Intrinsic Ripples Research Articles

Identification of Intrinsic Friction and Torque Ripple for a Robotic Joint with Integrated Torque Sensors with Application to Wheel-Bearing Characterization

Although integrated joint torque sensors in robots dispel the need for external force/torque sensors at the wrist to measure interactions, an inherent challenge is that they also measure the robot’s intrinsic dynamics. This is especially problematic for delicate robot manipulation tasks, where interaction forces may be comparable to the robot intrinsic dynamics. Therefore, the intrinsic dynamics must first be experimentally estimated under no-load conditions, when the measurement only consists of torques due to the transmission of the robot actuator, before external interactions may be measured. In this work, we propose an approach for identifying and predicting the intrinsic dynamics using linear regression with non-linear radial basis functions. Then, we validate this regression on a wheel-bearing turning task, in which its friction is a measure of quality, and thus must be accurately measured. The results showed that the bearing torque measured by the joint 7 torque sensor was within an RMS error of 11% of the torque measured by the external force/torque sensor. This error is much lower than that before our proposed model in compensating the intrinsic dynamics of the robot arm.

A High-PSRR NMOS LDO Regulator With Intrinsic Gain-Tracking Ripple Cancellation Technique

A High-PSRR NMOS LDO Regulator With Intrinsic Gain-Tracking Ripple Cancellation Technique

On-chip light sheet illumination for nanoparticle tracking in microfluidic channels.

A simple and inexpensive method is presented to efficiently integrate light sheet illumination in a microfluidic chip for dark-field microscopic tracking and sizing of nanoparticles. The basic idea is to insert an optical fiber inside a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer microfluidic chip and use it as a cylindrical lens. The optical fiber is in this case no longer seen as only an optical waveguide but as a ready-made micro-optical component that is inexpensive and easy to source. Upon insertion, the optical fiber stretches the PDMS microchannel walls, which has two effects. The first effect is to tone down the intrinsic ripples in the PDMS that would otherwise create inhomogeneities in the light sheet illumination. The second effect is to remove any obliqueness of the channel wall and constrain it to be strictly perpendicular to the propagation of the illumination, avoiding the formation of a prismatic diopter. Through calculations, numerical simulations and measurements, we show that the optimal configuration consists in creating a slowly converging light sheet so that its axial thickness is almost uniform along the tracked area. The corresponding thickness was estimated at 12 μm, or 10 times the depth of field of the optical system. This leads to an at least six-fold increase in the signal-to-noise ratio compared to the case without the cylindrical lens. This original light-sheet configuration is used to track and size spherical gold nanoparticles with diameters of 80 nm and 50 nm.

An Integrated AC-DC Isolated Converter Electrolytic-Free With Intrinsic Active Low-Frequency Ripple Reduction

An Integrated AC-DC Isolated Converter Electrolytic-Free With Intrinsic Active Low-Frequency Ripple Reduction

Water flow in graphene nanochannels driven by imposed thermal gradients: the role of flexural phonons.

Accurate control of fluid transport in nanoscale structures is key to enable the design of foreseeable nanofluidic devices with applications in many fields such as chip cooling, energy conversion, drug delivery and medical diagnosis. Here, inspired by the experimental observation of intrinsic thermal ripples in graphene and by recent advances in the manipulation of 2D nanomaterials, we introduce a graphene-based thermal nanopump which produces controlled and continuous liquid flow in nanoslit channels. We investigate the performance of this thermal nanopump employing large scale molecular dynamics simulations. Upon systematically imposing thermal gradients, a net water flow towards the low-temperature zone is observed, achieving flow velocities up to 4 m s-1. We observe that water flow rates increase monotonically due to larger ripple fluctuations on the graphene layers as higher thermal gradients are applied. Moreover, we find that the out-of-plane flexural phonons in graphene are responsible for flow generation wherein lower frequency phonon branches are activated with higher imposed thermal gradients. Furthermore, by modifying the wettability of the channel walls, an increase of 50% in the water flow rates is observed, showing that the efficiency of the proposed thermal pump can be enhanced by tuning the channel wall hydrophobicity. Our results indicate that thermal gradients can be employed to drive continuous water flow in graphene nanoslit channels with potential applications in nanofluidic devices.

