Many natural compounds derived from plants or microbes show promising potential for anticancer treatment, but few have been found to target energy-relevant regulators. In this study, we report that neoalbaconol (NA), a novel small-molecular compound isolated from the fungus, Albatrellus confluens, could target 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase 1 (PDK1) and inhibit its downstream phosphoinositide-3 kinase (PI3-K)/Akt-hexokinase 2 (HK2) pathway, which eventually resulted in energy depletion. By targeting PDK1, NA reduced the consumption of glucose and ATP generation, activated autophagy and caused apoptotic and necroptotic death of cancer cells through independent pathway. Necroptosis was remarkably induced, which was confirmed by several necroptosis-specific markers: the activation of autophagy, presence of necrotic morphology, increase of receptor-interacting protein 1 (RIP1)/RIP3 colocalization and interaction and rescued by necroptosis inhibitor necrostatin-1. The possibility that Akt overexpression reversed the NA-induced energy crisis confirmed the importance of the PDK1-Akt-energy pathway in NA-mediated cell death. Moreover, NA shows the capability to inhibit PI3-K/Akt signaling and suppress tumor growth in the nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) nude mouse model. These results supported the feasibility of NA in anticancer treatments.

To fulfill the physical requirement of a 50–100μm Free Electron Laser (FEL) oscillator, design considerations of a planar undulator are described. The main undulator parameters are optimized for a trade off between the gain and the FEL's natural extraction efficiency, and the technical aspects including the structure of the permanent magnet (PM), the choice of PM materials and field tolerances are discussed. The lattice of the designed undulator is studied and the beam matching at the entrance of the undulator corresponding to various working points of electron beam energy is performed.

This letter reports a novel concept of vertical stacked-spiral RF inductor with integrated nano-powder-magnetic-core in standard CMOS. A proof-of-concept design in a foundry 0.18 6-metal CMOS using a new post-CMOS backend process (CMOS+) is depicted. Measurement shows significant improvement in inductance of 35% and quality factor of 41% up to multi-GHz in prototype. An -density of 420 at 1.2 GHz is achieved. Limiting factors for the relatively low factor in the prototypes and improvement method are discussed.

Climate change, sustainable development, and greenhouse gas are several of the hot topics in the world.Saving our limited resources, reducing consumption, and waste are emergent tasks facing the world.As a result, a new generation of passive sampling technology -multi-gas passive sampling system (MGPS) has been developed and reported here.This paper will demonstrate the cost effective unique features of the MGPS compared with many normal passive samplers (NPS).Cross contamination problems have been comprehensively studied and reported in this paper.

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) failure is a major reliability problem, and ESD protection is an emerging design challenge for radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits demanding extremely high reliability for wireless applications in harsh environments. This paper reports the design and optimization of a 5-kV ESD-protected 2.4-GHz power amplifier (PA) circuit in a 0.18-μm RFCMOS technology. A new mixed-mode ESD simulation-design method and an accurate RF ESD characterization technique are used to minimize the inevitable ESD-induced parasitic effects, which can significantly degrade PA circuit performance. A novel ESD-aware PA design technique is utilized to optimize whole-chip ESD + PA performance. Experiments show that conventional ESD protection can seriously affect the PA circuit, while optimized ESD protection may resolve such a problem. The optimized ESD-protected PA circuit achieves good whole-chip performance, including 5-kV ESD protection, a linear output of 13.5 dBm, a gain of 20.2 dB, and a power-added efficiency of ~ 18%, all favorable in the same design category.

This paper reviews and discusses the design of a low-power single-full-band (3.1–10.6 GHz) noncarrier impulse-radio ultra wideband (UWB) transmitter featuring 5th-order Gaussian derivative pulse shaping, integrated BPSK modulation, and 2.5 kV whole-chip ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection. The UWB transmitter design has been implemented in a commercial 0.18 μm CMOS technology with a very small die size of 0.25 mm2. The fabricated chips have demonstrated full functionality, extremely low power consumption of 0.14 pJ/p-mV, and an ultra short pulse width of 394 ps. This ESD-protected UWB transmitter has the potential to support wireless streaming to gigabit per second (Gbps).

