Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection has been a very important reliability issue in microelectronics, especially for integrated circuits (ICs). ESD protection design for giga-Hz high-speed input/output (I/O) circuits has been one of the key challenges to implement high-speed interface circuits in CMOS technology. Conventional on-chip ESD protection circuits at the I/O pads often cause unacceptable performance degradation to hi Read More

While manual ICSI has been able to accomplish artificial fertilization rather satisfactorily, it has also been associated with several drawbacks inherited from its manual manner of operation. Piezo-assisted ICSI is currently gaining attention and preference because of its ability to perform sperm injection in a precise manner, which has significantly improved the result. A number of piezoactuators for this purpose have been Read More

Heat transfer is one of the most difficult tasks in thermal management of electronic components and directly influences cost, reliability and performances. Heat pipes are efficient heat transfer devices used in many applications, e.g. electronic systems, spacecrafts thermal control, energy collectors, power generation, chemical engineering, air conditioning, engine cooling and others. At normal operating temperatur Read More

Development of differential quadrature related generalized methods, discrete element analysis methods and EDQ based time integration methods has been carried out in the past few years. The related numerical algorithms are summarized and presented. Four discrete analysis techniques related patents are also reviewed. Some engineering problems are solved using the developed DQ related discrete analysis methods. N Read More

Today's papermakers face the ever-increasing challenge of producing good quality paper while keeping prices low. This is achieved by using cheaper raw materials such as mechanical pulps and mineral fillers. To increase productivity, machine speeds have also increased. To meet these challenges, it is crucial that the papermakers are able to effectively retain mineral fillers and fiber fines while simultaneously improving Read More

Mutual coupling is a common problem in the applications of antenna arrays. It significantly affects the operation of almost all types of antenna arrays. Over the past years, there have been many different kinds of methods suggested to decouple (or to compensate for) the mutual coupling effect in antenna arrays. The effectiveness of these methods varied and depended upon the types of antenna arrays being considered a Read More

Design phase, the front-end of a development process, is known to have the highest impact on the lifecycle cost of products. Presumably, it is considered necessary for product developers to legally protect the product design technologies that they have invented. This paper categorically reviews a group of selected patents, which were filed in the last twenty years, in this area of concerns. From the structural review, sever Read More

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