The formation and morphological evolution of germanides formed in a ternary Ni/Ta-interlayer/Ge system were examined by ex situ and in situ annealing experiments. The Ni germanide film formed in the Ni/Ta-interlayer/Ge system maintained continuity up to 550°C, whereas agglomeration of the Ni germanide occurred in the Ni/Ge system without Ta-interlayer. Through microstructural and chemical analy...

Porous tantalum (Ta) implants are highly corrosion resistant and biocompatible, and they possess significantly better initial stability than that of conventional titanium (Ti) implants. During loading wear, Ta nanoparticles (Ta-NPs) that were deposited on the surface of a porous Ta implant are inevitably released and come into direct contact with peri-implant osteoblasts. The wear debris may in...

A Ta/TaOx/Pt stacked capacitor-like device for resistive switching was fabricated and examined. The tested device demonstrated stable resistive switching characteristics including uniform distribution of resistive switching operational parameters, highly promising endurance, and retention properties. To reveal the resistive switching mechanism of the device, micro structure analysis using high-...

We consider broadcast encryption schemes wherein a center needs to broadcast a secret message to a privileged set of receivers. We prescribe a probability distribution P on the privileged set. In this setting, the transmission overhead can be viewed as a random variable over P and we define its expected value as the average transmission overhead (or ato). Given P, the Shannon’s entropy function...

The transmission through a stack of identical slabs that are separated by gaps with random widths is usually treated by calculating the average of the logarithm of the transmission probability. We show how to calculate the average of the transmission probability itself with the aid of a recurrence relation and derive analytical upper and lower bounds. The upper bound, when used as an approximat...

Aluminum and copper interconnects are widely used for microelectronic applications. A problem can arise when interfacial oxides are present. Such oxides can significantly degrade device performance by increasing electrical resistance. This paper describes analyses of interfacial oxide layers found in Al/Ta and Ta/Cu metal stacks. The analyses were performed through transmission electron microsc...

Type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are most commonly composed of two genes encoding a stable toxin, which harms the cell, and an unstable antitoxin that can inactivate it. TA systems were initially characterized as selfish elements, but have recently gained attention for regulating general stress responses responsible for pathogen virulence, formation of drug-tolerant persister cells and biof...

A frequency-domain block signal detection (FDBD) using QR decomposition with M-algorithm maximum likelihood detection (QRM-MLD) can significantly improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the cyclic prefix inserted single-carrier (CP-SC) block transmission in a frequency-selective fading channel. However, the use of a fairly large number of the surviving paths is required in the M-algorit...

Hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons receive inputs from entorhinal cortex directly via the temporoammonic (TA) pathway and indirectly via the Schaffer collateral (SC) pathway from CA3. NMDARs at synapses of both pathways are critical for the induction of synaptic plasticity, information processing, and learning and memory. We now demonstrate that, in the rat hippocampus, activity-dependent mGlu1 ...

Articles you may be interested in Spin Hall switching of the magnetization in Ta/TbFeCo structures with bulk perpendicular anisotropy Appl. Reducing spin-torque switching current by incorporating an ultra-thin Ta layer with CoFeB free layer in magnetic tunnel junctions Appl. Enhancement of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and transmission of spin-Hall-effect-induced spin currents by a Hf space...