Effect of Residual Charge Carrier on the Performance of a Graphene Field Effect Transistor

The temperature-dependent effect of residual charge carrier （no）, at the Dirac point, on mobility is studied. We fabricate and characterize a graphene field effect transistor （GFET） using 7nm TiO2 as the top-gate dielectric. The temperature-dependent gate voltage-drain current and room temperature gate capacitance are measured to extract the carrier mobility and to estimate the quantum capacitance of the GFET. The device shows the mobility value of gOO cm^2 /V.s at room temperature and it decreases to 45 cm^2 /V.s for 20 K due to the increase of n0. These results indicate that the phonon scattering is not the dominant process for the unevenness dielectric layer while the coulomb scattering by charged impurities degrades the device characteristically at low temperature.

A Repetitive Nanosecond Pulse Source for Generation of Large Volume Streamer Discharge

Using a unipolar pulse with the rise time and the pulse duration in the order of microsecond as the primary pulse, a nanosecond pulse with the repetitive frequency of several kilohertz is generated by a spark gap switch. By varying both the inter-pulse duration and the pulse frequency, the voltage recovery rate of the spark gap switch is investigated at different working conditions such as the gas pressure, the gas composition as well as the bias voltage. The results reveal that either increase in gas pressure or addition of SF6 to the air can increase the voltage recovery rate. The effect of gas composition on the voltage recovery rate is discussed based on the transferring and distribution of the residual space charges. The repetitive nanosecond pulse source is also applied to the generation of large volume, and the discharge currents are measured to investigate the effect of pulse repetition rate on the large volume streamer discharge.

The Role of the Charged Residues of the GP2 Helical Regions in Ebola Entry

The glycoprotein （GP） of Ebola is the sole structural protein that forms the spikes on the viral envelope. The GP contains two subunits, GPI and GP2, linked by a disulfide bond, which are responsible for receptor binding and membrane fusion, respectively. In this study, the full length of GP gene of Ebola Zaire species, 2028 base pairs in length, was synthesized using 38 overlapping oligonucleotides by multiple rounds of polymerase chain reaction （PCR）. The synthesized GP gene was shown to be efficiently expressed in mammalian cells. Furthermore, an efficient HIV-based pseudotyping system was developed using the synthetic GP gene, providing a safe approach to dissecting the entry mechanism of Ebola viruses. Using this pseudotyping system and mutational analysis, the role of the charged residues in the GP2 helical regions was examined. It was found that substitutions of the most charged residues in the regions did not adversely affect GP expression, processing, or viral incorporation, however, most of the mutations greatly impaired the ability of GP to mediate efficient viral infection. These results demonstrate that these charged residues of GP2 play an important role in GP-mediated Ebola entry into its host cells. We propose that these charged residues are involved in forming the intermediate conformation（s） of GP in membrane fusion and Ebola entry.