Optical Graphene for Biosensor Application: A Review

One of the most often credited materials for opening up new possibilities in the creation of next-generation biosensors is graphene oxide (GO). GO has good water dispersibility, biocompatibility, and high affinity for specific biomolecules due to the coexistence of hydrophobic domains from pristine graphite structure and hydrophilic oxygen containing functional groups, as well as properties of graphene itself that are partly dependent on preparation methods. The high signal output and a strong potential for rapid industrial growth rate, graphene-based materials, such as graphene oxide (GO), are receiving substantial interest in bio sensing applications. Some of graphene's most enticing qualities are its superior conductivity and mechanical capabilities (such as toughness and elasticity), as well as its high reactivity to chemical compounds. The existence of waves on the surface (natural or created) is another property/variable that has immense potential if properly utilized. Single cell detection can be performed by optical biosensors based on graphene. The present state of knowledge about the use of graphene for bio sensing is reviewed in this article. We briefly cover the use of graphene for bio sensing applications in general, with a focus on wearable graphene-based biosensors. The intrinsic graphene ripples and their impact on graphene bio sensing capabilities are extensively examined.

Distribution of ripples in graphene membranes

Intrinsic ripples with various configurations and sizes were reported to affect the physical and chemical properties of 2D materials. By performing molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical analysis, we use two geometric models of the ripple shape to explore numerically the distribution of ripples in graphene membrane. We focus on the ratio of ripple height to its diameter (t/D) which was recently shown to be the most relevant for chemical activity of graphene membranes. Our result demonstrates that the ripple density decreases as the coefficient t/D increases, in a qualitative agreement with the Boltzmann distribution derived analytically from the bending energy of the membrane. Our theoretical study provides also specific quantitative information on the ripple distribution in graphene and gives new insights applicable to other 2D materials.

Temperature‐Dependent Adhesion in van der Waals Heterostructures

AbstractThe interlayer coupling between 2D materials is immensely important for both the fundamental understanding of these systems, and for the development of transfer techniques for the fabrication of van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. A number of uncertainties remain with respect to their adhesion characteristics due to the elusive nature of measured adhesion interactions. Moreover, it is theoretically predicted that the intrinsic ripples in 2D materials give rise to a temperature dependence in adhesion, although the vdW interactions themselves are principally independent of temperature. Here, direct measurements of the adhesion between reduced graphene oxide – coated by solution deposition on atomic force microscopy tips – and graphene, h‐BN, and MoS2 supported on SiO2 substrates and as freestanding membranes are presented. The in situ nanomechanical characterization reveals a prominent reduction in the adhesion energies with increasing temperature which is ascribed to the thermally induced ripples in the 2D materials.

Dynamics of pull and release of graphene nanoribbons

The pull and release molecular dynamics simulations of graphene nanoribbons (GNR) lead to their length dependent several folded conformations in the ground states at finite temperatures. The folding occurs when the potential energy of the stretched GNR is sufficient to overcome the energy barriers between the flat GNR and its folded conformations. We explore the dynamics of GNRs during their pull and release as the flat GNR develops intrinsic ripples as soon as thermal fluctuations are introduced and rich mechanical phenomena are found even before the folding process starts. Nudged elastic band calculations were performed to understand the nature of energy barriers and the minimum energy paths between the flat and the rippled nanoribbons. The potential and the kinetic energies of nanoribbons show strong oscillatory characters with attenuation in amplitudes at the start and the end of the pulling process, but as soon as the release process starts the oscillatory nature becomes weak giving rise to small fluctuations. Both thermostatted and unthermostatted nanoribbons were studied with some important observations. Different equivalent continuum models were analyzed which can mimic these experiments. It has been found that the pull and release of the GNRs without any intrinsic rippling can be successfully simulated with a thin plate continuum model using Hooke’s law which does not account for geometric nonlinearities and therefore is aptly able to capture small deformations of the flat GNR. This relation fails when the GNR develops ripples and then undergoes through the pull and release experiments. The rippled GNR was modeled by introducing ripples in the flat continuum GNR by nonlinear curve fitting of the atomistic z-coordinates with a sinusoidal function. Then three different constitutive relations were tried and it was found that modeling GNRs as St. Venant–Kirchhoff materials, which assume a linear relation between the second Piola–Kirchhoff stress tensor and the Green-St. Venant strain tensor correctly reproduce the atomistic behavior before the folding starts. The temperature results were also reproduced by solving the energy balance equation where a thermoelastic constitutive relation between the second Piola–Kirchhoff stress tensor and the Green-St. Venant strain tensor subtracted by the thermal strain tensor was assumed.

