Charge pump with perfect current matching characteristics inphase-locked loops

Conventional CMOS charge pump circuits have some current mismatching characteristics. The current mismatch of the charge pump in the PLLs generates a phase offset, which increases spurs in the PLL output signals. In particular, it reduces the locking range in wide range PLLs with a dual loop scheme. A new charge pump circuit with perfect current matching characteristics is proposed. By using an error amplifier and reference current sources, one can achieve a charge pump with good current matching characteristics. It shows nearly perfect current matching characteristics over the whole VCO input range, and the amount of the reference spur is <-75 dBc in the PLL output signal. The charge pump circuit is implemented in a 0.25 μm CMOS process     

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film transistor fabricated onplasma treated silicon nitride

We have demonstrated that the performance of the inverted staggered, hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film transistor (a-Si:H TFT) is improved by a He, H₂, NH₃ or N₂ plasma treatment for a short time on the surface of silicon nitride (SiN _x) before a-Si:H deposition. With increasing plasma exposure time, the field-effect mobility increase at first and then decrease, but the threshold voltage changes little. The a-Si:H TFT with a 6-min N₂ plasma treatment on SiN_x exhibited a field effect mobility of 1.37 cm²/Vs, a threshold voltage of 4.2 V and a subthreshold slope of 0.34 V/dec. It is found that surface roughness of SiN_x is decreased and N concentration in the SiN _x at the surface region decreases using the plasma treatment     

Lightweight,Superelastic Boron Nitride/Polydimethylsiloxane Foam as Air Dielectric Substitute for Multifunctional Capacitive Sensor Applications

Porous polymeric foams as dielectric layer for highly sensitive capacitive based pressure sensors have been extensively explored owing to their excellent flexibility and elasticity. Despite intensive efforts, most of previously reported porous polymer foams still suffer from difficulty in further lowering the attainable density limit of ≈0.1 g cm^?3 while retaining high sensitivity and compressibility due to the limitations on existing fabrication techniques and materials. Herein, utilizing 3D interconnected networks of few‐layer hexagonal boron nitride foams (h‐BNFs) as supporting frameworks, lightweight and highly porous BN/polydimethylsiloxane composite foams (BNF@PDMS) with densities reaching as low as 15 mg cm^?3 and permittivity close to that of air are fabricated. This is the lightest PDMS‐based foam reported to date. Owing to the synergistic effects between BN and PDMS, these lightweight composite foams possess excellent mechanical resilience, extremely high compressibility (up to 95% strain), good cyclic performance, and superelasticity. Being electrically nonconductive, the potential application of BNF@PDMS as a dielectric layer for capacitive sensors is further demonstrated. Remarkably, the as‐fabricated device can perform multiple sensing functions such as noncontact touch sensor, environmental monitoring sensor, and high sensitivity pressure sensor that can detect extremely low pressures of below 1 Pa.     

Multi-Fidelity High-Throughput Optimization of Electrical Conductivity in P3HT-CNT Composites

Combining high-throughput experiments with machine learning accelerates materials and process optimization toward user-specified target properties. In this study, a rapid machine learning-driven automated flow mixing setup with a high-throughput drop-casting system is introduced for thin film preparation, followed by fast characterization of proxy optical and target electrical properties that completes one cycle of learning with 160 unique samples in a single day, a > 10 ×  improvement relative to quantified, manual-controlled baseline. Regio-regular poly-3-hexylthiophene is combined with various types of carbon nanotubes, to identify the optimum composition and synthesis conditions to realize electrical conductivities as high as state-of-the-art 1000 S cm⁻¹. The results are subsequently verified and explained using offline high-fidelity experiments. Graph-based model selection strategies with classical regression that optimize among multi-fidelity noisy input-output measurements are introduced. These strategies present a robust machine-learning driven high-throughput experimental scheme that can be effectively applied to understand, optimize, and design new materials and composites.     

Trend change in mean residual life

The authors consider a life distribution which shows a trend change in its mean residual life (MRL). The problem of testing such a trend change has been of great interest in reliability analysis. The authors propose a new procedure for testing the exponentiality against IDMRL or DMIRL, assuming that the proportion of the population, p, that dies at or before the change point of MRL is known. Their test provides a new competitor to the known test procedures, such as the Guess, Hollander, Proschan test and the Aly test. Based on the empirical powers of these tests against lognormal alternatives, their test outperforms the others for most sample sizes and most values of p and that all three tests achieve high power in detecting the trend change of MRL when p is very small and very large     

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.     

A Differential-Mode Wideband Bandpass Filter on Microstrip Line for UWB Application

A differential-mode wideband bandpass filter (BPF) on microstrip line is proposed with good common-mode suppression. A four port two stage branch-line differential-mode BPF is first designed. Then, open circuited stubs are attached to the middle of two of the vertical branches. As such, its two-port bisection becomes a bandpass or bandstop filtering topology under differental- or common-mode excitations, respectively. The lengths and widths of these stubs can be properly adjusted to produce a highly attenuated and widened stopband under the common-mode operation. Finally, a wideband differential-mode BPF is designed and fabricated. The predicted and measured performances are in good agreement with each other, showing good common-mode suppression with an insertion loss higher than 20 dB over the differential-mode passband with a fractional bandwidth of 65%.     

Improvement of form accuracy in hybrid machining of microstructures

Micromachining is gaining popularity due to recent advancements in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. Using conventional micromachining, it is relatively difficult to produce moving components in the order of microns. In this study, an attempt is made to fabricate microstructures using a combination of turning and electrodischarge machining (EDM). Several sets of experiments have been performed to study the characteristics of the hybrid machining process. From the experiments, it has been observed that a higher form of accuracy could be obtained by integrating the on-machine fabrication of the tool and by subsequently using the same tool for EDM. The main cause of the form error is due to the deflection of the shaft during turning. Hence, an attempt is made to observe the deflection of the shaft using a deflection sensor. The influence of micro-EDM parameters such as feed rate, discharge circuits, and gap control parameters on material removal rate and tool wear is also discussed in this study.     

Hybrid ring coupler for W-band MMIC applications using MEMS technology

The hybrid ring coupler was designed and fabricated on a GaAs substrate using surface micromachining techniques, which adopted dielectric-supported air-gapped microstrip line (DAML) structure. The fabrication process of DAML is compatible with the standard monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) techniques, and the hybrid ring coupler can be simply integrated into a plane-structural MMIC. The fabricated hybrid ring coupler shows wideband characteristics of the coupling loss of 3.57 /spl plusmn/ 0.22dB and the transmission loss of 3.80 /spl plusmn/ 0.08dB across the measured frequency range of 85 to 105GHz. The isolation characteristics and output phase differences are -34dB and 180/spl plusmn/1/spl deg/, at 94GHz, respectively.     

Bendable and Splitter-Integrated Optical Subassembly Based on a Flexible Optical Board

A bendable and splitter-integrated optical subassembly (OSA) is suggested as a short-distance board-to-board optical interconnection. This OSA was fabricated by simply packaging a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser on a flexible optical board having an embedded 1 $times$ 8 optical splitter waveguide. Finally, we measured various optical characteristics of the OSA, including insertion, twist, and bending losses.