Ricerc@Sapienza

A theoretical and experimental analysis of a thermal-photovoltaic panel, whose purpose is to produce both electrical and thermal energies, has been performed. In order to achieve the main objective, the different components that constitute the thermal-photovoltaic panel have been studied and a simulation model of the thermal-photovoltaic panel has been developed. Furthermore, a prototype of the whole system consisting of a commercial panel, the thermal and electrical circuits, and an innovative wireless remote data acquisition system has been setup.

The study of a pre-tunnel structure that filters the daylight has been carried out by means of 3D daylight simulation software. The 1:1 scale model of the tunnel and the pre-tunnel has been realized and two different sequences of filtering panels have been simulated. The first sequence reproduces the panels experimented in a previous study with a real scale model; the second sequence is aimed to optimize the filter effect, acting on the grid of the panels.

The Economist Intelligence Unit Safe Cities Index summarizes the primary issues of Safety as being digital security, health security, infrastructure safety and personal safety. The biggest challenge for cities is to identify all the issues that actually impact on public safety and comprehend the real perceptions - or misconceptions - that citizens may have. Reassurance describes the confidence a pedestrian might gain from road lighting (and other factors) to walk along a footpath or road after dark, and is intended to describe both perceived safety and fear of crime.

In the last ten years, after the first Italian feed-in-tariff, it has been observed that during the operation and maintenance of large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic systems, several unexpected problems may occur whose solution calls for specific strategies not initially planned at the design stage. Based on information gathered from more than 80 plants located in Italy, this work outlines the most widespread issues, the principal typologies of failures and unexpected events that occur in photovoltaic plants and tries to propose the best ways to solve them.

In this paper, an emulation environment for approximate memory architectures is presented. In the context of error tolerant applications, in which energy is saved at the expense of the occurrence of errors in data processing, approximate memories play a relevant part. Approximate memories are memories where read/write errors are allowed with controlled probability. In general these errors are the result of circuital or architectural techniques (i.e. voltage scaling, refresh rate reduction) introduced to save energy.

The shielding effectiveness of thin planar shields against magnetic field is investigated in the time domain. The analysis is performed considering a vertical magnetic dipole as the source and a classical twelve inches diameter loop as receiving antenna. The computations are performed through a recently proposed analytical solution. The relevant features of classical configurations are extracted and the effects of shield constitutive parameters on the relevant time-domain shielding parameters are presented.

This work reports on the design, simulation and fabrication of an autonomous microfluidic network. It is a part of a highly integrated, new analytical platform for the multiparametric detection of bio-organic molecules in extra-terrestrial environment. The proposed microfluidic system, made in SU-8 3050, allows to obtain an autonomous microfluidic network able to have simultaneous capillary filling and fresh solution into each site of detection avoiding cross-contamination among different sites.

In this paper, we present an optoelectronic system-on-glass (SoG), suitable for detection of fluorescent molecule. It integrates, on the same glass substrate, an array of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) photosensors and a thin film interferential filter. The system can be directly coupled with another glass substrate hosting a polydimethylsiloxane based microfluidic network where the fluorescent phenomena occur.

This article presents the successful design, fabrication and testing of a miniaturized system integrating capillarity and electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) technology in a microfluidic network. In particular, the change in hydrophobicity occurring at the interphase between a capillary channel and a hydrophobic layer has been exploited using EWOD as a stop-go fluid valve.

In this paper, we present an improved microfluidic network based on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and thin film heaters for thermal treatment of biomolecules in lab-on-chip systems. It relies on the series connection of two thermally actuated valves, at both inlet and outlet of the network, in order to reduce leakage of sample when its process temperature approaches 100, °C. The spatial arrangement of valves and microfluidic channels in between has been optimized using COMSOL Multiphysics, through the investigation of the system thermal behavior.