Digital Laser Micropainting for Reprogrammable Optoelectronic Applications

Structural coloration is closely related to the progress of innovative optoelectronic applications, but the absence of direct, on-demand, and rewritable coloration schemes has impeded advances in the relevant area, particularly including the development of customized, reprogrammable optoelectronic devices. To overcome these limitations, a digital laser micropainting technique, based on controlled thin-film interference, is proposed through direct growth of the absorbing metal oxide layer on a metallic reflector in the solution environment via a laser. A continuous-wave laser simultaneously performs two functions—a photothermal reaction for site-selective metal oxide layer growth and in situ real-time monitoring of its thickness—while the reflection spectrum is tuned in a broad visible spectrum according to the laser fluence. The scalability and controllability of the proposed scheme is verified by laser-printed painting, while altering the thickness via supplementary irradiation of the identical laser in the homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions facilitates the modification of the original coloration. Finally, the proof-of-concept bolometer device verifies that specific wavelength-dependent photoresponsivity can be assigned, erased, and reassigned by the successive application of the proposed digital laser micropainting technique, which substantiates its potential to offer a new route for reprogrammable optoelectronic applications.     

Rapid Generation of Biologically Relevant Hydrogels Containing Long‐Range Chemical Gradients

Many biological processes are regulated by gradients of bioactive chemicals. Thus, the generation of materials with embedded chemical gradients may be beneficial for understanding biological phenomena and generating tissue‐mimetic constructs. Here a simple and versatile method to rapidly generate materials containing centimeter‐long gradients of chemical properties in a microfluidic channel is described. The formation of a chemical gradient is initiated by a passive‐pump‐induced forward flow and further developed during an evaporation‐induced backward flow. The gradient is spatially controlled by the backward flow time and the hydrogel material containing the gradient is synthesized via photopolymerization. Gradients of a cell‐adhesion ligand, Arg‐Gly‐Asp‐Ser (RGDS), are incorporated in poly(ethylene glycol)‐diacrylate (PEG‐DA) hydrogels to test the response of endothelial cells. The cells attach and spread along the hydrogel material in a manner consistent with the RGDS‐gradient profile. A hydrogel containing a PEG‐DA concentration gradient and constant RGDS concentration is also shown. The morphology of cells cultured on such hydrogel changes from round in the lower PEG‐DA concentration regions to well‐spread in the higher PEG‐DA concentration regions. This approach is expected to be a valuable tool to investigate the cell–material interactions in a simple and high‐throughput manner and to design graded biomimetic materials for tissue engineering applications.     

A dual-loop shunt regulator using current-sensing feedback techniques

The dual-loop shunt regulator using current-sensing feedback techniques is proposed in this paper. This architecture adopts a voltage and current loops to increase the transient response of the proposed shunt regulator. The maximum output current of the proposed shunt regulator is 180 mA at a 1.8 V output. Moreover the architecture of the proposed shunt regulator can suppress the stray effect which is from power supply. The prototype of the proposed shunt regulator is fabricated by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) 0.35-μm CMOS 2P4M process. The active area is only 579×355 μm².     

Advances in multibeam communications satellite antennas

The evolution of satellite antennas over the past quarter of a century is presented. Five major areas of advances in communications satellite antenna technology are reviewed: single offset reflectors with feed arrays, shaped reflector systems, active phased arrays, phased-array-fed dual reflector systems, and lightweight feed elements. Examples are given of existing systems and of the ongoing development of new technologies     

Grafted GaAlAs rib waveguides on an InP substrate

Rib waveguides were fabricated on a 1.4 mu m thick GaAlAs epilayer granted on the surface of a semi-insulating InP substrate by epitaxial lift-off. Single-mode waveguides with propagation losses (<7 dB/cm) lower than heteroepitaxially grown counterparts have been achieved. TEM analysis on the GaAlAs/InP interface indicates surface scattering as one of the main loss mechanisms.<>     

Dissolution Behaviors and Applications of Silicon Oxides and Nitrides in Transient Electronics

Silicon oxides and nitrides are key materials for dielectrics and encapsulation layers in a class of silicon‐based high performance electronics that has ability to completely dissolve in a controlled fashion with programmable rates, when submerged in bio‐fluids and/or relevant solutions. This type of technology, referred to as “transient electronics”, has potential applications in biomedical implants, environmental sensors, and other envisioned areas. The results presented here provide comprehensive studies of transient behaviors of thin films of silicon oxides and nitrides in diverse aqueous solutions at different pH scales and temperatures. The kinetics of hydrolysis of these materials depends not only on pH levels/ion concentrations of solutions and temperatures, but also on the morphology and chemistry of the films, as determined by the deposition methods and conditions. Encapsulation strategies with a combination of layers demonstrate enhancement of the lifetime of transient electronic devices, by reducing water/vapor permeation through the defects.     

Novel iterative equalization based on energy-spreading transform

In this paper, novel iterative equalization for intersymbol interference (ISI) channels is proposed. Different from the existing turbo equalization, the proposed one is based on energy-spreading transform (EST), which separates equalization and coding, and therefore works for uncoded systems. The complexity of the proposed scheme is comparable to that of decision-feedback equalization (DFE). However, analytical and simulation results demonstrate that its performance is very close to the matched-filter bound (MFB) when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is above a threshold.     

A gain-clamped SOA with distributed Bragg reflectors fabricated under both ends of active waveguide with different lengths

We demonstrate a gain-clamped semiconductor optical amplifier (GC-SOA) which has gratings under both end regions of an active waveguide. Two gratings of the new GC-SOA are fabricated in different lengths. Their lasing modes and gain characteristics are measured and analyzed with different combinations of grating lengths. It shows different gain and noise characteristics according to the measurement direction in asymmetric grating combinations.     

Do component reliabilities depend on system size?

The basic assumption of Poisson-Weibull convergence in analyzing the reliability of large consecutive-k-out-of-n:F systems is questioned with respect to the relevance of its consequences to practical reliability theory     

Treating late-time instability of hybridfinite-element/finite-difference time-domain method

The hybrid finite element/finite-difference time-domain (FETD/FDTD) method previously proposed to handle arbitrarily shaped dielectric objects is employed to investigate electromagnetic problems of high Q systems for which the transient response over a very long duration is necessary. To begin with, the paper demonstrates that this hybrid method may suffer from late-time instability and spurious DC modes. Then an approach which combines the temporal filtering and frequency shifting techniques is presented to overcome sequentially and, respectively, the two drawbacks. Its accuracy is validated by the favorable comparison with several different methods for the analysis of resonant frequencies and and factors of the various modes in an isolated dielectric resonator. Finally, the present method is applied to calculate the scattering parameters on the microstrip line due to the presence of the cylindrical dielectric resonator