Destruction of volatile organic compounds used in a semiconductorindustry by a capillary tube discharge reactor

Nonthermal plasma technologies offer an innovative approach to the problem of decomposing various volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The authors focused on DC capillary tube discharge plasma reactors to study the decomposition/destruction efficiency for toluene, EGM, trichloroethane and trichloroethylene at 50-2300 ppm levels in dry air. The effects of gas flow rate, VOC concentration and reactor operating conditions on decomposition and analysis of reactant conversion for each VOC were investigated. The results show that VOC destruction efficiency as high as 90% can be achieved, even under a short residence time (3.8 ms) with a destruction energy efficiency of up to 95 g (VOC)/kWh. Laboratory-scale plasma technology was successfully demonstrated for its potential application for VOC control in the semiconductor clean-room environment     

S/N and error rate performance in AlGaAs semiconductor laser preamplifier and linear repeater systems

The applications of AlGaAs semiconductor laser preamplifier and linear repeaters in single mode optical fiber transmission systems were studied through the baseband signal-to-noise ratio and bit error rate performance measurement. Experiments were carried out with the Fabry-Perot cavity laser amplifiers whose characteristics are improved by reducing the input mirror reflectivity to 6 percent. The use of a preamplifier improves the minimum detectable power by 7.4 dB over the Si-APD direct detection level when the received signal is amplified by 30 dB before photodetection. The use of two linear repeaters increases the regenerative repeater gain by 37 dB. These experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions based on the photon statistic master equation analysis.     

S/N performance of an AlGaAs laser preamplifier and a linear repeater system

Baseband signal-to-noise-ratio characteristics in an AlGaAs laser preamplifier and a linear repeater system were studied theoretically and experimentally. The AlGaAs laser preamplifier improved the minimum detectable power by 1.6 dB over the level achieved by direct detection with an Si APD. 37 dB regenerative repeater gain was experimentally obtained in the system with two optical repeaters at 100 Mbit/s data rate.     

Contrasting effects of water-soluble and water-insoluble dietary fibers on bile acid conjugation and taurine metabolism in the rat

The effect of the type of dietary fiber on the bile acid and taurine metabolism was examined in rats. Diets containing 10% of various water-soluble fibers (citrus pectin, konjak mannan, guar gum) as compared to a fiber-free diet increased biliary excretion of total bile acids. In contrast, water-insoluble dietary fibers (cellulose, corn bran, chitin; 10% in the diets) as well as cholestyramine (5% in the diet) considerably, decreased bile acid excretion. Water-soluble dietary fibermediated increases in bile acid excretion were totally attributable to increases in glycine-conjugates. Thus, these fibers greatly increased by the bile acid glycine-to-taurine ratio (G/T). Excretio of glycine conjugates decreased more than that of taurine conjugates in rats fed various water-insoluble dietary fibers. As a results, G/T in rats fed water-insoluble fibers was significantly lowered as compared to G/T in animals fed a fiber-free diet. Cholestyramine did not affect the G/T ratio of bile acids. Fecal bile acid excretion and the activities of hepatic cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase (EC 1.14.13.17) in rats fed various water-soluble dietary fibers approximately doubled as compared to the respective values for rats fed a fiber-free diet. Whereas cholestyramine greatly increased these parameters, water-insoluble fibers did not significantly affect them. Various water-soluble fibers decreased hepatic concentration and urinary excretion of taurine as well as the activity of hepatic cysteine dioxygenase (EC 1.13.11.20). In contrast, water-insoluble fibers considerably increased hepatic taurine concentrations and enzyme activities. The parameters for taurine metabolism were unaffected by cholestyramine. It was suggested that the types of dietary fiber affected hepatic taurine synthesis and thus modified bile acid glycine/taurine ratios.     

