Ricerc@Sapienza

The history of leaky waves and leaky-wave antennas is an interesting one, with much of the theory being put on a firm foundation in the 1950s and 1960s by early pioneers such as Nathan Marcuvitz and Arthur A. Oliner. Rapid development of leaky-wave antennas took place after the foundation was established, and the development spread to areas such as printed-circuit technology, optics, and metamaterials. This presentation will review some of the basic history of leaky waves and leaky-wave antennas, and discuss some of the recent advances in the field.

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have proved to be a useful tool for unveiling many aspects of pore formation in lipid membranes under the influence of external electric fields. In order to compare the size-related properties of pores in bilayers of various compositions, generated and maintained under different physical and chemical conditions, reference metrics are needed for characterizing pore geometry and its evolution over time.

In this paper, ultra-thin narrow-band, complementary narrow-band, and dual-band metamaterial absorbers (MMAs), exploiting the same electric ring resonator configuration, are investigated at normal and oblique incidence for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations, and with different physical properties in the THz regime. In the analysis of the ultra-thin narrow-band MMA, the limit of applicability of the transmission line model has been overcome with the introduction of a capacitance which considers the z component of the electric field.

A new miniaturized figure-of-eight coil (μCoil) for TMS applications has been developed taking advantage of the Flex circuit technology. First experiments on volunteers demonstrated the ability of the μCoil to elicit sensorial action potentials of the peripheral nervous system. The necessity of reducing the size of standard TMS stimulator arises from the poor spatial resolution of the latter. This study aims to model the μCoil and study the electromagnetic fields induced inside the arm during peripheral nerve stimulation.

Electroporation is a well-established technique used to stimulate cells, enhancing membrane permeability. Although the biological phenomena occurring after the poration process have been widely studied, the physical mechanisms of pore formation are not clearly understood.

Non-contact galvanotaxis as a way to drive the cells migration could be a promising tool for a variety of biomedical applications, such as wound healing control, avoiding the interaction between electrodes and cell cultures.