This book highlights how real-time kernels work, using Micrium s C/OS-III as a reference. The book consists of two parts: Part I describes real-time kernels in generic terms, while Part II provides practical examples using NXP s LPC1768 Microcontroller, based on the ARM Cortex M3(rev 2) architecture. A companion evaluation board (Keil MCB1700) and IDE (Keil MDK Evaluation Version) enable the reader to quickly and easily evaluate the microcontroller, tools and RTOS. A range of examples are included, providing a unique hands-on experience, and leading to a faster and better understanding of the concepts presented in the book.

This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. C/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products.

C/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today s embedded systems. C/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular C/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of C/OS-II s ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of C/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more.
Built-in performance measurements

This book puts the spotlight on how a real-time kernel works using Micrium s C/OS-III as a reference. The book consists of two complete parts. The first describes real-time kernels in generic terms. Part II provide examples for the reader, using Texas Instruments EVM-EVALBOT, a small, robotic evaluation board. The board is based on the Stellaris LM3S9B92 which combines the popular ARM Cortex-M3(r) architecture with Ethernet MAC+PHY, USB OTG (On-The-Go), and I2S. Together with the IAR Systems Embedded Workbench for ARM development tools, the evaluation board provides everything necessary to enable the reader to be up and running quickly, as well as a fun and educational experience, resulting in a high-level of proficiency in a short time.

This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. C/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products.

C/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today s embedded systems. C/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular C/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of C/OS-II s ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of C/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more. Built-in performance measurements

A new experimental method - the "Stiffnessometer", is developed to measure elementary properties of a superconductor, including the superconducting stiffness and the critical current. This technique has many advantages over existing methods, such as: the ability to measure these properties while minimally disturbing the system; the ability to measure large penetration depths (comparable to sample size), as necessary when approaching the critical temperature; and the ability to measure critical currents without attaching contacts and heating the sample. The power of this method is demonstrated in a study of the penetration depth of LSCO, where striking evidence is found for two separate critical temperatures for the in-plane and out-of-plane directions. The results in the thesis are novel, important and currently have no theoretical explanation. The stiffnessometer in a tool with great potential to explore new grounds in condensed matter physics.

Many open questions in Theoretical Physics pertain to strongly interacting quantum systems such as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy-ion collisions or the strange-metal phase observed in many high-temperature superconductors. These systems are notoriously difficult to study using traditional methods such as perturbation theory, but the gauge/gravity duality offers a successful alternative approach, which maps strongly interacting quantum gauge theories to computationally tractable, classical gravity theories. This book begins with a pedagogical introduction to how the duality can be used to extract transport properties of quantum systems from their gravity dual. It then presents new results on hydrodynamic transport in strongly interacting quantum fluids, providing strong evidence that the Haack-Yarom identity between second-order transport coefficients holds for all fluids with a classical gravity dual and may be a universal feature of all strongly coupled quantum fluids such as the QGP. Newly derived Kubo formulae, expressing transport coefficients in terms of quantum correlators, hold independently of the duality. Lastly, the book discusses new results on magnetic impurities in strongly correlated metals, including the first dual gravity description of an inter-impurity coupling, crucial for the quantum criticality underlying the strange-metal phase.

The book deals with applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to strongly coupled condensed matter systems. In particular, it concerns with the study of thermo-electric transport properties of holographic models exhibiting momentum dissipation and their possible applications to the transport properties of strange metals. The present volume constitutes one of the few examples in the literature in which the topic is carefully reviewed both from the experimental and theoretical point of view, including not only holographic results but also standard condensed matter achievements developed in the past decades. This work might be extremely useful both for scientific and pedagogical purposes.

The 3rd International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Energy Related Materials (ENEFM2015) was held from 19-23 October 2015. This congress focused on the latest developments of sustainable energy technologies, materials for sustainable energy applications and environmental and economic perspectives of energy. These proceedings included 40 peer-reviewed technical papers, submitted by leading academic and research institutions from over 23 countries and represented some of the most cutting-edge researches available. The sections included in the 40 papers are listed as follows: Solar Energy, Fuel cells, Hydrogen productions, Hydrogen storage, Energy storage, Energy saving, Biofuels and Bioenergy, Wind Energy, Nuclear Energy, Fossil Energy, Hydropower, Carbon capture and storage, Materials for renewable energy storage and conversion, Photovoltaics and solar cells, Fuel generation from renewables (catalysis), Carbon dioxide sequestration and conversion, Materials for energy saving, Thermoelectrics, Energy saving in buildings, Bio-Assessment and Toxicology, Air pollution from mobile and stationary sources, Transport of Air Pollutants, Environment-Friendly Construction and Development, Energy Management Systems.

