Rapidly tunable optical add-drop multiplexer utilising relaxed beam splitters

A polarisation-independent four-port electro-optic tunable filter in the 1530 nm wavelength regime utilising non-polarising relaxed beam splitters and strain-induced polarisation converters on LiNbO₃ with 16 nm tuning range and 46 ns tuning speed is reported.     

Fatigue crack propagation properties from small sized rod specimens

Mechanical properties characterization is needed in many industrial applications yet sufficient amount of material for fabricating standard-sized testing specimens is often not available. Techniques for testing miniaturized specimen must be adopted. Much effort has been made to develop techniques for impact, fracture toughness and tensile properties of sub-sized specimens. Work on the testing of fatigue properties is more limited. In this study, fatigue crack propagation behavior is evaluated from the growth of surface crack in a cylindrical rod under tension. Rods of various lengths and diameters were tested. As the size of the rod specimen is reduced, the fatigue crack growth rate tends to increase when correlated using the stress intensity factor range. This increase is explained largely by the decrease in the degree of premature crack closure in the small specimens. Valid fatigue crack growth data can be obtained among the specimens examined except on the crack growth on the surface of the smallest specimen, which has a length of 26 mm and diameter of 8 mm. Even so, valid data can still be elucidated on the latter specimen if the interior growth is considered. The dimensions of the latter specimen allow fatigue properties to be evaluated using broken remnants from impact or other test specimens.     

Chemical vapor deposition of amorphous ruthenium-phosphorus alloy films

Chemical vapor deposition growth of amorphous ruthenium-phosphorus films on SiO₂ containing ∼ 15% phosphorus is reported. cis-Ruthenium(II)dihydridotetrakis-(trimethylphosphine), cis-RuH₂(PMe₃)₄ (Me = CH₃) was used at growth temperatures ranging from 525 to 575 K. Both Ru and P are zero-valent. The films are metastable, becoming increasingly more polycrystalline upon annealing to 775 and 975 K. Surface studies illustrate that demethylation is quite efficient near 560 K. Precursor adsorption at 135 K or 210 K and heating reveal the precursor undergoes a complex decomposition process in which the hydride and trimethylphosphine ligands are lost at temperatures as low at 280 K. Phosphorus and its manner of incorporation appear responsible for the amorphous-like character. Molecular dynamics simulations are presented to suggest the local structure in the films and the causes for phosphorus stabilizing the amorphous phase.     

At least N+1 finite transmission zeros using frequency-variant negative source-load coupling

A second-order cross-coupled combline filter which has three finite transmission zeros is presented. The problem of the frequency-invariant coupling in a real circuit is introduced. To make extra transmission zeros, a top metalized dielectric block is used.     

The stress-whitened damage zone of PVC blends

The stress-whitened damage zone that formed ahead of a semicircular notch during slow tensile loading has been measured from optical micrographs of translucent blends of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) with experimental chlorinated polyethylene (CPE) resins. When the zone was small, the plane strain condition applied and from the elastic stress distribution a constant mean stress condition was found at the boundary of the crescent-shaped zone. The critical mean stress did not depend on the chlorine content or the chlorine distribution of the experimental CPE resin used in the blend. While the critical mean stress decreased as the amount of CPE in the blend was increased, the critical volume strain, calculated from the bulk modulus, was independent of composition and was thought to be the controlling parameter for stress-whitening. When the zone was larger, the shape was qualitatively described by concepts of stress redistribution in the presence of a plastic zone ahead of the notch. Macroscopic flow and necking were only detected near the maximum in the stress-displacement curve.     

DC and AC characteristics of sub-50-nm MOSFETs with source/drain-to-gate nonoverlapped structure

A MOSFET structure with a nonoverlapped source/drain (S/D) to gate region was proposed to overcome the challenges in sub-50-nm CMOS devices. Key device characteristics were investigated by extensive simulation study. Fringing gate electric field through the spacer induces an inversion layer in the nonoverlap region to act as an extended S/D region. An oxide spacer is used to reduce parasitic gate overlap capacitance. A reasonable amount of inversion electrons were induced under the spacers. Internal physics, speed characteristics, short channel effects, and RF characteristics were studied with the nonoverlap distance at a fixed metallurgical channel length of 40 nm. The proposed structure had good drain-induced barrier lowering and V/sub T/ rolloff characteristics and showed reasonable intrinsic gate delay and cutoff frequency compared to those of an overlapped structure.     

A typed functional extension of logic programming

A logic language is suitable for specification if it is equipped with features for data abstraction and modularization. In this paper, an effective mechanism to incorporate function and type into logic programming is presented as the means to embed data abstraction mechanism into logic programming. This incorporation is essentially based on Horn clause logic with equality and a polymorphic type system that is an extension of Mycroft and O’Keefe’s system. This paper also presents an implementation based on Warren Abstract Machine (WAM) and shows the performance, along with a comparison with WAM.     

Synthesis and characterization of poly(siloxane-urethane)s

A series of polyurethane block copolymers based on hydroxy-terminated polydimethylsiloxane and poly(propylene glycol) soft segments of molecular weights 1818 and 2000, respectively, were synthesized. The hard segments consisted of 4,4′-diphenylnethane diisocyanate and 1,4-butanediol as the chain extender. Samples with different molar ratios were prepared. We tried to synthesize polydimethylsiloxane-based polyurethanes (PDMS-PU) containing a hard block as major fraction and a soft block as minor fraction for preparing toughened rigid systems. After a study of the pure polydimethylsiloxane-based polyurethane and poly(propylene glycol)-based polyurethane (PPG-PU), (mixed polyol)-based block copolymers and blends of PDMS-PU and PPG-PU were synthesized, and characterized by means of differential scanning calorimetry, tensile testing and scanning electron microscopy. In (mixed polyol)-based copolymers and lower hard-segment content blends, macro-phase separation occurred, but blends with higher hard-segment contents showed significant reduction in amounts of phase separation.     

Simple ASK transmitter using a 790 nm self-pulsating laser diodefor local area networks

A simple amplitude shift keying (ASK) optical link is demonstrated by using a low-cost self-pulsating laser diode and an envelope detector for a low-cost broadband local area network. A link sensitivity of -22 dBm was achieved at 200 Mbit/s. Because the self-pulsation frequency can be tuned by the bias current, frequency division multiplexing can be simply implemented for multiuser applications