Reversible Conversion Reactions and Small First Cycle Irreversible Capacity Loss in Metal Sulfide‐Based Electrodes Enabled by Solid Electrolytes

Solid‐state batteries can potentially enable new classes of electrode materials which are unstable against liquid electrolytes. Here, SnS nanocrystals, synthesized by a wet chemical method, are used to fabricate a Li‐ion electrode, and the electrochemical properties of this electrode are examined in both solid and liquid electrolyte designs. The SnS‐based solid‐state cell delivers a capacity of 629 mAh g^?1 after 100 cycles and exhibits an unprecedentedly small irreversible capacity in the first cycle (8.2%), while the SnS‐based liquid cell shows a rapid capacity decay and large first cycle irreversible capacity (44.6%). Cyclic voltammetry (CV) experiments show significant solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation in the liquid cell during the first discharge while SEI formation by electrolyte reduction in the solid‐state cell appears negligible. Along with CV, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy are used to investigate the differences between the solid‐state and liquid cells. The reaction chemistry of SnS in solid‐state cells is also studied in detail by ex situ X‐ray diffraction and X‐ray absorption spectroscopy. The overarching findings are that use of a solid electrolyte suppresses materials degradation and electrolyte reduction which leads to a small first cycle irreversible capacity and stable cycling.     

Thermo-Adaptive Block Copolymer Structural Color Electronics

Flexible electronics that enable the visualization of thermal energy have significant potential for various applications, such as thermal diagnosis, sensing and imaging, and displays. Thermo-adaptive flexible electronic devices based on thin 1D block copolymer (BCP) photonic crystal (PC) films with self-assembled periodic nanostructures are presented. By employing a thermo-responsive polymer/non-volatile hygroscopic ionic liquid (IL) blend on a BCP film, full visible structural colors (SCs) are developed because of the temperature-dependent expansion and contraction of one BCP domain via IL injection and release, respectively, as a function of temperature. Reversible SC control of the bi-layered BCP/IL polymer blend film from room temperature to 80 °C facilitates the development of various thermo-adaptive SC flexible electronic devices including pixel arrays of reflective-mode displays and capacitive sensing display. A flexible diagnostic thermal patch is demonstrated with the bi-layered BCP/IL polymer blend enabling the visualization of local heat sources from the human body to microelectronic circuits.     

Designing a Stable Cathode with Multiple Layers to Improve the Operational Lifetime of Polymer Light‐Emitting Diodes

The short device lifetime of blue polymer light‐emitting diodes (PLEDs) is still a bottleneck for commercialization of self‐emissive full‐color displays. Since the cathode in the device has a dominant influence on the device lifetime, a systematic design of the cathode structure is necessary. The operational lifetime of blue PLEDs can be greatly improved by introducing a three‐layer (BaF₂/Ca/Al) cathode compared with conventional two‐layer cathodes (BaF₂/Al and Ba/Al). Therefore, the roles of the BaF₂ and Ca layers in terms of electron injection, luminous efficiency, and device lifetime are here investigated. For efficient electron injection, the BaF₂ layer should be deposited to the thickness of at least one monolayer (～3 nm). However, it is found that the device lifetime does not show a strong relation with the electron injection or luminous efficiency. In order to prolong the device lifetime, sufficient reaction between BaF₂ and the overlying Ca layer should take place during the deposition where the thickness of each layer is around that of a monolayer.     

NCl(α)/I全气相碘激光与氧碘化学激光能量提取的分析比较

利用连续流光腔动力学模型,对氧碘化学激光(COIL)和基于NCl(α)-I传能的全气相碘激光(AGIL)的能量提取进行了分析和公式推导,得到了连续流光腔的光子通量解析表达式以及氧碘化学激光光子通量沿流动方向的分布和输出功率的简化计算公式.AGIL的体系较为复杂,不能得到光子通量沿流动方向分布和输出功率的简化计算公式.从能量提取和体积重量效率角度,对氧碘化学激光和基于NCl(α)-I传能的全气相碘激光进行了对比评价.     

