No abstract

Aluminum nitride (AlN) is a widely researched piezoelectric material due to its CMOS compatibility. One of the most common applications for AlN is in the area of vibrational energy harvesting. The piezoelectric quality of AlN is related to the crystal orientation of the film and optimal conditions are obtained when AlN is c-axis aligned with a (0 0 2) orientation. AlN can be a challenging material to integrate into a fabrication process due to orientation dependency of the fabrication process. This paper reports on the effects of non-(0 0 2) oriented AlN peaks on an energy harvesting MEMS cantilever structure. Results show that FWHM values of the AlN films from different wafers were approximately the same 8.5°, 8.7°, and 9°, however wafer 1 had additional peaks at (1 0 2) and (1 0 3), which significantly affected the piezoelectric constants and the amount of power generated. The measured d31 value for the wafers were 2.04, 1.97, and 0.84 pm V−1, and the power generated was 0.67, 0.64, and 0.24 µW respectively. These values show that non-peaks of AlN can cause a significant decrease in the piezoelectric constant, which causes significant decrease in the ability to generate power from an AlN film.

Environment perception is crucial for the safe navigation of vehicles and robots to detect obstacles in their surroundings. It is also of paramount interest for navigation of human beings in reduced visibility conditions. Obstacle avoidance systems typically combine multiple sensing technologies (i.e., LiDAR, radar, ultrasound and visual) to detect various types of obstacles under different lighting and weather conditions, with the drawbacks of a given technology being offset by others. These systems require powerful computational capability to fuse the mass of data, which limits their use to high-end vehicles and robots. INSPEX delivers a low-power, small-size and lightweight environment perception system that is compatible with portable and/or wearable applications. This requires miniaturizing and optimizing existing range sensors of different technologies to meet the user’s requirements in terms of obstacle detection capabilities. These sensors consist of a LiDAR, a time-of-flight sensor, an ultrasound and an ultra-wideband radar with measurement ranges respectively of 10 m, 4 m, 2 m and 10 m. Integration of a data fusion technique is also required to build a model of the user’s surroundings and provide feedback about the localization of harmful obstacles. As primary demonstrator, the INSPEX device will be fixed on a white cane.

One candidate for the cytosolic labile iron pool is iron(II)glutathione. There is also a widely held opinion that an equivalent cytosolic labile heme pool exists and that this pool is important for the intracellular transfer of heme. Here we describe a study designed to characterise conjugates that form between heme and glutathione. In contrast to hydrated iron(II), heme reacts with glutathione, under aerobic conditions, to form the stable hematin–glutathione complex, which contains iron(III). Thus, glutathione is clearly not the cytosolic ligand for heme, indeed we demonstrate that the rate of heme degradation is enhanced in the presence of glutathione. We suggest that the concentration of heme in the cytosol is extremely low and that intracellular heme transfer occurs via intracellular membrane structures. Should any heme inadvertently escape into the cytosol, it would be rapidly conjugated to glutathione thereby protecting the cell from the toxic effects of heme.