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.     

On the leverage of high-fT transistors foradvanced high-speed bipolar circuits

A detailed study on the leverage of high-f_T transistors for advanced high-speed bipolar circuit applications is presented. It is shown that for the standard ECL (emitter-coupled logic) circuit, the leverage of high f_T is limited by the passive resistors (emitter-follower resistor and collector load resistor) and wire delay, especially in the low-power regime. For the standard NTL (nonthreshold logic) circuit, the leverage is higher due to its front-end configuration and lower power supply value. As the passive resistors are decoupled from the delay path in various advanced circuits utilizing active-pull-down schemes, the leverage of high F_T becomes more significant     

Matrix analysis of 2-D microresonator lattice optical filters

We present a transfer matrix analysis of a two-dimensional (2-D) filter to study its frequency response functions. The (M/spl times/N) array consists of N independent columns of microring resonators side-coupled to two channel bus waveguides, with equal spacing between columns and each column consisting of M coupled resonators. We show that such a general 2-D lattice network of lossless and symmetric resonators can approximate an ideal bandpass filter characterized by a flat-top box-like amplitude response without out-of-band sidelobes, and a linear phase response. The bandwidth is determined by the coupling factor between resonators. The 2-D periodic structure exhibits nonoverlapping photonic bandgaps arising from the complementary transmission properties of the row and column arrays. The row array behaves as a distributed feedback grating giving rise to narrow bandgaps corresponding to the flat reflection passbands of the filter with out-of-band sidelobes. The column array, on the other hand, acts as a high-order coupled-cavities filter with broad bandgaps that overlap with the sidelobe regions, thereby effectively suppressing the sidelobes. The phase response is linear except near the band edges, where enhanced group delay limits the usable bandwidth of the filter to about 80%. The minimum size of the array required is about 3/spl times/10, but is ultimately limited by waveguide loss.     

Dual-material gate (DMG) field effect transistor

A generic new type of field effect transistor (FET), the dual material gate (DMG) FET, is proposed and demonstrated. The gate of the DMGFET consists of two laterally contacting materials with different work functions. This novel gate structure takes advantage of material work function difference in such a way that the threshold voltage near the source is more positive than that near the drain (for n-channel FET, the opposite for p-channel FET), resulting in a more rapid acceleration of charge carriers in the channel and a screening effect to suppress short-channel effects. Using the heterostructure FET as a vehicle, the principle, computer simulation results, design guidelines, processing, and characterization of the DMGFET are discussed in detail     

Modeling and Interoperability Test Case Generation of a Real-Time QoS Monitoring Protocol

QoS monitoring is a kind of real-time systems which allows each level of the system to track the ongoing QoS levels achieved by the lower network layers. For these systems, real-time communication between corresponding transport protocol objects is essential for their correct behavior. When two or more entities are employed to perform a certain task as in the case of communication protocols, the capability to do so is called interoperability and considered as the essential aspect of correctness of communication systems. This paper describes a formal approach on modeling and interoperability test case generation of a real-time QoS monitoring protocol. For this, we specify the behavior of flow monitoring of transport layer QoS protocol, i.e., METS protocol, which is proposed to address QoS from an end-to-end's point of view, based on QoS architecture model which includes ATM network in lower layers. We use a real-time Input/Output Finite State Machine to model the behavior of real-time flow monitoring over time. From the modeled real-time I/OFSM, we generate interoperability test cases to check the correctness of METS protocol's flow monitoring behaviors for two end systems. A new approach to efficient interoperability testing is described and the method of interoperability test cases generation is shown with the example of METS protocol's flow monitoring. The current TTCN is not appropriate for testing real-time and multimedia systems. Because test events in TTCN are for message-based system and not for stream-based systems, the real-time in TTCN can only be approximated. This paper also proposes the notation of real-time Abstract Test Suite by means of real-time extension of TTCN. This approach gives the advantages that only a few syntactical changes are necessary, and TTCN and real-time TTCN are compatible. This formal approach on interoperability testing can be applied to the real-time protocols related to IMT-2000, B-ISDN and real-time systems.     

Negative giant surface potential of vacuum-evaporated tris(7-propyl-8-hydroxyquinolinolato) aluminum(III) [Al(7-Prq)3] film

Negative giant surface potential was realized in a vacuum-evaporated film of tris(7-propyl-8-hydroxyquinolinolato) aluminum(III) [Al(7-Prq)₃]. Electroabsorption response of the film presented an inverted polarity to that of tris(8-hydroxyquinolinolato) aluminum (Alq₃), suggesting opposite noncentrosymmetry of molecular orientation. Asymmetric dice model with molecular geometric effect has been proposed, and propyl substitution at 7 position of the ligands was indicated to affects the molecular posture on the surface to invert the polarity of noncentrosymmetry. Our results opened a new possibility of controlling molecular orientation in a film for device applications.     

Integrating guanxi into technology acceptance: An empirical investigation of WeChat

Social influence is an important research topic in the technology acceptance literature, in particular for social media. Prior empirical studies have for the most part employed social influence theory to investigate user intentions to continue with social media, while culture driven theories have been neglected. Rather than using social influence theory, we introduced guanxi theory to explore how guanxi social mechanisms (or processes) influence Chinese users’ continuance intentions in WeChat. Specifically, we developed a model that examines the role of guanxi as manifested by renqing, mianzi and ganqing in perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and continuance intention in WeChat. A survey research method was adopted to test the proposed hypotheses. This study found that ganqing has a positive impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Mianzi exerts a negative effect on continuance intention but exhibits a positive effect on perceived usefulness. Renqing was found to have no significant impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Our study advances the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by introducing guanxi-based constructs in a Chinese mobile social-messaging application context. Our study also offers alternative insights on guanxi-based social influence processes in the Chinese technology acceptance literature.     

Downlink channel covariance matrix (DCCM) estimation and itsapplications in wireless DS-CDMA systems

The downlink channel covariance matrix (DCCM) is of vital importance in determining downlink beamforming weights for base station (BS) antenna array systems. For the frequency-division-duplex (FDD) mode, DCCM is difficult to obtain due to a lack of direct measurement of downlink channel responses. In this paper, a novel technique is proposed for estimating DCCM using uplink channel responses only, which does not need direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation and its association. The downlink beamforming scheme is then proposed for wireless DS-CDMA systems, using the obtained DCCM information together with the so-called virtual uplink beamforming and power control technique. Computer simulations show that using the BS antenna array together with this new beamforming technique can provide larger system capacity than traditional DOA-based approaches, which just direct the main beam toward the desired user