IMPROVEMENT OF TYPE IV CRACKING RESISTANCE OF 9Cr HEAT RESISTING STEEL WELDMENT BY BORON ADDITION

Creep lives of high Cr ferritic heat resisting steel weldments decrease due to Type Ⅳ fracture, which occurs as a result of formation and growth of creep voids and cracks on grain boundaries in fine-grained heat affected zone (HAZ). Because boron is considered to suppress the coarsening of grain boundary precipitates and growth of creep voids, we have investigated the effect of boron addition on the creep properties of 9Cr steel weldments. Four kinds of 9Cr3WSCoVNb steels with boron content varying from 4.7×10-5 to 1.8×10-4 and with nitrogen as low as 2.0×10-5 were prepared. The steel plates were welded by gas tungsten arc welding and crept at 923K. It was found that the microstructures of HAZ were quite different from those of conventional high Cr steels such as P91 and P92, namely the fine-grained HAZ did not exist in the present steel weldments. Boron addition also has the effect to suppress coarsening of grain boundary carbides in HAZ during creep. As a result of these phenomena, the welded join     

Hand shape classification in various pronation angles using a wearable wrist contour sensor

Hand gestures are potentially useful for communications between humans and between a human and a machine. However, existing methods entail several problems for practical use. We have proposed an approach to hand shape recognition based on wrist contour measurement. Especially in this paper, two assignments are addressed. First is the development of a new sensing device in which all elements are installed in a wrist-watch-type device. Second is the development of a new hand shape classifier that can accommodate pronation angle changes. The developed sensing device enables wrist contour data collection under conditions in which the pronation angle varies. The classifier recognizes the hand shape based on statistics produced through data forming and statistics conversion processes. The most important result is that no large difference exists between classification rates that include or those that exclude the independent (preliminary) pronation estimation process using inertia measurement units. This result shows two possible insights: (1) the wrist contour has some features that depend on the hand shape but which do not depend on the pronation angle, or (2) the wrist contour potentially includes pronation angle variation information. These insights indicate the possibility that hand shape can be recognized solely from the wrist contour, even while changing the pronation angle.     

Reliability and mechanical durability tests of flexible OLED with ALD coating

To improve the reliability and mechanical durability of a flexible organic light‐emitting diode display, the entire flexible display is coated with an aluminum oxide film by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Because the step coverage of ALD is excellent, the AlO_x film was deposited not only on the front and back surfaces but also on the side surfaces of the display. A high‐temperature and high‐humidity preservation test, repetitive bending tests, and a pencil hardness test were conducted on the flexible display with ALD‐AlO_x coating. The display survived 500 h of a 65°C, 95% preservation test, endured a 100,000‐time repetitive bending test with a curvature radius of 4 mm, and was found to have a pencil hardness of 4H.     

Computational design of iris folding patterns

Computational Visual Media - Iris folding is an art-form consisting of layered strips of paper, forming a spiral pattern behind an aperture, which can be used to make cards and gift tags. This...     

Teaching materials to enhance the visual expression of Web pages for students not in art or design majors

The explosive growth of the Internet has made the knowledge and skills for creating Web pages into general subjects that all students should learn. It is now common to teach the technical side of the production of Web pages and many teaching materials have been developed. However teaching the aesthetic side of Web page design has been neglected, and students not in art or design majors are normally confronted with difficulties when they do expressive design of Web pages.     

Construction of a robot control system which understands a voice and pointing actions

This research was aimed at making a robot that can go and get an object designated by the user. We produced a robot control system that uses pointing and voice control. This control system is composed of two systems. One system is the object instruction system that uses pointing, and the other is the object instruction system that uses voice. The approximate position of a designated object is recognized by the object instruction system that uses pointing, and information about the object and instructions about the operation are conveyed by the object instruction system that uses voice. This time, the object instruction system that uses pointing has been designed and verified as the first step. A calculation resource to calculate the approximate position of the designated object is obtained when the user points directly at the object. A robot can be moved around a designated object by using this system. The object instruction system that uses voice will be constructed in future work.     

Quantitative structural analysis of twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 using HAADF STEM method

The structure and composition of the 1/4{110} twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 have been determined by using quantitative high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF STEM) analysis. The noise in the experimental HAADF STEM images is reduced by using the maximum entropy method and average processing, and the parameters used in dynamical simulations are experimentally determined. From the analysis, it has been found that octahedral sites in the twin boundary slightly shift parallel to the [110] direction, and a reduction of the Sb concentration at the octahedral sites on the plane adjacent to the twin boundary was detected. The reduction was measured from three regions in the same twin boundary, and the Sb concentrations were 4 +/- 3, 8 +/- 3 and 19 +/-2 at% from 33 at%.     

Observation of three-dimensional elemental distributions of a Si device using a 360 degrees -tilt FIB and the cold field-emission STEM system

A technique for preparation of a pillar-shaped specimen and its multidirectional observation using a combination of a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) and a focused ion beam (FIB) instrument has been developed. The system employs an FIB/STEM compatible holder with a specially designed tilt mechanism, which allows the specimen to be tilted through 360 degrees [T. Yaguchi, M. Konno, T. Kamino, T. Hashimoto, T. Ohnishi, K. Umemura, K. Asayama, Microsc. Microanal. 9 (Suppl. 2) (2003) 118; T. Yaguchi, M. Konno, T. Kamino, T. Hashimoto, T. Ohnishi, M. Watanabe, Microsc. Microanal. 10 (Suppl. 2) (2004) 1030]. This technique was applied to obtain the three-dimensional (3D) elemental distributions around a contact plug of a Si device used in a 90-nm technology. A specimen containing only one contact plug was prepared in the shape of a pillar with a diameter of 200nm and a length of 5mum. Elemental maps were obtained from the pillar specimen using a 200-kV cold-field emission gun (FEG) STEM model HD-2300C equipped with the EDAX genesis X-ray energy-dispersive spectrometry (XEDS) system through a spectrum imaging technique. In this study, elemental distributions of minor elements with weak signals were enhanced by applying principal component analysis (PCA), which is a superior technique to extract weak signals from a large dataset. The distributions of elements, especially the metallization component Ti and minor dopant As in this particular device, were successfully extracted by PCA. Finally, the 3D elemental distributions around the contact plug could be visualized by reconstruction from the tilt series of maps.