Three AuBe ohmic contact structures with Ni, Pt, or Pd as a diffusion barrier layer are investigated and compared. It is found that the barrier layer plays an important role at the formation of a high-quality AuBe-type ohmic contact on p-GaAs. This paper reveals that Ni cannot function as an efficient barrier and the ohmic contact with Ni as a barrier layer is characterized with high specific contact resistance and poor surface morphology. Both the AuBe/Pt/Au and AuBe/Pd/Au ohmic contact structures can achieve a minimum contact resistance of several 10 (7) Omega . cm(2) after an oven annealing at 390 degrees C for 30 min. The AuBe/Pt/Au contact structure has the best overall performance in terms of low specific contact resistance, good geometrical integrity, and high thermal stability. A thin Ti layer is used to promote adhesion without causing a negative impact on ohmic contact resistance. The AlGaAs/GaAs and InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors with Ti/AuBe/Pt/Au as the base ohmic contacts exhibit good linearity with low offset and knee voltages.

Low cost and low power are the major requirements for radio-frequency identification (RFID) applications. In this article, optimisation techniques on ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID passive transponders are proposed to achieve low power without loss of area. The optimisations cover the key sub-circuits, such as the charge pump, discharge scheme and sense amplifier in the embedded electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) of UHF RFID-passive transponders. A 256-byte EEPROM for UHF RFID application with an 0.8 mm × 0.7 mm chip area was designed and manufactured based on an SMIC 0.18 μm EEPROM process. The simulations and measurements show that, compared to the conventional design, a reduced power loss of more than 20% is achieved without a loss in the chip area.

This paper presents the design of a low-power single-full-band (3.1-10.6 GHz) noncarrier impulse-radio ultra-wideband (UWB) transmitter (TX) implemented in a commercial 0.18-μm CMOS technology. This UWB TX features fifth-order Gaussian derivative pulse shaping, integrated binary phase-shift keying modulation and 2.5-kV whole-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection. Measurement shows full function with a very small die size of 0.25 mm 2 , extremely low power consumption of 0.14 pJ/p-mV, and an ultrashort pulsewidth of 394 ps. This ESD-protected UWB TX has the potential to support wireless streaming for gigabit/second applications.

This paper reports a tunable low triggering voltage, dual-directional SCR ESD protection structure in CMOS for RF ICs. A new embedded gate-coupling technique is used to reduce and adjust its triggering voltage. Experiment shows a low discharging resistance of ~0.26Ω, low leakage current of ~0.19nA, low parasitic capacitance of ~150fF and ultra fast response time of ~100pS. This structure achieves ESD protection of >;9.20kV HBM and >;500V CDM for a 90μm device. A high ESD protection to Si ratio of ESDV~8.17V/μm 2 is obtained for RF IC applications.

This paper discusses critical aspects for co-design of ultra wideband (UWB) system-on-chip (SoC) and on-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, which are beyond the considerations on data rate and bandwidth. Impulse radio UWB system architecture has been defined with critical building blocks proposed and verified, including pulse generator, transmitter, low noise amplifier (LNA) and multiplier based correlator. ESD protection is well considered for each related block. Design examples have been implemented in a commercial RFCMOS processes to demonstrate the working principles for key UWB transmitter and receiver circuit blocks. UWB-ESD co-design techniques, simulation and measurement results for these UWB RF modules are presented in detail.

This paper presents a new circuit scheme to control the current surge in the boosting phase of an radio frequency idenfication–nonvolative memory pump. By introducing a circuit block consisting of a current reference and a current mirror, the new circuit scheme can keep the period-average current of the pump constantly below the desired level, for example, 2.5 μA. Therefore, it can prevent the rectified supply of the RFID tag IC from collapsing in the boosting phase of the pump. The presented scheme could effectively reduce the voltage drop on the rectified supply from more than 50% to even zero, but could cost less area. Moreover, an analytical expression to calculate the boosting time of a pump in the new scheme is developed.

