Characteristics of ZnO thin film deposited on various metal bottom electrodes

ZnO films for electronic applications were deposited by radio-frequency (rf) sputtering onto various metal bottom electrodes (Pt/Ti, W, Ni) to investigate such structural properties as crystallinity and surface morphology. The crystallinity, surface morphology and composition of the as-deposited films were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Rutherford back-scattering spectrometry (RBS), respectively. The preferred orientation and surface morphologies were strongly influenced by the type of bottom electrodes. The ZnO films with (200) texturing deposited on Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si showed a smoother and smaller grain size than those deposited on W and Ni. The ZnO films on Pt and W electrodes exhibited compressive residual stress. This article is based on a presentation made in the 2002 Korea-US symposium on the “Phase Transformations of Nano-Materials”, organized as a special program of the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, held at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea on October 25–26, 2002.     

A study of tailored blank welding between mild steel sheet and zn-coated steel sheet by CO2 laser beam

Research was conducted on tailored blank welding between mild steel sheet and Zn-coated steel sheet using CO₂ laser beam. The materials used in this study were low carbon steel sheets with a thickness of 1.2 mm and Zn-coated steel sheet with the same thickness and 6.3 μm Zn coating. Experiments were conducted by applying the Taguchi method to obtain optimum conditions for the application of this tailored blank laser welding method in practical manufacturing processes. Optical microscopy, XRD, SEM and TEM analysis were performed to observe the microstructures and to determine the structures of welded zone. In addition, mechanical properties were measured by the microhardness test, tensile test and Erichsen test to evaluate the formability of the welded specimen. There was no trapped Zn in the fusion zone, and the phases of this region consisted of polygonal ferrite, quasi-polygonal ferrite, banitic ferrite and martensite. The elongation value of welded specimen was more than 80% of the value in substrate metal, and the LDH value was more than 90% of the value in substrate metal.     

A timing controller embedded driver IC with 3.24‐Gbps eDP interface for chip‐on‐glass TFT‐LCD applications

This paper presents a timing controller embedded driver (TED) IC with 3.24‐Gbps embedded display port (eDP), which is implemented using a 45‐nm high‐voltage CMOS process for the chip‐on‐glass (COG) TFT‐LCD applications. The proposed TED‐IC employs the input offset calibration scheme, the zero‐adjustable equalizer, and the phase locked loop‐based bang‐bang clock and data recovery to enhance the maximum data rate. Also, the proposed TED‐IC provides efficient power management by supporting advanced link power management feature of eDP standard v1.4. Additionally, the smart charge sharing is proposed to reduce the dynamic power consumption of output buffers. Measured result demonstrates the maximum data rate of 3.24 Gbps from a 1.1 V supply voltage with a 7.9‐inch QXGA 60‐Hz COG‐LCD prototype panel and 44% power saving from the display system.     

Rendering of HDR images to improve brightness discrimination

The impression of quality of images can be enhanced on a high dynamic range (HDR) displays. Generally, a conventional 8‐bit image can be processed to an HDR image by inverse tone mapping operators. Among the operators, brightness discrimination mapping by applying brightness adaptation model attempted to mimic the human visual system. In this paper, we use a brightness adaptation model to derive a brightness discrimination mapping algorithm for HDR displays. The proposed algorithm maximizes a function, which represents the local and global brightness discrimination range by exploiting characteristics of the human visual system. Enhancement of details is verified by visualizing HDR images from dark to bright regions. Improvement of dynamic range is quantified by measuring increased discrimination ratio.     

LTCC‐based monolithic system‐in‐package (SiP) module for millimeter‐wave applications

A miniature LTCC system‐in‐package (SiP) module has been presented for millimeter‐wave applications. A typical heterodyne 61 GHz transmitter (Tx) has been designed and fabricated in a type of the SiP module as small as 36 × 12 × 0.9 mm³. Five active chips including a mixer, driver amplifier, power amplifier, and two frequency multipliers were mounted on the single LTCC package substrate, in which all passive circuits such as a stripline (SL) BPF, 2 × 2 array patch antenna, surface‐mount technology (SMT) pads, and intermediate frequency (IF) feeding lines have been monolithically embedded by using vertical and planar transitions. The embedded SL BPF shows the center frequency of 60.8 GHz, BW of 4.1%, and insertion loss of 3.74 dB. The gain and 3‐dB beam width of the fabricated 2 × 2 array patch antenna are 7 dBi and 36 degrees, respectively. The assembled LTCC 61 GHz Tx SiP module achieves an output power of 10.2 dBm and an up‐conversion gain of 7.3 dB. Because of the integrated BPF, an isolation level between a local oscillation (LO) and RF signal is below 26.4 dBc and the spurious level is suppressed by lower than 22.4 dBc. By using a 61 GHz receiver (Rx) consisting of off‐the‐shelf modules, wireless communication test was demonstrated by comparing measured IF spectrums at the Tx and Rx part.     

P2P-based u-health cluster service model for silver generation in PBR platform

As the number of the silver generation increases, u-health service has evolved into more preventive services accessible in any type of service environment based on service platforms from the previous treatment and management-oriented services for specific diseases. U-health service used to solely provide remote diagnosis and counseling or biometrics monitoring, facing limitations in preventing or managing potential chronic disease cases. In this recognition, the research seeks to propose a P2P-based u-health cluster service model for silver generation in PBR(Personal Bio Record) platform. The proposed u-health service herein utilizes PCs and smart phones to provide health, dietary and exercise information regardless of time and space. Based on the PBR platform, the system effectively connects the EMR system and users’ service systems in order to understand service targets’ lifestyle patterns and offer further customized services. This u-health cluster service model is expected to realize useful services to user in a multi-platform environment and contribute to enhanced health status of senior patients with chronic disease.     

Distinct element method analysis of a retaining wall using a steel frame and fill materials

A technique is developed to clearly establish the shear resistance of a cellular structure, retaining wall composed of a steel frame and fill materials with both continuous and discontinuous characteristics. To overcome the limitation of the existing analysis approach based on continuum mechanics, in which the shear behavior and interaction between the frames and fill material of this type of structure are difficult to describe, this paper introduces displacement incremental analysis into the distinct element method. The results obtained by using the proposed approach are compared with experimental results to verify its accuracy. The results show an internal friction angle of fill materials and overburdening load are major factor determining the shear resistance of a retaining wall with a cellular structure type. From the results of the parametric study on the shear behavior of this type of structure, this paper also proposes a shear resistance moment-shear displacement formula for designing a retaining wall with a cellular structure type.     

Analytic center cutting plane method for multiple kernel learning

Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) is a popular generalization of kernel methods which allows the practitioner to optimize over convex combinations of kernels. We observe that many recent MKL solutions can be cast in the framework of oracle based optimization, and show that they vary in terms of query point generation. The popularity of such methods is because the oracle can fortuitously be implemented as a support vector machine. Motivated by the success of centering approaches in interior point methods, we propose a new approach to optimize the MKL objective based on the analytic center cutting plane method (accpm). Our experimental results show that accpm outperforms state of the art in terms of rate of convergence and robustness. Further analysis sheds some light as to why MKL may not always improve classification accuracy over naive solutions.