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With contributions from an internationally-renowned group of experts, this book uses a multidisciplinary approach to review recent developments in the field of smart sensor systems, covering important system and design aspects.  It examines topics over the whole range of sensor technology from the theory and constraints of basic elements, physics and electronics, up to the level of application-orientated issues. Developed as a complementary volume to 'Smart Sensor Systems' (Wiley 2008), which introduces the basics of smart sensor systems, this volume focuses on emerging sensing technologies and applications, including: * State-of-the-art techniques for designing smart sensors and smart sensor systems, including measurement techniques at system level, such as dynamic error correction, calibration, self-calibration and trimming. * Circuit design for sensor systems, such as the design of precision instrumentation amplifiers. * Impedance sensors, and the associated measurement techniques and electronics, that measure electrical characteristics to derive physical and biomedical parameters, such as blood viscosity or growth of micro-organisms. * Complete sensor systems-on-a-chip, such as CMOS optical imagers and microarrays for DNA detection, and the associated circuit and micro-fabrication techniques. * Vibratory gyroscopes and the associated electronics, employing mechanical and electrical signal amplification to enable low-power angular-rate sensing. * Implantable smart sensors for neural interfacing in bio-medical applications. * Smart combinations of energy harvesters and energy-storage devices for autonomous wireless sensors. Smart Sensor Systems: Emerging Technologies and Applications will greatly benefit final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students in the areas of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering, and physics. Professional engineers and researchers in the microelectronics industry, including microsystem developers, will also find this a thorough and useful volume.

Controlling the internal quantum states of chiral molecules for a selected enantiomer has a wide range of fundamental applications from collision and reaction studies, quantum information to precision spectroscopy. Achieving full enantiomer-specific state transfer is a key requirement for such applications. Using tailored microwave fields, a chosen rotational state can be enriched for a selected enantiomer, even starting from a racemic mixture. This enables rapid switching between samples of different enantiomers in a given state, holding great promise, for instance, for measuring parity violation in chiral molecules. Although perfect state-specific enantiomeric enrichment is theoretically feasible, achieving the required experimental conditions seemed unrealistic. Here, we realize near-ideal conditions, overcoming both the limitations of thermal population and spatial degeneracy in rotational states. We achieve over 92% enantiomer-specific state transfer efficiency using enantiopure samples. This indicates that 96% state-specific enantiomeric purity can be obtained from a racemic mixture, in an approach that is universally applicable to all chiral molecules of C 1 symmetry. Our work integrates the control over internal quantum states with molecular chirality, thus expanding the field of state-selective molecular beams studies to include chiral research. A potential origin of homochirality in living organisms is the parity-violating energy difference between enantiomers. Here, the authors realize a technique to control rotational states of chiral molecules using microwave and ultraviolet radiation.

Glycosyl cations are the key intermediates during the glycosylation reaction that covalently links building blocks during the synthetic assembly of carbohydrates. The exact structure of these ions remained elusive due to their transient and short-lived nature. Structural insights into the intermediate would improve our understanding of the reaction mechanism of glycosidic bond formation. Here, we report an in-depth structural analysis of glycosyl cations using a combination of cold-ion infrared spectroscopy and first-principles theory. Participating C2 protective groups form indeed a covalent bond with the anomeric carbon that leads to C1-bridged acetoxonium-type structures. The resulting bicyclic structure strongly distorts the ring, which leads to a unique conformation for each individual monosaccharide. This gain in mechanistic understanding fundamentally impacts glycosynthesis and will allow to tailor building blocks and reaction conditions in the future. Glycosyl cations are key intermediates in glycosylation reactions, but their structure has remained elusive due to their transient nature. Here, the authors perform an in-depth structural analysis and report that C2-participating protective groups induce acetoxonium cations with distinct ring conformations.

Glycolipids are complex glycoconjugates composed of a glycan headgroup and a lipid moiety. Their modular biosynthesis creates a vast amount of diverse and often isomeric structures, which fulfill highly specific biological functions. To date, no gold-standard analytical technique can provide a comprehensive structural elucidation of complex glycolipids, and insufficient tools for isomer distinction can lead to wrong assignments. Herein we use cryogenic gas-phase infrared spectroscopy to systematically investigate different kinds of isomerism in immunologically relevant glycolipids. We show that all structural features, including isomeric glycan headgroups, anomeric configurations and different lipid moieties, can be unambiguously resolved by diagnostic spectroscopic fingerprints in a narrow spectral range. The results allow for the characterization of isomeric glycolipid mixtures and biological applications. Glycolipids are glycoconjugates with important biological functions, but techniques for their analysis are deficient. Here, the authors report the use of cryogenic gas-phase infrared spectroscopy to investigate isomerism in a set of immunologically relevant glycolipids, and show that their structural features can be accurately resolved based on a narrow spectral fingerprint region.