This thesis devotes three introductory chapters to outlining basic recipes for constructing the quantum Hamiltonian of an arbitrary superconducting circuit, starting from classical circuit design. Since a superconducting circuit is one of the most promising platforms for realizing a practical quantum computer, anyone who is starting out in the field will benefit greatly from this introduction. The second focus of the introduction is the ultrastrong light-matter interaction (USC), where the latest developments are described. This is followed by three main research works comprising quantum memory in USC; scaling up the 1D circuit to a 2D lattice configuration; creation of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era quantum error correction codes and polariton-mediated qubit-qubit interaction. The research work detailed in this thesis will make a major contribution to the development of quantum random access memory, a prerequisite for various quantum machine learning algorithms and applications.

This book is a must-have reference to dry etching technology for semiconductors, which will enable engineers to develop new etching processes for further miniaturization and integration of semiconductor integrated circuits. The author describes the device manufacturing flow, and explains in which part of the flow dry etching is actually used. The content is designed as a practical guide for engineers working at chip makers, equipment suppliers and materials suppliers, and university students studying plasma, focusing on the topics they need most, such as detailed etching processes for each material (Si, SiO2, Metal etc) used in semiconductor devices, etching equipment used in manufacturing fabs, explanation of why a particular plasma source and gas chemistry are used for the etching of each material, and how to develop etching processes. The latest, key technologies are also described, such as 3D IC Etching, Dual Damascene Etching, Low-k Etching, Hi-k/Metal Gate Etching, FinFET Etching, Double Patterning etc.

This book introduces a variety of basic sciences and applications of the nanocomposites and heterostructures of functional oxides. The presence of a high density of interfaces and the differences in their natures are described by the authors. Both nanocomposites and heterostructures are detailed in depth by researchers from each of the research areas in order to compare their similarities and differences. A new interfacial material of heterostructure of strongly correlated electron systems is introduced.

This thesis presents various characteristics of 122-type iron pnictide (FeSC) such as crystal and electronic structure, carrier-doping effect, and impurity-scattering effect, using transport, magnetization, specific heat, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and optical spectral measurements. Most notably the measurement on the magnetic fluctuation in the material successfully explains already known unusual electronic properties, i.e., superconducting gap symmetry, anisotropy of in-plane resistivity in layered structure, and charge dynamics; and comparing them with those of normal phase, the controversial problems in FeSCs are eventually settled. The thesis provides broad coverage of the physics of FeSCs both in the normal and superconducting phase, and readers therefore benefit from the efficient up-to-date study of FeSCs in this thesis. An additional attraction is the detailed description of the experimental result critical for the controversial problems remaining since the discovery of FeSC in 2008, which helps readers follow up recent developments in superconductor research.

This thesis examines the unique properties of gallium arsenide (GaAs)-based quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifiers for optical communication networks, introducing readers to their fundamentals, basic parameters and manifold applications. The static and dynamic properties of these amplifiers are discussed extensively in comparison to conventional, non quantum-dot based amplifiers, and their unique advantages are elaborated on, such as the fast carrier dynamics and the decoupling of gain and phase dynamics. In addition to diverse amplification scenarios involving single and multiple high symbol rate amplitude and phase-coded data signals, wide-range wavelength conversion as a key functionality for optical signal processing is investigated and discussed in detail. Furthermore, two novel device concepts are developed and demonstrated that have the potential to significantly simplify network architectures, reducing the investment and maintenance costs as well as the energy consumption of future networks.

This monograph solely investigates the Einstein's Photoemission(EP) from Heavily Doped(HD) Quantized Structures on the basis of newly formulated electron dispersion laws. The materials considered are quantized structures of HD non-linear optical, III-V, II-VI, Ge, Te, Platinum Antimonide, stressed materials, GaP, Gallium Antimonide, II-V, Bismuth Telluride together with various types of HD superlattices and their Quantized counterparts respectively. The EP in HD opto-electronic materials and their nanostructures is studied in the presence of strong light waves and intense electric fields that control the studies of such quantum effect devices. The suggestions for the experimental determinations of different important physical quantities in HD 2D and 3D materials and the importance of measurement of band gap in HD optoelectronic materials under intense built-in electric field in nano devices and strong external photo excitation (for measuring physical properties in the presence of intense light waves which alter the electron energy spectra) have also been discussed in this context. The influence quantizing magnetic field, on the EP of the different HD quantized structures (quantum wells, quantum well HD superlattices and nipi structures) under different physical conditions has been investigated. This monograph contains 100 open research problems which form the integral part of the text and are useful for both Ph.D aspirants and researchers in the fields of materials science, condensed matter physics, solid-state sciences, nano-science and technology and allied fields in addition to the graduate courses in modern semiconductor nanostructures offered in different Universities and Institutes.

