(1) Background: Access to clean water is a very important factor for human life. However, pathogenic microorganisms in drinking water often cause diseases, and convenient/inexpensive testing methods are urgently needed. (2) Methods: The reagent contains 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and phenazine methosulfate (PMS) and can react with succinate dehydrogenase within bacterial cell membranes to produce visible purple crystals. The colorimetric change of the reagent after reaction can be measured by a sensor (AS7262). (3) Results: Compared with traditional methods, our device is simple to operate and can provide rapid (i.e., 5 min) semi-quantitative results regarding the concentration of bacteria within a test sample. (4) Conclusions: This easy-to-use device, which employs MTT-PMS reagents, can be regarded as a potential and portable tool for rapid water quality determination.
A conventional free-electron laser is useful but large, driven by a beam with many relativistic electrons. Although, recently, keV electron beams have been used to excite broadband radiation from material chips, there remains a quest for a chip-size free-electron laser capable of emitting coherent radiation. Unfortunately, those keV emitters from electron microscopes or dielectric laser accelerator usually deliver a small current with discrete moving electrons separated by a distance of a few or tens of microns. To envisage a chip-size free-electron laser as a powerful research tool, we study in this paper achievable laser radiation from a single electron and an array of single electrons atop a nano-grating dielectric waveguide. In our study, thanks to the strong coupling between the electron and the guided wave in a structure with distributed feedback, a single 50-keV electron generates 1.5-μm laser-like radiation at the Bragg resonance of a 31-μm long silicon grating with a 400-nm thickness and 310-nm period. When driven by a train of single electrons repeating at 0.1 PHz, the nano-grating waveguide emits a strong laser radiation at the second harmonic of the excitation frequency. A discrete spectrum of Smith-Purcell radiation mediated by the waveguide modes is also predicted in theory and observed from simulation in the vacuum space above the grating waveguide. This study opens up the opportunity for applications requiring combined advantages from compact high-brightness electron and photon sources.
The proposed Minkowski fractal antenna design achieves wideband and continuous frequency tuning in a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system. By manipulating the fractal geometry of the unit antenna element, the resonance frequency of the antenna can be adjusted simply by changing its electrical length. The Minkowski fractal operator generates an increasing current path, resulting in a leftward frequency shift as the antenna side length increases with each iteration. In the first iteration, the proposed fractal antenna demonstrated a 97.9% continuous frequency shift from 0.204 to 0.404 THz with maximum return loss values of −31.23 and −21.6 dB, respectively. In the second iteration, a 38.6% continuous resonance frequency shift from 0.413 to 0.578 THz was achieved with return loss values of −18.22 and −40.47 dB, respectively. The maximum tunable bandwidths of the first and second iterations were approximately 0.2 and 0.16 THz, respectively. The proposed correlation between the dimensions of a single antenna and its resonance frequency provides the foundation for designing and implementing MIMO antenna systems in high-speed wireless devices, cognitive radio, and other multiband MIMO applications. A 2 × 2 MIMO antenna system has been designed from the results of the proposed single antenna to achieve multiband operation or frequency tuning through selective switching of the antenna feed.
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