Double-pass resonant Er-Raman amplifier

A new double-pass wideband Er-Raman fibre amplifier is proposed, pumped by a Raman laser oscillating through a medium consisting of Er-doped fibre and dispersion compensating fibre in series.     

Chiral Stereoisomer Engineering of Electron Transporting Materials for Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

A series of chiral stereoisomers of electron transporting materials with two chiral substituents is rationally designed and synthesized, and the influence of stereoisomerism on their physical and electronic properties is investigated to demonstrate highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Compared to mesomeric naphthalene diimide (NDI) derivatives, which have heterochiral side groups with centrosymmetric molecular packing of symmetric‐shaped conformers in the crystalline state, enantiomeric NDI derivatives have homochiral side groups that exhibit non‐centrosymmetric molecular packing of asymmetric‐shaped conformers in the crystalline state and exhibit better solution processability based on one order of magnitude higher solubility. A similar trend is observed in different rylene diimide stereoisomers based on larger semiconducting core perylene diimide. The PSCs based on NDI enantiomers with good film‐forming ability and a very high lowest phase transition temperature (T_lowest) of 321 °C exhibit a high and uniform average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.067 ± 0.654%. These PSCs also have a high temporal device stability, with less than 10% degradation of the PCE at 100 °C for 1000 h without encapsulation. Therefore, chiral stereoisomer engineering of charge transporting materials is a potential approach to achieve high solution processability, excellent performance, and significant temporal stability in organic electronic devices.     

Optimum selection diversity for BPSK signals in Rayleigh fadingchannels

We propose a new selection diversity scheme, called |ar|-selection diversity, that selects the branch providing the largest magnitude of log-likelihood ratio (LLR). The LLR for BPSK signals in fading channels is found to be proportional to the product of the fading amplitude and the matched filter output after phase compensation. The proposed |ar|-selection diversity scheme is shown to be optimal in the sense of minimizing the bit error rate (BER), and outperform existing selection diversity schemes. We also propose a suboptimal selection diversity scheme, called |aw|-selection diversity, that does not require a phase compensation in the selection process, thereby significantly reducing implementation complexity. We show that the proposed |ar|-selection and |aw|-selection diversity schemes exhibit significant power gains over existing selection diversity schemes in Rayleigh fading channels     

A fast fully 4-D incremental gradient reconstruction algorithm for list mode PET data

We describe a fast and globally convergent fully four-dimensional incremental gradient (4DIG) algorithm to estimate the continuous-time tracer density from list mode positron emission tomography (PET) data. Detection of 511-keV photon pairs produced by positron-electron annihilation is modeled as an inhomogeneous Poisson process whose rate function is parameterized using cubic B-splines. The rate functions are estimated by minimizing the cost function formed by the sum of the negative log-likelihood of arrival times, spatial and temporal roughness penalties, and a negativity penalty. We first derive a computable bound for the norm of the optimal temporal basis function coefficients. Based on this bound we then construct and prove convergence of an incremental gradient algorithm. Fully 4-D simulations demonstrate the substantially faster convergence behavior of the 4DIG algorithm relative to preconditioned conjugate gradient. Four-dimensional reconstructions of real data are also included to illustrate the performance of this method.     

Optical Characteristics of Stretchable Chiral Liquid Crystal Elastomer under Multiaxial Stretching

Chiral liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs) are soft photonic materials that exhibit both the photonic characteristics of nanoscale periodic helical structures and mechanical properties of rubber. Owing to its elasticity, the structural color of CLCEs can be tuned through mechanical deformations known as mechanochromism. Thus far, there is significant research attention to exploring the mechanochromism of CLCEs. However, most studies have only discussed the color shifting of CLCEs under uniaxial deformation. Therefore, the optical and chiral structural deformation behaviors of CLCEs under multiaxial stress are not well understood. This study investigates multiaxial (uniaxial, biaxial, and out-of-plane) stretching-induced helical structure change and the resulting optical properties of CLCEs. The results confirm that uniaxial stretching leads to a loss of intrinsic circular polarization selectivity in CLCEs due to helix unwinding deformations, while biaxial and out-of-plane stretching maintain circular polarization.     

Fully aromatic polyimide gate insulators with low temperature processability for pentacene organic thin-film transistors

This paper demonstrates the effects of the imidization ratio of polyimide gate insulators on the performance of organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs). We report the synthetic results of polyimide films imidized at a temperature of 200 °C along with an easily removed organic base catalyst (1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene, DBU), and their application in gate insulators of organic thin-film transistors. The degree of imidization increased to almost 100% after a thermal treatment at 200 °C for 40 min in the presence of DBU. The performance of the pentacene OTFT dramatically improved by using low temperature cured polyimide film as the gate insulator.     

Physical Mechanisms behind the Field‐Cycling Behavior of HfO2‐Based Ferroelectric Capacitors

Novel hafnium oxide (HfO₂)‐based ferroelectrics reveal full scalability and complementary metal oxide semiconductor integratability compared to perovskite‐based ferroelectrics that are currently used in nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memories (FeRAMs). Within the lifetime of the device, two main regimes of wake‐up and fatigue can be identified. Up to now, the mechanisms behind these two device stages have not been revealed. Thus, the main scope of this study is an identification of the root cause for the increase of the remnant polarization during the wake‐up phase and subsequent polarization degradation with further cycling. Combining the comprehensive ferroelectric switching current experiments, Preisach density analysis, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study with compact and Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) modeling, it has been found out that during the wake‐up of the device no new defects are generated but the existing defects redistribute within the device. Furthermore, vacancy diffusion has been identified as the main cause for the phase transformation and consequent increase of the remnant polarization. Utilizing trap density spectroscopy for examining defect evolution with cycling of the device together with modeling of the degradation results in an understanding of the main mechanisms behind the evolution of the ferroelectric response.     

Broadcasting System Compliant with MPEG‐2/4 IPMPX

In this paper, we present an intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) system in a broadcasting environment to provide mechanisms for copyright and contents protection that are compliant with the MPEG‐2 and MPEG‐4 IPMP Extension (IPMPX) specifications. The technology for processing IPMP related information was exploited, and a terminal model has been successfully designed and implemented. In addition, interoperability, which is the main objective of MPEG‐2/4 IPMPX, has been addressed in detail. The experimental results show that the implemented system performs the IPMP process well, meeting the requirements of a broadcasting environment.     

An Area Optimization Method for Digital Filter Design

In this paper, we propose an efficient design method for area optimization in a digital filter. The conventional methods to reduce the number of adders in a filter have the problem of a long critical path delay caused by the deep logic depth of the filter due to adder sharing. Furthermore, there is such a disadvantage that they use the transposed direct form (TDF) filter which needs more registers than those of the direct form (DF) filter. In this paper, we present a hybrid structure of a TDF and DF based on the flattened coefficients method so that it can reduce the number of flip‐flops and full‐adders without additional critical path delay. We also propose a resource sharing method and sharing‐pattern searching algorithm to reduce the number of adders without deepening the logic depth. Simulation results show that the proposed structure can save the number of adders and registers by 22 and 26%, respectively, compared to the best one used in the past.