A short-period GaAs-AlGaAs quantum-wire array laser with a submicrometer current blocking layer

The structure and device characteristics of a 700-nm-pitch GaAs-AlGaAs quantum-wire array laser (QWAL) with a dielectric defined current blocking layer are reported. The high wire density of the QWAL has been expected to yield more efficient carrier capture, but large spacing between the quantum wires was found to deteriorate the laser characteristics. In this work, we have improved electrical confinement into the active regions by incorporating a SiO/sub 2/ film onto the large spacing. Room-temperature pulsed operation with an output power of 9 mW at 191-mA injection current was achieved for a 200/spl times/500 /spl mu/m laser with uncoated facet. The threshold current density was 0.14 kA/cm/sup 2/. The dependence of the threshold current and the maximum power on the cavity length and width was also studied.     

Dependence of electrical properties on the crystallographic orientation of CBr4-doped GaAs epilayers grown on GaAs substrates by atmospheric pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

Carbon incorporation into GaAs epilayers has been performed by atmospheric pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition using CBr4. The electrical properties of CBr₄-doped GaAs epilayers grown on the GaAs substrates with various surface crystallographic orientations between (100) and (111)A were investigated. The electrical properties of the epilayers showed a strong crystallographic orientation dependence. On increasing the surface offset angle, the hole concentration of CBr4-doped GaAs epilayers rapidly decreased with a hump at (311)A. The lower hole concentration at the high offset angle can be explained by its higher desorption rate than that of the (100) surface. This hole concentration dependence on the offset angle was not changed in spite of the growth temperature and the V/III ratio variation given in this work. The above behaviors indicate that the surface kinetics plays an important role in the C incorporation into the non-planar GaAs epilayers.     

Performance of DS SS system under on-off wideband jamming

A performance analysis of a direct sequence spread spectrum (DS SS) system under a periodic on-off wideband jammer is presented. Closed-form results of system bit error rate (BER) are derived for all possible cases of jammer duty cycle     

Design and Architecture of Low‐Latency High‐Speed Turbo Decoders

In this paper, we propose and present implementation results of a high‐speed turbo decoding algorithm. The latency caused by (de)interleaving and iterative decoding in a conventional maximum a posteriori turbo decoder can be dramatically reduced with the proposed design. The source of the latency reduction is from the combination of the radix‐4, center to top, parallel decoding, and early‐stop algorithms. This reduced latency enables the use of the turbo decoder as a forward error correction scheme in real‐time wireless communication services. The proposed scheme results in a slight degradation in bit error rate performance for large block sizes because the effective interleaver size in a radix‐4 implementation is reduced to half, relative to the conventional method. To prove the latency reduction, we implemented the proposed scheme on a field‐programmable gate array and compared its decoding speed with that of a conventional decoder. The results show an improvement of at least five fold for a single iteration of turbo decoding.     

Performance of Efficient Signal Detection for LED-ID Systems

In this paper, effects of reader-to-reader interference are investigated for LED identification (LED-ID) system in a multi-reader environment. The LED-ID readers typically use different channels to avoid collision between readers. However, in-channel collision usually happens in terms of interrogation range. A reader-to-reader interference scenario is proposed, and nominal interrogation range of a desired reader is derived from this model. In order to evaluate the LED-ID reader-to-reader interference quantitatively, an efficient detection scheme is proposed and simulated by employing spreading sequence. The spreading sequence is inserted between each user’s frame formats. In the receiver, the desired signal is detected by using correlation among inserted spreading sequences. From simulation results, it is confirmed that the proposed scheme is very effective to enhance reliability of LED-ID communication systems.     

A Discrete‐Amplitude Pulse Width Modulation for a High‐Efficiency Linear Power Amplifier

A new discrete‐amplitude pulse width modulation (DAPWM) scheme for a high‐efficiency linear power amplifier is proposed. A radio frequency (RF) input signal is divided into an envelope and a phase modulated carrier. The low‐frequency envelope is modulated so that it can be represented by a pulse whose area is proportional to its amplitude. The modulated pulse has at least two different pulse amplitude levels in order that the duty ratios of the pulse are kept large for small input. Then, an RF pulse train is generated by mixing the modulated envelope with the phase modulated carrier. The RF pulse train is amplified by a switching‐mode power amplifier, and the original RF input signal is restored by a band pass filter. Because duty ratios of the RF pulse train are kept large in spite of a small input envelope, the DAPWM technique can reduce loss from harmonic components. Furthermore, it reduces filtering efforts required to suppress harmonic components. Simulations show that the overall efficiency of the pulsed power amplifier with DAPWM is about 60.3% for a mobile WiMax signal. This is approximately a 73% increase compared to a pulsed power amplifier with PWM.