Effect of non-axisymmetric perturbations on the ambipolar Er and neoclassical particle flux inside the ITER pedestal region

The transport dynamics of impurities in the pedestal region of ITER plasmas is of crucial interest since this regulates the penetration of impurities from the edge into the core plasma, where an excessive accumulation of impurities can degrade their fusion performance. In the pedestal region of H-mode tokamak plasmas, anomalous transport is highly reduced and impurity transport is found to be well described by the neoclassical theory. Under these conditions, perturbations to the axisymmetric tokamak geometry can strongly affect both the radial electric field and particle transport. In this work, we describe the results of numerical studies performed to quantify the effects on the pedestal ambipolar electric field and radial particle fluxes of the non-axisymmetric fields, associated with both the intrinsic toroidal field ripple and extrinsic fields applied for ELM control, for ITER Q = 10 plasma conditions with emphasis on high Z impurity transport. It is found that the effect of the ITER toroidal field ripple on high Z impurity transport is negligible. On the contrary, extrinsic three-dimensional fields applied for ELM control cause a strong modification of the pedestal ambipolar electric (to less negative values) and the appearance of multi-valued solutions for the pedestal electric field, analogue to core stellarator transport significantly increasing the outward character of neoclassical pedestal transport for both the main plasma ions (D and T in ITER) and high Z impurities, suggesting a strong modification of the background plasma profiles. Finally, it is found that for the Z impurity, its quantitative evaluation has uncertainties (with important implications for the radial flow direction) associated with the high poloidal Mach number ~ 1, due to the high pedestal electric field and large ion mass, which renders the first order neoclassical theory questionable. Detailed ITER MHD 3D equilibria and a benchmark of SFINCS against NEO and NCLASS codes has also been obtained.

Impairment of Sharp-Wave Ripples in a Murine Model of Dravet Syndrome.

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a severe early-onset epilepsy associated with heterozygous loss-of-function mutations in SCN1A Animal models of DS with global Scn1a haploinsufficiency recapitulate the DS phenotype, including seizures, premature death, and impaired spatial memory performance. Spatial memory requires hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SPW-Rs), which consist of high-frequency field potential oscillations (ripples, 100-260 Hz) superimposed on a slower SPW. Published in vitro electrophysiologic recordings in DS mice demonstrate reduced firing of GABAergic inhibitory neurons, which are essential for the formation of SPW-R complexes. Here, in vivo electrophysiologic recordings of hippocampal local field potential in both male and female mice demonstrate that Scn1a haploinsufficiency slows intrinsic ripple frequency and reduces the rate of SPW-R occurrence. In DS mice, peak ripple-band power is shifted to lower frequencies, average intertrough intervals of individually detected ripples are slower, and the rate of SPW-R generation is reduced, while SPW amplitude remains unaffected. These alterations in SPW-R properties, in combination with published reductions in interneuron function in DS, suggest a direct link between reduced inhibitory neuron excitability and impaired SPW-R function. A simple interconnected, conductance-based in silico interneuron network model was used to determine whether reduced sodium conductance is sufficient to slow ripple frequency, and stimulation with a modeled SPW demonstrates that reduced sodium conductance alone is sufficient to slow oscillatory frequencies. These findings forge a potential mechanistic link between impaired SPW-R generation and Scn1a mutation in DS mice, expanding the set of disorders in which SPW-R dysfunction contributes to impaired memory.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Disruption of sharp-wave ripples, a characteristic hippocampal rhythm coordinated by the precise timing of GABAergic interneurons, impairs spatial learning and memory. Prior in vitro patch-clamp recordings in brain slices from genetic mouse models of Dravet syndrome (DS) reveal reduced sodium current and excitability in GABAergic interneurons but not excitatory cells, suggesting a causal role for impaired interneuron activity in seizures and cognitive impairment. Here, heterozygous Scn1a mutation in DS mice reduces hippocampal sharp-wave ripple occurrence and slows internal ripple frequency in vivo and a simple in silico model demonstrates reduction in interneuron function alone is sufficient to slow model oscillations. Together, these findings provide a plausible pathophysiologic mechanism for Scn1a gene mutation to impair spatial memory.

