the WEC power matrix, expressed as a function of the wave height and period. This matrix was determined experimentally by the protot…

Electrochemical fabrication of amorphous TiO2/Poly-3,4 Ethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT) hybrid structures for electronic devices.

2013

Solid State Properties of Anodic Hf-Nb Mixed Oxides

2016

In last decades, HfO2 and Nb2O5 have been extensively studied due to their many potential applications, from corrosion protection to CMOS (as high-k gate dielectrics) [1-2] and ReRAM technologies [3-4]. For these technological applications compact, uniform and flat oxides are necessary, and a detailed understanding of their physical properties as a function of the fabrication conditions is needful. Scientific community gradually shifted its interest from pure metal oxides to mixed metal oxides trying to exploit the advantages of pure oxides and to suppress their disadvantages. Mixed oxides can be grown on valve metals alloys by anodizing, a simple and low cost electrochemical process for pr…

Nanostructured Electrochemical Devices for Sensing, Energy Conversion and Storage

2016

Nanostructured materials are attracting growing interest for improving performance of devices and systems of large technological interest. In this work, the principal results about the use of nanostructured materials in the field of electrochemical energy storage, electrochemical water splitting, and electrochemical sensing are presented. Nanostructures were fabricated with two different techniques. One of these was the electrodeposition of the desired material inside the channels of a porous support acting as template. The other one was based on displacement reaction induced by galvanic contact between metals with different electrochemical nobility. In the present work, a commercial polyca…

High Efficiency Electrodes Based on Nanostructured Materials for Energy Devices

2012

Electrical characterization of low power CIGSSe photovoltaic modules

2015

This paper presents the electrical characterization of low power CIGSSe photovoltaic (PV) modules. Such investigation is achieved to perform a comparison of their performances with conventional silicon PV modules. For this purpose, a test bench, suitable for the characterization of both traditional and innovative low power modules, has been set-up and experimental results are accurately described and discussed.

Donor/acceptor heterojunction organic solar cells

2017

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have made very good improvements in recent years, reaching power conversion efficiencies above 10% [1]. This have been achieved through chemical synthesis of new organic materials with improved properties and also by new and more or less complex structures such as donor/acceptor (D/A) or bulk heterojunction OSCs. Here we report the results of initial development of OSCs based on the simple D/A heterojunction [2]. Copper phtalocyanine (CuPc) is used as donor organic material, whereas perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) and fullerene (C60) as acceptor organic materials. Moreover bathocuproine (BCP) is used as exciton blocking layer. Devices are fabricated by…

An energy analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access modes

2010

Body Area Networks (BANs) are an emerging area of wireless personal communications. The IEEE 802.15.6 working group aims to develop a communications standard optimised for low power devices operating on, in or around the human body. IEEE 802.15.6 specifically targets low power medical application areas. The IEEE 802.15.6 draft defines two main channel access modes; contention based and contention free. This paper examines the energy lifetime performance of contention free access and in particular of periodic scheduled allocations. This paper presents an overview of the IEEE 802.15.6 and an analytical model for estimating the device lifetime. The analysis determines the maximum device lifeti…

Automatic image representation and clustering on mobile devices.

2010

In this paper a novel approach for the automatic representation of pictures on mobile devices is proposed. With the wide diffusion of mobile digital image acquisition devices, the need of managing a large number of digital images is quickly increasing. In fact the storage capacity of such devices allow users to store hundreds or even thousands, of pictures that, without a proper organization, become useless. Users may be interested in using (i.e., browsing, saving, printing and so on) a subset of stored data according to some particular picture properties. A content-based description of each picture is needed to perform on-board image indexing. In our work the images are analyzed and descri…