UV/TiO2 and UV/TiO2-film for Degradation of Textile Dyes

Wastewaters fromtextile and dyeingindustries are highly colored by various non-biodegradable dyes whichcause serious environ-mental problems[1].The effluents of the wastewater introduced not only color but alsotoxicityinto aquatic system.The conventionalt…     

A Hairpin Line Diplexer for Direct Sequence Ultra-Wideband Wireless Communications

A high performance hairpin line diplexer for the direct sequence ultra-wideband communication is designed and implemented. This microstrip diplexer is mainly composed of two hairpin line wideband bandpass filters and a tapped open stub. The design concept is proposed in detail and has been verified by the experimental results of the fabricated diplexer, including the two isolated wideband bandwidths of 3.1-5.0 GHz and 6.02-10 GHz, low insertion loss and high isolation. Experimental results also show a good agreement with the simulated results.     

Equivalent Lumped Elements of DC-Biased Thin Film Microstrip Line in MMICs

This letter investigates the equivalent lumped elements of the thin film microstrip line (TFML) with different DC-bias voltages for the first time. The wide-band frequency-dependent characteristic impedance Z_o(f) and equivalent lumped elements such as R(f), L(f), G(f), and C(f) are accurately characterized for DC-biased TFML on a 20-m thick low dielectric constant (K) polyimide up to 50 GHz. The experimental results shows the DC-biased TFML can be extensively applied to the voltage-controlled passive and active integrated circuits.     

Experimental Demonstration of a Linearized Polymeric Directional Coupler Modulator

A linearized directional coupler modulator based on electrooptic polymer was fabricated and tested. The linearity was obtained by tailoring the coupling coefficient of the device using the photobleaching technique. A two-tone test of the device was presented and it demonstrated an enhancement in intermodulation distortion compared to a Mach-Zehnder modulator.     

Solution‐Processed HafSOx and ZircSOx Inorganic Thin‐Film Dielectrics and Nanolaminates

New thin‐film dielectrics and nanolaminates have been synthesized via aqueous‐solution deposition of Hf and Zr sulfates, where facile gelation and vitrification of the precursor solution have been achieved without organic additives. X‐ray reflectivity, imaging, and metal‐insulator‐metal capacitor performance reveal that smooth, atomically dense films are readily produced by spin coating and modest thermal treatment (T < 325 °C). Dielectric characteristics include permittivities covering the range of 9–12 with breakdown fields up to 6 MV cm^–1. Performance as gate dielectrics is demonstrated in field‐effect transistors exhibiting small gate‐leakage currents and qualitatively ideal device performance. The low‐temperature processing, uniformity, and pore‐free nature of the films have also allowed construction of unique, high‐resolution nanolaminates exhibiting individual layers as thin as 3 nm.     

Effective Work Function Engineering of TaxCy Metal Gate on Hf-Based Dielectrics

This letter reports the engineering of effective work function (EWF) for tantalum carbide (TaC) metal gate on high-k gate dielectrics. The dependence of EWF on Si concentration in HfSiO as well as nitridation techniques is revealed. The EWF was extracted by both terraced oxide and terraced high-k techniques with the bulk and interface charges taken into account. The incorporation of Si in Hf-based dielectrics results in an increase of EWF, while the presence of N tends to decrease the EWF. Plasma nitridation is found to be more effective in lowering the EWF than a thermal nitridation. The phenomena can be explained by the modification of TaC/high-k interface dipole moment, which arises from the electronegativity difference for various interface bonds. Based on the above findings, we proposed a novel approach to reduce the EWF of TaC on HfSiON by using a thin HfO₂ cap layer after optimizing the nitridation. The MOSFET results show that this technique is able to achieve a lower V_t without degrading the device performance     

Testing process precision for truncated normal distributions

Process precision index C_p has been widely used in the manufacturing industry to provide numerical measures of process precision, which essentially reflects product quality consistency. Precision measures using C_p for normal processes, contaminated normal processes, have been investigated extensively, but are neglected for truncated normal processes. Truncated normal processes are common in the manufacturing industry, particularly, for factories equipped with automatic machines handling fully inspections, and scrap/rework products falling outside the specification limits. If the processes follow the normal distribution, then the inspected products (processes) must follow the truncated normal distribution. In this note, we consider the precision measure for truncated normal processes. We investigate the analytically intractable sampling distribution of the estimated C_p, and obtain a rather accurate approximation. Using the results, we develop a practical testing procedure for practitioners to use in their in-plant applications.     

Comments on "Software process representation and analysis for framework instantiation"

When studying [T.C. Oliveira et al. (2004)], we found an error and some ambiguous parts. In this paper, we state those errors.     

Integral variable structure control of nonlinear system using a CMAC neural network learning approach.

This work presents a novel integral variable structure control (IVSC) that combines a cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) neural network and a soft supervisor controller for use in designing single-input single-output (SISO) nonlinear system. Based on the Lyapunov theorem, the soft supervisor controller is designed to guarantee the global stability of the system. The CMAC neural network is used to perform the equivalent control on IVSC, using a real-time learning algorithm. The proposed IVSC control scheme alleviates the dependency on system parameters and eliminates the chattering of the control signal through an efficient learning scheme. The CMAC-based IVSC (CIVSC) scheme is proven to be globally stable inasmuch all signals involved are bounded and the tracking error converges to zero. A numerical simulation demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller.     

Asynchronous phase synchronization in uniform unidirectional rings

We propose a self-stabilizing asynchronous phase synchronization protocol for uniform unidirectional rings. Consider applications with phase bound K, i.e., the phases are phase 0, phase 1, ...; phase K-1, phase 0, phase 1, etc. Under the protocol, when the ring is stabilized, it satisfies the following criterion: No node begins to execute phase (k+1) mod K until all nodes have executed phase k, and after all nodes have executed their phase k, each node eventually executes phase (k+1) mod K. Besides the variable used to denote the phase that a node is working on, each node maintains only one auxiliary variable with b states, where b can be any number greater than or equal to the ring size. Provided that K and b satisfy the limitation: K/spl times/b>n(b-1), the proposed protocol is correct under the parallel model and takes at most 2(K/spl times/b) rounds to stabilize.