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.     

压阻式MEMS压力传感器的原理与分析

本文介绍了一种压阻式MEMS压力传感器的工作原理,该装置由玻璃支座、单晶硅衬底及PZT薄膜构成,压阻薄膜连接组成惠斯登电桥,以取得更高的电压灵敏度和低温度敏感性。使用有限元分析软件ANSYS对单晶硅衬底的轴对称模型进行了仿真分析,以达到优化设计的目的。     

Extended Pilot‐Based Coding for Lossless Bit Rate Reduction of MPEG Surround

Pilot‐based coding (PBC), which is used for lossless bit rate reduction of audio coding, has been recently proposed for MPEG Surround. We propose extended PBC for further lossless bit rate reduction of MPEG Surround. Extended PBC selects the number of pilots depending on the parameter band number and the type of spatial parameter. It then encodes the pilots and the relevant difference data. Experiments show that extended PBC is more effective than the original PBC, especially for high bit rate modes, with a negligible complexity increase on the decoder side.     

Comparison of Protein Extraction Solutions for Rice Starch Isolation and Effects of Residual Protein Content on Starch Pasting Properties

Protein extraction solutions such as aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide (0.1 and 0.2 %), sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS, 1.2 %) containing sodium sulfite (0.12 %), and dodecylbenzene sulfonate (DoBS, 1.2 %) containing sodium sulfite (0.12 %) were compared in their protein removal efficiencies during isolation of starch from a rice flour (Ilpumbyo, a nonwaxy Korean rice variety). In addition, the pasting properties of the isolated starch was compared. More than 80 % of the flour protein was extracted in 1 h by stirring the dispersion (1:3, w/v) at room temperature. Repeating the extractions (1 or 2 h for each step) with fresh solution significantly increased the protein removal efficiency. When the extraction in 0.2 % NaOH was repeated four times (1 h for each step) at 25°C, the residual protein content in the isolated rice starch was 0.9 % (DB), equivalent to 86 % removal of the rice protein. Raising the extraction temperature slightly increased the protein solubility, but starch loss also became significant. Among the solutions, DoBS was most effective in removing rice protein whereas SLS was least. The residual protein content had a critical role in determining the pasting characteristics of the isolated starch, showing a negative correlation to the peak viscosity of the starch paste, but a positive correlation to the pasting temperature.     

Two-phase boosted voltage generator for low-voltage DRAMs

A two-phase boosted voltage (V/sub PP/) generator circuit was proposed for use in gigabit DRAMs. It reduced the maximum gate-oxide voltage of pass transistor and the lower limit of supply voltage to V/sub PP/ and V/sub TN/, respectively, while those for the conventional charge-pump circuit are V/sub PP/+V/sub DD/ and 1.5 V/sub TN/ respectively. Also, the pumping current was increased in the new circuit. The newly proposed two-phase V/sub PP/ charge-pump circuit worked successfully at V/sub DD/ down to 0.8 V by eliminating the threshold voltage loss of the control pulse generator and was tested successfully in a 0.16-/spl mu/m test chip using triple-well CMOS technology.     

Low‐Temperature Growth of SiO2 Films by Plasma‐Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition

Silicon dioxide (SiO₂) films prepared by plasma‐enhanced atomic‐layer deposition were successfully grown at temperatures of 100 to 250 °C, showing self‐limiting characteristics. The growth rate decreases with an increasing deposition temperature. The relative dielectric constants of SiO₂ films are ranged from 4.5 to 7.7 with the decrease of growth temperature. A SiO₂ film grown at 250 °C exhibits a much lower leakage current than that grown at 100°C due to its high film density and the fact that it contains deeper electron traps.     

Smart CMOS Image Sensor With High SBR and Subpixel Resolution for Light-Section-Based Range Finding

Light-section (LS)-based range finders are commonly used for obstacle recognition in home service robots and autonomous vehicles. This paper proposes a smart CMOS image sensor for LS-based range finding. The proposed sensor can detect the laser light, even under very strong ambient-illumination levels by using a multiple-capture frame-correlated double sampling (F-CDS), which is realized with an inverter-based switched-capacitor F-CDS accumulator. The proposed sensor also includes on-chip winner-take-all circuits that significantly reduce the software and hardware complexity of interpolation for the subpixel resolution. The prototype chip was fabricated using a 0.35-mum CMOS process. The measurement results show that the proposed sensor can detect a laser line with an intensity that is 56.5 dB lower than that of the ambient illumination, providing a spatial resolution of plusmn0.16 pixels.     

A 60-W Multicarrier WCDMA Power Amplifier Using an RF Predistorter

In this brief, we present a 60-W power amplifier that is linearized using an RF predistorter for multicarrier wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) applications. The proposed RF predistorter is fully composed of RF or analog circuits, and it has a moderate memory effect compensation capability using a delayed third-order intermodulation (IM3) component path. It also includes the IM5 generation circuits and a compact IM3 generator that is capable of autocanceling for the fundamental component. The proposed RF predistorter was implemented and applied to a 60-W high-power WCDMA amplifier. For a four-carrier downlink WCDMA signal, the RF predistorter improved the adjacent channel leakage power ratio at a 5-MHz offset by 6.19 dB at an average output power of 48 dBm. The total efficiency of the system is as high as 13.6% at the same output power level. At an output power level of 60 W, the linearized power amplifier complies with the linearity specification of the WCDMA system.     

Template‐Based Reconstruction of Surface Mesh Animation from Point Cloud Animation

In this paper, we present a method for reconstructing a surface mesh animation sequence from point cloud animation data. We mainly focus on the articulated body of a subject — the motion of which can be roughly described by its internal skeletal structure. The point cloud data is assumed to be captured independently without any inter‐frame correspondence information. Using a template model that resembles the given subject, our basic idea for reconstructing the mesh animation is to deform the template model to fit to the point cloud (on a frame‐by‐frame basis) while maintaining inter‐frame coherence. We first estimate the skeletal motion from the point cloud data. After applying the skeletal motion to the template surface, we refine it to fit to the point cloud data. We demonstrate the viability of the method by applying it to reconstruct a fast dancing motion     

Enhancement of Cu nucleation in Cu-MOCVD by Pd sputtering pretreatment

Cu electroplating which emerges as a viable Cu filling technique for damascene processing relies on the presence of a smooth and continuous Cu seed layer. Metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) may be the most promising technique to deposit the Cu seed layer. Plasma pretreatment is widely used as a precleaning technique which is essential for the enhancement of Cu nucleation in Cu-MOCVD. New pretreatment techniques which can replace plasma pretreatments are proposed in this paper. Pd sputtering, Pd–HF dipping or Pd-CVD pretreatment will possibly enhance Cu nucleation significantly if it is conducted on barrier metal films prior to Cu-MOCVD. It was found that Pd sputtering is more effective in enhancing Cu nucleation than direct plasma H₂ precleaning. Pd sputtering pretreatment is effective for a variety of barrier metals including Ta, TiN, TaN and TaSiN. The mechanism through which Cu nucleation is enhanced may be as follows: a thin Pd buffer layer formed by sputtering shields the barrier metal substrate surface with adsorbed oxygen atoms making Cu nucleation difficult and provides preferred sites for Cu nucleation.