BACKGROUND Electrocoagulation is a technique involving the electrolytic addition of coagulating metal ions directly from sacrificial electrodes. These ions coagulate with turbidity agents in the water, in a similar manner to the addition of coagulating chemicals such as alum and ferric chloride, and allow the easier removal of the pollutants. Purpose of this study was to conduct experimental in...

We describe a "biolithographic" technique in which the unique properties of biopolymeric materials and the selective catalytic activities of enzymes are exploited for patterning surfaces under simple and bio-friendly conditions. We begin by coating a reactive film of the polysaccharide chitosan onto an inorganic surface (glass or silicon wafer). Chitosan's pH-responsive solubility facilitates f...

When heated, poly(lactic acid) (PLA) fibers depolymerize in a controlled manner, making them potentially useful as sacrificial fibers for microchannel fabrication. Catalysts that increase PLA depolymerization rates are explored and methods to incorporate them into commercially available PLA fibers by a solvent mixture impregnating technique are tested. In the present study, the most active cata...

This paper describes the fabrication of conjugated polymer nanowires by a three stage process: (i) spin-coating a composite film comprising alternating layers of a conjugated polymer and a sacrificial material, (ii) embedding the film in an epoxy matrix and sectioning it with an ultramicrotome (nanoskiving), and (iii) etching the sacrificial material to reveal nanowires of the conjugated polyme...

This paper reports on the design, implementation and characterization of wafer-level packaging technology for a wide range of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices. The encapsulation technique is based on thermal decomposition of a sacrificial polymer through a polymer overcoat to form a released thin-film organic membrane with scalable height on top of the active part of the MEMS. Hermi...

Conventional lithographic methods (e.g., electron-beam lithography, photolithography) are capable of producing high-resolution structures over large areas but are generally limited to large (>1 cm(2)) planar substrates. Incorporation of these features on unconventional substrates (i.e., small (<1 mm(2)) and/or non-planar substrates) would open possibilities for many applications, including remo...

aluminum anodes have been widely used in the cathodic protection of marine structures. however there are conditions in which these anodes become passivated or face some localized or unwanted corrosion, which influences their efficiency. addition of alloying elements such as zn and in not only have improved the efficiency of the anodes but also the effect of casting parameters such as ultra melt...

Using the cavity method we consider the learning of noisy teachergenerated examples by a nonlinear student perceptron. For insufficient examples and weak weight decay, the activation distribution of the training examples exhibits a gap for the more difficult examples. This illustrates that the outliers are sacrificed for the overall performance. Simulation shows that the picture of the smooth e...

We report that individual metallic nanowires and nanoobjects can be assembled and welded together into complex nanostructures and conductive circuits by a new nanoscale electrical welding technique using nanovolumes of metal solder. At the weld sites, nanoscale volumes of a chosen metal are deposited using a sacrificial nanowire, which ensures that the nanoobjects to be bonded retain their stru...