An experimental study shows how a polar molecule can be oriented in three dimensions by using a combination of laser and electrostatic fields. The approach should help to obtain molecular-frame information about strong-field ionization processes in molecules for which the orientation cannot be determined after ionization. The combination of ultrafast light sources with detection of molecular-frame photoelectron angular distributions (MFPADs) is setting new standards for detailed interrogation of molecular dynamics 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . However, until recently measurement of MFPADs relied on determining the molecular orientation after ionization 1 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , which is limited to species and processes where ionization leads to fragmentation. An alternative is to fix the molecular frame before ionization. The only demonstrations of such spatial orientation involved aligned small linear nonpolar molecules 5 , 6 , 14 . Here we extend these techniques to the general class of polar molecules. Carbonylsulphide and benzonitrile molecules, fixed in space by combined laser and electrostatic fields, are ionized with intense, circularly polarized 30-fs laser pulses. For carbonylsulphide and benzonitrile oriented in one dimension, the MFPADs exhibit pronounced anisotropies perpendicular to the fixed permanent dipole moment, which are absent for randomly oriented molecules. Furthermore, for benzonitrile oriented in three dimensions, striking suppression of electron emission in the fixed molecular plane appears. Our theoretical analysis, based on tunnelling ionization theory 15 , 16 , shows that the MFPADs reflect permanent dipole moments and polarizabilities of both the neutral molecule and its cation, and nodal planes of occupied electronic orbitals. These results point to future opportunities for time-resolved probing of valence electron dynamics.

Motivation The spectroscopy of diatomic molecules is an important research area in chemical physics due to its relevance in astrochemistry, combustion chemistry, and ultracold physics. However, there is currently no database where the user can easily retrieve, in a useful format, the spectroscopic constants of a given molecule. A similar situation appears concerning the vibrational Franck–Condon factors for diatomic molecules, a crucial parameter to infer laser cooling prospects for molecules. To address this problem, and inspired by the idea that data should be open and freely accessible, we have developed a user-friendly website ( https://rios.mp.fhi.mpg.de ) where the user can retrieve spectroscopic constants and Franck–Condon factors in useful formats. Implementation In this database, the spectroscopic constants of the ground states and first excited states of the diatomic molecules are accessible from the website and can be retrieved in readable formats. The website is implemented within the LAMP web service stacks. In particular, using Linux as the operative system, Apache as the HTTP Server, MySQL as the database management system, and PHP as the programming language for the web. Furthermore, the user can register and upload new data. This project is licensed under the Free-Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) license Apache License 2.0 which allows free and open access to the codes as well as efficient collaboration in the maintenance of the software. Conclusions and impact The present data-driven website presents essential information in a user-friendly manner and may help the chemical physics community to identify molecules that should be explored through spectroscopic techniques.

A novel traveling-wave Zeeman decelerator based on a double-helix coil geometry capable of decelerating paramagnetic molecules with high efficiency is presented. Moving magnetic traps are generated by applying time-dependent currents through the decelerator coils. Paramagnetic molecules in low-field-seeking Zeeman states are confined inside the moving traps which are decelerated to lower forward velocities. As a prototypical example, we demonstrate the deceleration of OH radicals from an initial velocity of 445 m s−1 down to various final velocities. The experimental results are analyzed and numerically reproduced with the help of trajectory simulations confirming the phase-space stability and efficiency of the deceleration of the molecules in the new device.

We report a combined experimental and theoretical study on the influence of microwave pulse durations on enantiomer-specific state transfer. Two triads of rotational states within a chiral molecule (1-indanol) are selected to address the possible scenarios. In the triad connected to the absolute ground state, the simplest triad that exists for all chiral molecules, the enantiomer-specific state transfer process simplifies into a sequence of two-level transitions. The second triad, including higher rotational states, represents a more generic scenario that involves multiple Rabi frequencies for each transition. Our study reveals that the conventional π 2 − π − π 2 pulse sequence is not the optimal choice, except for the ideal case when in the simplest triad only the lowest state is initially populated. We find that employing a shorter duration for the first and last pulse of the sequence leads to significantly higher state-specific enantiomeric enrichment, albeit at the expense of overall population in the target state. Our experimental results are in very good agreement with theory, substantiating the quantitative understanding of enantiomer-specific state transfer.

The concept of a novel traveling wave Zeeman deccelerator based on a double-helix wire geometry capable of decelerating paramagnetic species with high efficiency is presented. A moving magnetic trap is created by running time-dependent currents through the decelerator coils. Paramagnetic species in low-field-seeking Zeeman states are confined in the moving traps and transported to the end of the decelerator with programmable velocities. Here, we present the theoretical foundations underlying the working principle of the traveling-trap decelerator. Using trajectory simulations, we characterise the performance of the new device and explore the conditions for phase-space stability of the transported molecules.