Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) procedure has been used for the treatment of portal hypertension induced due to liver cirrhosis. A small metallic tube called stent graft is inserted during TIPS for rerouting blood flow in the liver. Common complications after TIPS is partial or complete blockage inside or at either ends of the stent graft. This paper presents the design and fabrication of a smart stent graft containing two pressure sensors for detecting blockages occuring after TIPS. The active implant device with pressure sensor is powered wirelessly and it transmits measured pressure data wirelessly to the external monitoring station using inductive coupling. Ferrite inductor antennas are used for wireless power reception and PCB trace antenna is used for wireless data transmission in the implant device. A smart stent graft is fabricated by coating PTFE membrane on the bare stent followed by mounting of the implant devices. The in vivo setup is emulated by placing the smart stent graft inside meat and powering the implant device with wireless inductive telemetry link. Test result shows that implant device can be operated for a wireless range of 4.5 cm using 15 W 2.05 MHz RF power sender.

This paper details the design of an integrate & fire (I & F) neuron ASIC and its integration with a double barrier memristor device. The memristor has a non-volatile analog memory characteristic which changes with time and voltage. The neuron ASIC is designed to interact with the memristor by integrating its current and firing when a certain threshold is reached. The resulting spikes increase the memristor's conductance and consequently the firing rate of neuron increases. Together, the ASIC and the memristor mimics neuromorphic learning on hardware. The ASIC has been fabricated in AMS 350nm process.

The author addresses the problem of boundary conditions for electron transport at interfaces of different material species from a fundamental microscopic point of view in order to derive self-consistent boundary conditions for various transport models and to help select a suitable model for the consideration of interface effects. A three-dimensional nonequilibrium interface condition for the Boltzmann equation at heterojunctions is set up, where the heterojunction is modeled by a band-edge discontinuity. From this interface condition, respective conditions for the moments of the distribution function are derived. Application to a selected transport model results in conditions stating continuity of quasi-Fermi level, electron temperature, and the normal component of the particle current density, and yields relations between the tangential components of the particle- and energy-flux vectors on both sides of the interface. These interface conditions enable numerical simulations of hot electron transport to be carried out at abrupt interfaces of different material species.>