H optimal approximation for causal spline interpolation

In this paper, we give a causal solution to the problem of spline interpolation using H^∞ optimal approximation. Generally speaking, spline interpolation requires filtering the whole sampled data, the past and the future, to reconstruct the inter-sample values. This leads to non-causality of the filter, and this becomes a critical issue for real-time applications.Our objective here is to derive a causal system which approximates spline interpolation by H^∞ optimization for the filter. The advantage of H^∞ optimization is that it can address uncertainty in the input signals to be interpolated in design, and hence the optimized system has robustness property against signal uncertainty.We give a closed-form solution to the H^∞ optimization in the case of the cubic splines. For higher-order splines, the optimal filter can be effectively solved by a numerical computation. We also show that the optimal FIR (finite impulse response) filter can be designed by an LMI (linear matrix inequality), which can also be effectively solved numerically. A design example is presented to illustrate the result.     

Improvement of output voltage control performance for low-speed operation of matrix converter

The matrix converter (MxC) is an ac-to-ac conversion device that can generate variable frequency and variable voltage output. The nine bidirectional switches of an MxC allow pulse-width modulation (PWM) control of input currents and output voltages. PWM switches need "switch commutations" from one switch to another. During these switch commutations, however, unwanted voltage error occurs like a dead time effect in a voltage source inverter (VSI). When PWM pulse-widths are narrower than the time for completing a commutation sequence, voltage error rapidly increases. In the low-speed range, PWM pulses become narrower and voltage distortions become larger due to incomplete commutations. Moreover, these errors are critical in the low-speed operation because the system is sensitive to the smallest voltage error. In this paper, a new PWM strategy is proposed for improving voltage control performance in the low-speed range. Based on the input and output voltage information, PWM pulse-widths are controlled to avoid incomplete commutation. The feasibility of the proposed method is proved through simulation and experimental results.     

Upconversion pumped thulium-doped fluoride fiber amplifier andlaser operating at 1.47 μm

A 1.064-μm band upconversion pumped Tm³⁺-doped fluoride fiber amplifier and a laser both operating at 1.47 μm are investigated in detail. The two devices are based on the ³F ₄→³H₄ transition in a trivalent thulium ion, which is a self-terminating system. When pumped at 1.064 μm, the amplifier has a gain of over 10 dB from 1.44 to 1.51 μm and a low-noise characteristic. Also, the fiber laser generates a high-output power of over 100 mW with a slope efficiency of 59% at around 1.47 μm. These levels of performance will be important for optical communication systems     

Observation of iron silicide formation by plan-view transmission electron microscopy

The formation and the phase transitions of iron silicide by solid-phase epitaxy have been investigated by means of plan-view transmission electron microscopy, which enables us to observe a clean interface between Fe and Si. Layers of Fe were deposited on Si (100) at room temperature in an ultrahigh vacuum chamber. The sample was annealed in the electron microscope at a temperature between 673 and 1073 K. After annealing at 673 K, FeSi crystallites were formed with various orientations. When the annealing temperature was increased to 973 K, we found that the crystallites suddenly started to coalesce into grains of several hundreds of nanometers in size and polycrystalline beta-FeSi2 was formed. These phase transitions were also confirmed with electron energy-loss spectroscopy.     

HDR satellite codec with concatenated multilevel codes

The performance of a high data rate (HDR) codec based on a multidimensional modulation code derived from multilevel codes is evaluated for a satellite channel. The codec reliably supports HDR transmission for broadband ISDN over a 72 MHz satellite transponder and is designed to be used with an 8 PSK modem. Results show that significant coding gain with higher spectral efficiency can be achieved compared to uncoded QPSK     

NRZ operation at 40 Gb/s of a compact module containing an MQW electroabsorption modulator integrated with a DFB laser

NRZ operation at 40 Gb/s has been successfully performed using a very compact module of a multiple-quantum-well (MQW) electroabsorption modulator integrated with a distributed-feedback (DFB) laser. While the DFB laser is injected with a constant current, the integrated MQW electroabsorption modulator is driven with a 10-Gb/s electrical NRZ signal. A clearly opened eye diagram has been observed in the modulated light from the modulator. And a receiver sensitivity of -27.2 dBm at 10/sup -9/ has been experimentally confirmed in the bit-error-rate (BER) performance.