Role of Graphene Surface Ripples and Thermal Vibrations in Molecular Dynamics of C60

Nanocars are artificial molecular machines with chassis, axles, and wheels designed for nanoscale transport at materials’ surfaces. Understanding the dependence of surface dynamics of nanocars on the substrate’s physicochemical properties is critical to the design of the transport properties of such man-made nanoscale devices. Among the multitude of potential substrates for the nanotransporters, graphene exhibits intrinsic ripples on its surface, which may affect the surface dynamics of nanocars. In this work, we report our molecular dynamics study of motion of C60, a popular nanocar wheel, on the graphitic substrates with systematically controllable surface ripples. We find that surface ripples increase the amplitude of fullerene fluctuation in the direction normal to surface, which leads to decrease of the desorption temperature from 650 K on a double-layer graphite system with less ripples to 550 K on single-layer graphene with more ripples. The surface diffusion of C60 follows the rare hops mechanism ...

On the Use of the Intrinsic Ripple of a Buck Converter for Visible Light Communication in LED Drivers

In this paper, we present the analysis of a novel technique to implement visible light communication (VLC) into light emitting diode (LED) drivers with minimum hardware requirements and efficacy degradation. It uses a synchronous buck converter as a circuit for a dual-purpose LED driver for illumination and VLC. The role of the converter is to regulate the average current via the duty cycle value for lighting purposes and to modulate digital data through the phase of its ripple waveform. In this technique, the phase of the pulsewidth modulator acts as an independent variable to modulate the ripple waveform for a binary phase-shift keying modulation and does not affect lighting regulation. Thus, the transmission of wireless digital data uses the remaining ac content present in the waveform of the ripple. By detecting the phase of the ripple, a VLC receiver can decode the data sent by the transmitter. Finally, our experimental results show that the efficacy of the LED is not affected by the value of the ripple when operating outside its nonlinear region, along with minimum global efficacy degradation when compared with a standard synchronous buck converter with the same parameters and no VLC capabilities.

Intrinsic rippling enhances static non-reciprocity in a graphene metamaterial.

In mechanical systems, Maxwell-Betti reciprocity means that the displacement at point B in response to a force at point A is the same as the displacement at point A in response to the same force applied at point B. Because the notion of reciprocity is general, fundamental, and is operant for other physical systems like electromagnetics, acoustics, and optics, there is significant interest in understanding systems that are not reciprocal, or exhibit non-reciprocity. However, most studies on non-reciprocity have occurred in bulk-scale structures for dynamic problems involving time reversal symmetry. As a result, little is known about the mechanisms governing static non-reciprocal responses, particularly in atomically-thin two-dimensional materials like graphene. Here, we use classical atomistic simulations to demonstrate that out-of-plane ripples, which are intrinsic to graphene, enable significant, multiple orders of magnitude enhancements in the statically non-reciprocal response of graphene metamaterials. Specifically, we find that a striking interplay between the ripples and the stress fields that are induced in the metamaterials due to their geometry impacts the displacements that are transmitted by the metamaterial, thus leading to a significantly enhanced static non-reciprocal response. This study thus demonstrates the potential of two-dimensional mechanical metamaterials for symmetry-breaking applications.

Thermally Induced Bending of ReS2 Nanowalls.

Among the variety of stimuli-responsive materials, temperature-responsive materials (TRMs) can adapt to the surrounding environment in the presence of a thermal stimulus, and they have attracted considerable attention in sensors, actuators, and surface engineering. However, polymers, as the most representative TRMs, are far from ideal with respect to long-term reliability and durability. Here, for the first time, an inorganic material, ReS2 , is analyzed, which possesses an unexpected temperature-responsive behavior that is triggered by stable and reversible thermally induced bending (TIB). Due to thermal fluctuations in the ReS2 layers, intrinsic ripples tend to aggravate rapidly with rising temperature. Then, the weak interlayer interaction of ReS2 is further weakened, thus resulting in interlayer sliding. Due to a decrease in bending rigidity with increasing temperature, out-of-plane bending spontaneously occurs in the ReS2 layers. Interestingly, this TIB of ReS2 can recover to its initial configuration when the temperature drops, which is further confirmed by the reversible wetting measurement. Above all, the TIB behavior of ReS2 exhibits great potential in smart applications, such as smart windows and microfluidic devices, and fills the significant gaps of inorganic TRMs.

Dominant source of disorder in graphene: charged impurities or ripples?

