2021, Wei, Wenzuo, Shi, Fukun, Kolb, Juergen F.

A spatially unambiguous characterization of electrical properties of osseous tissues is important for the therapy of osteopathy via electrical stimulation. Accordingly, the study aimed to characterize the highly inhomogeneous composition and structures of different anatomical regions of trabecular bone based on their electrical properties. The electrical properties of 64 porcine trabecular bone samples were analyzed in a parallel plate electrode configuration and compared with published results. Therefore, a novel method, combining traditional Cole model with a linear discriminant analysis (LDA), was developed to discriminate the different regions, i.e., femur head, greater trochanter, and femur neck. Possible mechanisms behind the distinction for different regions could be interpreted from both methods. Respective adjacent regions with similar structure and composition could be distinguished from statistically significant differences of Cole parameters, i.e., α (p < 0.01) and R∞ (p < 0.05). The latter was correlated especially with water content, indicating an association of individual differences in microstructures in particular with conductivity. Conversely, different regions were unambiguously discriminated with LDA based on permittivity or conductivity. Contributions to the discrimination were explicitly reflected by the coefficients of the derived LDA features. A clear distinction was obtained especially for a frequency response at 950 kHz. Moreover, predictions for the classification of unspecified samples assigned them correctly to their origin with a success of 92.9%. The combination of both methods offers the possibility for a spatially resolved and eventually patient specific discrimination and evaluation of bone tissues and their response to therapies, notably electrical stimulation.

2021, Treidel, Eldad Bahat, Hilt, Oliver, Hoffmann, Veit, Brunner, Frank, Bickel, Nicole, Thies, Andreas, Tetzner, Kornelius, Gargouri, Hassan, Huber, Christian, Donimirski, Konstanty, Wurfl, Joachim

ON-state conductance properties of vertical GaN n -channel trench MISFETs manufactured on different GaN substrates and having different gate trench orientations are studied up to 200 °C ambient temperature. The best performing devices, with a maximum output current above 4 kA/cm 2 and an area specific ON-state resistance of 1.1 mΩ·cm 2 , are manufactured on ammonothermal GaN substrate with the gate channel parallel to the a-plane of the GaN crystal. The scalability of the devices up to 40 mm gate periphery is investigated and demonstrated. It is found that, in addition to oxide interface traps, the semiconductor border traps in the p-GaN layer limit the available mobile channel electrons and that the channel surface roughness scattering limits the channel mobility. Both strongly depend on the gate trench orientation and on the GaN substrate defect density.

2020, Karpov, Yevhen, Kiriy, Nataliya, Formanek, Petr, Hoffmann, Cedric, Beryozkina, Tetyana, Hambsch, Mike, Al-Hussein, Mahmoud, Mannsfeld, Stefan C.B., Büchner, Bernd, Debnath, Bipasha, Bretschneider, Michael, Krupskaya, Yulia, Lissel, Franziska, Kiriy, Anton

Derivatives of the hexacyano-[3]-radialene anion radical (CN6-CP•−) emerge as a promising new family of p-dopants having a doping strength comparable to that of archetypical dopant 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyano-quinodimethane (F4TCNQ). Here, mixed solution (MxS) and sequential processing (SqP) doping methods are compared by using a model semiconductor poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and the dopant CN6-CP•−NBu4 + (NBu4 + = tetrabutylammonium). MxS films show a moderate yet thickness-independent conductivity of ≈0.1 S cm−1. For the SqP case, the highest conductivity value of ≈6 S cm−1 is achieved for the thinnest (1.5–3 nm) films whereas conductivity drops two orders of magnitudes for 100 times thicker films. These results are explained in terms of an interfacial doping mechanism realized in the SqP films, where only layers close to the P3HT/dopant interface are doped efficiently, whereas internal P3HT layers remain essentially undoped. This structure is in agreement with transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Kelvin probe force microscopy results. The temperature-dependent conductivity measurements reveal a lower activation energy for charge carriers in SqP samples than in MxS films (79 meV vs 110 meV), which could be a reason for their superior conductivity. © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim