Investigations of phase-separated Langmuir-Blodgett films by atomic force microscopy reveal that on a scale of 30 to 200 micrometers, these images resemble those observed by fluorescence microscopy. Fine structures (less than 1 micrometer) within the stearic acid domains were observed, which cannot be seen by conventional optical microscopic techniques. By applying the force modulation technique, it was found that the elastic properties of the domains in the liquid condensed phase and grains observed within the liquid expanded phase were comparable. Small soft residues in the domains could also be detected. The influence of trace amounts of a fluorescence dye on the micromorphology of monolayers could be detected on transferred films.

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Magnetometers are essential for scientific investigation of planetary bodies and are therefore ubiquitous on missions in space. Fluxgate and optically pumped atomic gas based magnetometers are typically flown because of their proven performance, reliability, and ability to adhere to the strict requirements associated with space missions. However, their complexity, size, and cost prevent their applicability in smaller missions involving cubesats. Conventional solid-state based magnetometers pose a viable solution, though many are prone to radiation damage and plagued with temperature instabilities. In this work, we report on the development of a new self-calibrating, solid-state based magnetometer which measures magnetic field induced changes in current within a SiC pn junction caused by the interaction of external magnetic fields with the atomic scale defects intrinsic to the semiconductor. Unlike heritage designs, the magnetometer does not require inductive sensing elements, high frequency radio, and/or optical circuitry and can be made significantly more compact and lightweight, thus enabling missions leveraging swarms of cubesats capable of science returns not possible with a single large-scale satellite. Additionally, the robustness of the SiC semiconductor allows for operation in extreme conditions such as the hot Venusian surface and the high radiation environment of the Jovian system.

This paper describes an on-die lightweight nanoAES hardware accelerator, fabricated in 22 nm tri-gate high-k/metal-gate CMOS, targeted for ultra-low power symmetric-key encryption and decryption on mobile SOCs. Compared to conventional 128 bit AES implementations, this design uses a single 8 bit Sbox circuit along with ShiftRows byte-order data processing to compute all AES rounds in native composite-field. This approach along with a serial-accumulating MixColumns circuit, area-optimized encrypt and decrypt Galois-field polynomials and integrated on-the-fly key generation circuit results in a compact encrypt/decrypt layout occupying 2200/2736 m and lowest-reported gate count of 1947/2090 respectively, while achieving: (i) maximum operating frequency of 1.133 GHz and total power consumption of 13 mW with leakage component of 500 W, measured at 0.9 V, 25 C, (ii) nominal AES-128 encrypt/decrypt throughput of 432/671 Mbps respectively, with peak energy-efficiency of 289 Gbps/W measured at near-threshold operation of 430 mV (11 higher than previously reported implementations), (iii) encrypt/decrypt latencies of 336/216 cycles and total energy consumption of 3.9/2.5 nJ respectively, (iv) wide operating supply voltage range with robust sub-threshold voltage performance of 45 Mbps, 170 W, measured at 340 mV, 25 C and (v) first-reported Galois-field polynomial-based micro-architectural co-optimization, resulting in distinct area-optimized encrypt and decrypt polynomials with up to 9% area reduction at iso-performance.Index Terms-Advanced encryption standard, composite-field polynomial arithmetic, encryption hardware accelerator, lightweight crypto, on-the-fly key-generation, security, ultra-low power AES.

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