Experimentally produced graphene sheets exhibit a wide range of mobility values. Both extrinsic charged impurities and intrinsic ripples (corrugations) have been suggested to induce long-range disorder in graphene and could be a candidate for the dominant source of disorder. Here, using large-scale molecular dynamics and quantum transport simulations, we find that the hopping disorder and the gauge and scalar potentials induced by the ripples are short-ranged, in strong contrast with predictions by continuous models, and the transport fingerprints of the ripple disorder are very different from those of charged impurities. We conclude that charged impurities are the dominant source of disorder in most graphene samples, whereas scattering by ripples is mainly relevant in the high carrier density limit of ultraclean graphene samples (with a charged impurity concentration less than about 10 ppm) at room and higher temperatures. Our finding is valuable to theoretical modelling of transport properties of not only graphene, but also other two-dimensional materials, as the thermal ripples are universal.

Young's modulus of defective graphene sheet from intrinsic thermal vibrations

Classical molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to establish a relation between thermally excited ripples and Young's modulus of defective graphene sheet within a range of temperatures. The presence of the out-of-plane intrinsic ripples stabilizes the graphene membranes and the mechanical stability is analyzed by means of thermal mean square vibration amplitude in the long wavelength regime. We observed that the presence of vacancy and Stone-Wales (SW) defects reduces the Young's modulus of graphene sheets. Graphene sheet with vacancy defects possess superior Young's modulus to that of a sheet with Stone-Wales defects. The obtained room temperature Young's modulus of pristine and defective graphene sheet is ∼ 1 TPa, which is comparable to the results of earlier experimental and atomistic simulation studies.

Sensorless Finite-Control Set Model Predictive Control for IPMSM Drives

This paper investigates the feasibility of a sensorless field-oriented control combined with a finite-control set model predictive current control (FCS-MPC) for an interior permanent-magnet synchronous motor. The use of an FCS-MPC makes the implementation of most of the existing sensorless techniques difficult due to the lack of a modulator. The proposed sensorless algorithm exploits the saliency of the motor and the intrinsic higher current ripple of the FCS-MPC to extract position and speed information using a model-based approach. This method does not require the injection of additional voltage vectors or the periodic interruption of the control algorithm and consequently it has no impact on the performance of the current control. The proposed algorithm has been tested in simulation and validated on an experimental setup, showing promising results.

Effects of neoclassical toroidal viscosity induced by the intrinsic error fields and toroidal field ripple on the toroidal rotation in tokamaks

Effects of neoclassical toroidal viscosity (NTV) induced by intrinsic error fields and toroidal field ripple on cocurrent toroidal rotation in H-mode tokamak plasmas are investigated. It is expected that large NTV torque can be localized at the edge region through the 1/ν-regime in the vicinity of Er∼0 in the cocurrent rotating H-mode plasma. Numerical simulation on toroidal rotation demonstrates that the edge localized NTV torque determined by the intrinsic error fields and toroidal field ripples in the level of most tokamaks can damp the toroidal rotation velocity over the whole region while reducing the toroidal rotation pedestal which is clearly observed in Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) tokamak. It is found that the NTV torque changes the toroidal rotation gradient in the pedestal region dramatically, but the toroidal rotation profile in the core region responds rigidly without a change in the gradient. On the other hand, it shows that the NTV torque induced by the intrinsic error fields and toroidal field ripple in the level of the KSTAR tokamak, which are expected to be smaller than most tokamaks by at least one order of magnitude, is negligible in determining the toroidal rotation velocity profile. Experimental observation on the toroidal rotation change by the externally applied nonaxisymmetric magnetic fields on KSTAR also suggests that NTV torque arising from nonaxisymmetric magnetic fields can damp the toroidal rotation over the whole region while diminishing the toroidal rotation pedestal.

Effect of Intrinsic Ripples on Elasticity of the Graphene Monolayer.

The effect of intrinsic ripples on the mechanical response of the graphene monolayer is investigated under uniaxial loading using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with a focus on nonlinear behavior at a small strain. The calculated stress-strain response shows a nonlinear relation through the entire range without constant slopes as a result of the competition between ripple softening and bond stretching hardening. For a small strain, entropic contribution is dominant due to intrinsic ripples, leading to elasticity softening. As the ripples flatten at increasing strain, the energetic term due to C–C bonds stretching competes with the entropic contribution, followed by energetic dominant deformation. Elasticity softening is enhanced at increased temperature as the ripple amplitude increases. The study shows that the intrinsic ripple of graphene affects elasticity. This result suggests that a change of ripple amplitudes due to various environmental conditions such as temperature, and substrate interactions can lead to a change of the mechanical properties of graphene. The understanding of the rippling effect on the mechanical behavior of 2D materials is useful for strain-based ripple manipulation for their engineering applications.