Thermoelectric measurements are notoriously challenging. In this work, we outline new thermoelectric characterization methods that are experimentally more straightforward and provide much higher accuracy, reducing error by at least a factor of 2. Specifically, three novel measurement methodologies for thermal conductivity are detailed: steady‐state isothermal measurements, scanning hot probe, and lock‐in transient Harman technique. These three...

The XXI century is based on developments of up-to-date intelligent systems and self-learning wireless distributed sensory networks for different purposes of the application to make the whole of space surrounding us sensory and motoric but also for the health and human life maintenance, the improvement of a production status, an output quality, and the product biosafety. A bedrock principle underlying precision agriculture is a wide application of...

Excerpt Despite the obvious advantages of biometric systems, their proliferation was not as much as attended. The main drawback is the uncertainty of the verification result. By contrast to password checking, the verification of biometric raw data is subject to errors and represented by a similarity percentage (100% is never reached). Others drawbacks related to vulnerabilities and usability issues exist. In addition, in order to be used in an industrial...

Excerpt The work of Essaki & Tsu [1] caused a big interest to the study of superlattices made from alternating layers of two semiconductors. The development of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) was successfully applied to fabricate different quantum wells and superlattices. Among them III-V superlattices [Ga1-xAlxAs-GaAs [1-2] - type I], III-V superlattices [InAs/GaSb [3] - type II] and later II-VI superlattice [HgTe/CdTe [4] - type III]. The latter is...

Excerpt Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are cylinders of graphene which is a single planar sheet of sp2-bonded carbon atoms. From their unique structures, they exhibit several novel properties, such as high strength, high performance in electrical and thermal conductors, etc. Therefore, since the discovery by Iijima in 1991 (Iijima, 1991), CNTs have been one of the hottest topics in both physics and material science. Mainly, their structures are specified...

Excerpt This paper, which is based on our recent work (Galicki, 2006b), introduces a new class of adaptive path following controllers not requiring the full know-ledge of both kinematic and dynamic equations in the control laws. Consequently, they are suitable for controlling uncertain robotic manipulators. Motivated in part by the dissipativity and adaptivity methodology (Slotine & Li, 1987), we develop path following controllers whose structure...

High‐frequency and microwave electromagnetic fields are used in billions of various devices and systems. Design of these systems is impossible without detailed analysis of their electromagnetic field. Most of microwave systems are very complex, so analytical solution of the field equations for them is impossible. Therefore, it is necessary to use numerical methods of field simulation. Unfortunately, such complex devices as, for example, modern smartphones...

Recent years have witnessed successful developments of detection techniques of terahertz (THz) pulse radiation and its imaging applications such as security, medicine and environmental sensing, to name an important few. Progress of detection techniques has been made in many aspects, including detection sensitivity, real‐time detection, room‐temperature operation, detection bandwidth and dynamic range, spatial (wavefront) and temporal profiles...