This book offers a theoretical description of topological matter in terms of effective field theories, and in particular topological field theories, focusing on two main topics: topological superconductors and topological insulators.Even though there is vast literature on these subjects, the book fills an important gap by providing a concise introduction to both topological order and symmetry-protected phases using a modern mathematical language, and developing the theoretical concepts by highlighting the physics and the physical properties of the systems. Further, it discusses in detail the topological interactions for topologically ordered matter, and the response to smooth external fields for symmetry protected matter. The book also covers more specialized topics that cannot be found elsewhere. Specifically, the response of superconductors to geometry, including the newly discovered geo-Meissner effect; and a correction to the usual Meissner effect, only present in the topologically interesting chiral superconductors.

This book introduces microcontroller theory using the Parallax BASIC Stamp I, II, and IIsx. The BASIC Stamp microcontroller is based on Microchip's PIC hardware with some modifications and is very approachable for beginning users. Once the basic theory is established, BASIC Stamp, 2/E walks the reader through applications suitable for designers as well as the home hobbyist. These applications can be used as is or as a basis for further modifications to suit specific design needs. BASIC Stamp, 2/E thoroughly explains the hardware base of the BASIC Stamp microcontroller including internal architecture, the peripheral functions, as well as providing the technical data sheets for each kind of chip. The authors also explain the BASIC Stamp development systems including DOS and Windows-based tools in tremendous detail. As an added feature, BASIC Stamp, 2/E includes full instructions for using PBASIC programming and formatting. The book provides many specific applications for microcontroller use, complete with programming instructions, including: single instructions, multiple instructions, interfacing directions, and more complex applications such as motion detection, light measurement, and home automation.

Provides a keystone for the introductory level of the Newnes microelectronics titles
Introduces PIC microcontroller operation
Demonstrates applications for designers and hobbyists

This book covers all the steps in order to fabricate a lab-on-a-chip device starting from the idea, the design, simulation, fabrication and final evaluation. Additionally, it includes basic theory on microfluidics essential to understand how fluids behave at such reduced scale. Examples of successful histories of lab-on-a-chip systems that made an impact in fields like biomedicine and life sciences are also provided. This book also: * Provides readers with a unique approach and toolset for lab-on-a-chip development in terms of materials, fabrication techniques, and components * Discusses novel materials and techniques, such as paper-based devices and synthesis of chemical compounds on-chip * Covers the four key aspects of development: basic theory, design, fabrication, and testing * Provides readers with a comprehensive list of the most important journals, blogs, forums, and conferences where microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip news, methods, techniques and challenges are presented and discussed, as well as a list of companies providing design and simulation support, components, and/or developing lab-on-a-chip and microfluidic devices.

This work studies the magnetic behavior of ZnO nanoparticles capped with different organic molecules and showing room-temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM). Of particular significance is the combination of element-specific X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) techniques, which demonstrates the intrinsic occurrence of RTFM in these systems and indicates that it is not related to the 3-D states of the metallic cation but is relayed along the conduction band of the semiconductor. The discovery of room-temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) in semiconductors holds great promise in future spintronics technologies. Further results presented here include O K-edge XMCD studies, which demonstrate that the oxygen ions have a ferromagnetic response in these ZnO-based systems, providing the first direct support for claims regarding the appearance of oxygen ferromagnetism in oxide semiconductors at the nanoscale.

This book examines the electronic structure of earth-abundant and environmentally friendly materials for use as absorber layers within photovoltaic cells. The corroboration between high-quality photoemission measurements and density of states calculations yields valuable insights into why these materials have demonstrated poor device efficiencies in the vast literature cited. The book shows how the materials' underlying electronic structures affect their properties, and how the band positions make them unsuitable for use with established solar cell technologies. After explaining these poor efficiencies, the book offers alternative window layer materials to improve the use of these absorbers. The power of photoemission and interpretation of the data in terms of factors generally overlooked in the literature, such as the materials' oxidation and phase impurity, is demonstrated. Representing a unique reference guide, the book will be of considerable interest and value to members of the photoemission community engaged in solar cell research, and to a wider materials science audience as well.