The Kink phenomenon and its effect on broad band matching are introduced and analyzed,and a novel composite HBT basing on the principle of negative feedback is proposed.According to the small signal analysis and the computer software simulation,the output impedance of a composite transistor could be represented by a "shifted" series RC circuit,and keep a constant value.A test die chip using 2 μm InGaP/GaAs HBT technology was fabricated.The measurement shows that the new composite HBT structure is able to eliminate the Kink phenomenon over a very broad band from 0.1 GHz to 20 GHz(nearly reaches this HBT's cutoff frequency).Furthermore,the measurement is quite close to the results from theoretical analysis and the computers simulation.In a word,the composite transistor structure can simplify the design of a broadband amplifier.Besides,the increase of chip area and power consumption is negligible.

This paper presents a low-voltage wideband quadrature VCO for a 3.5 GHz phase-locked loop(PLL).With a careful function definition and an optimization of switched-capacitor-arrays(SCA),each channel frequency is accurately mapped into each subband one by one.Thus,process of subband selection during the PLL's channel switching process is eliminated.This chip was fabricated in a 0.18 μm CMOS process.The measured central frequency of the highest subband is 3.538 GHz,and the phase noise is-121.6 dBc/Hz @1 MHz offset frequency.The measured tuning range is 3.04 to 3.58 GHz with the tuning gain from 86 to 132 MHz/V.Power consumption is about 14 mW with a 1.2 V supply voltage.

This paper models and analyses differential inductors and series-connected inductors from SMIC's 0.18μm CMOS process, and then proposes a design rule of inductors in RF CMOS differential circuits. This paper also presents a new model of series-connected inductors, in which mutual inductance, substrate capacitive loss and capacitive effects between windings are taken into consideration. Finally, a group of series-connected inductors with different spacing are designed and fabricated, and their measured results verify this model.

A method based on equivalent circuit is presented to design a class of compacted millimeter wave bandpass filters in standard 0.18-mu m CMOS process. Thin film microstrip is properly constructed on the lossy silicon substrate to realize small insertion loss. Using broadside-coupled scheme, thin film microstrip bandpass filters are designed and fabricated. Equivalent circuit model and theoretical network analysis are given to explain the performance of the suggested filters. Design procedures for one-stage and multi-stage filters are proposed. Meandering transmission lines are properly constructed to miniaturize the chip size. A class of compacted K-band bandpass filters is implemented. Their measured results agree with the design results very well.

This paper proposes a simple method of measuring differentially-excited on-wafer RF CMOS spiral inductor-like components. This method requires only two common 'G-S-G' probes and an ordinary two-port VNA. Using a network instead of a detailed equivalent circuit, this method completes the de-embedding with only one `Through' dummy, and thus the measurements are greatly simplified. By designing the ports 'Open' or 'Shortcircuited' deliberately, a multi-port transformer can be transformed into three two-port networks with different terminators. Then, couplings between the two coils can be solved, and the differentially-excited scattering parameters (S-parameters) can be constructed. Also, a group of differential inductors and transformers were designed and measured, and then comparisons between simulated and measured electromagnetic results are performed to verify this method.

A compacted CMOS K-band bandpass filter incorporating meandering thin film microstrip and defective uniplanar compact photonic bandgap (UC-PBG) slow-wave structures for size reduction are presented. Benefited from the multilayer metal technology of the standard 0.18-mu m CMOS process, meandering thin film microstrip and broadside-coupled structures with large coupling degree are properly constructed to realize bandpass filters with small insertion loss. The slow-wave effect of UC-PBG structure is investigated and a center frequency drop of 14% is achieved by the use of UC-PBG ground. A 3.6-dB loss 18 GHz filter with two transmission poles has been designed and implemented in standard 0.18-mu m CMOS technology and only with an area of 0.34 mm(2).