Ag Nanowire Reinforced Highly Stretchable Conductive Fibers for Wearable Electronics

Stretchable conductive fibers have received significant attention due to their possibility of being utilized in wearable and foldable electronics. Here, highly stretchable conductive fiber composed of silver nanowires (AgNWs) and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) embedded in a styrene–butadiene–styrene (SBS) elastomeric matrix is fabricated. An AgNW‐embedded SBS fiber is fabricated by a simple wet spinning method. Then, the AgNPs are formed on both the surface and inner region of the AgNW‐embedded fiber via repeated cycles of silver precursor absorption and reduction processes. The AgNW‐embedded conductive fiber exhibits superior initial electrical conductivity (σ₀ = 2450 S cm^?1) and elongation at break (900% strain) due to the high weight percentage of the conductive fillers and the use of a highly stretchable SBS elastomer matrix. During the stretching, the embedded AgNWs act as conducting bridges between AgNPs, resulting in the preservation of electrical conductivity under high strain (the rate of conductivity degradation, σ/σ₀ = 4.4% at 100% strain). The AgNW‐embedded conductive fibers show the strain‐sensing behavior with a broad range of applied tensile strain. The AgNW reinforced highly stretchable conductive fibers can be embedded into a smart glove for detecting sign language by integrating five composite fibers in the glove, which can successfully perceive human motions.     

Unveiled Ferroelectricity in Well-Known Non-Ferroelectric Materials and Their Semiconductor Applications

Ferroelectric materials are considered ideal for emerging memory devices owing to their characteristic remanent polarization, which can be switched by applying a sufficient electric field. However, even several decades after the initial conceptualization of ferroelectric memory, its applications are limited to a niche market. The slow advancement of ferroelectric memories can be attributed to several extant issues, such as the absence of ferroelectric materials with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility and scalability. Since the 2010s, ferroelectric memories have attracted increasing interest because of newly discovered ferroelectricity in well-established CMOS-compatible materials, which are previously known to be non-ferroelectric, such as fluorite-structured (Hf,Zr)O₂ and wurtzite-structured (Al,Sc)N. With advancing material fabrication technologies, for example, accurate chemical doping and atomic-level thickness control, a metastable polar phase, and switchable polarization with a reasonable electric field can be induced in (Hf,Zr)O₂ and (Al,Sc)N. Nonetheless, various issues still exist that urgently require solutions to facilitate the use of the ferroelectric (Hf,Zr)O₂ and (Al,Sc)N in emerging memory devices. Thus, ferroelectric (Hf,Zr)O₂ and (Al,Sc)N are comprehensively reviewed herein, including their fundamental science and practical applications.     

Empirical analysis of strategy selection for the technology leading and technology catch-up in the IT industry

R&D strategies of companies with low and high technological levels are discussed based on the concept of technology convergence and divergence. However, empirically detecting enterprise technology convergence in the distribution of enterprise technology (total productivity increase) over time and identifying key change factors are challenging. This study used a novel statistical indicator that captures the internal technology distribution change with a single number to clearly measure the technology distribution peak as a change in critical bandwidth for enterprise technology convergence and presented it as evidence of each technology convergence or divergence. Furthermore, this study applied the quantitative technology convergence identification method. Technology convergence appeared from the separation of total corporate productivity distribution of 69 IT companies in Korea in 2019–2020 rather than in 2015–2016. Results indicated that when the total technological level was separated from the technology leading and technology catch-up, IT companies were found to be pursuing R&D strategies for technology catch-up.     

Consideration of the Actual Current-Spreading Length of GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes for High-Efficiency Design

Based on the proposed experimental method, the current spreading length of GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was measured and analyzed for practical device design. In this study, Thompson's and Guo's models, which are categorized according to vertical series resistance (in particular, p-type contact resistance), were used to extract device parameters. It was shown that the measured current spreading length strongly depends on the injected current density. For LEDs fabricated with low-resistance p-type contacts, this behavior could be explained in terms of the accelerated current crowding with higher current densities occurring as a result of the reduced voltage drop across the junction, which is in good agreement with Thompson's relation. However, for LEDs fabricated with high-resistance p-contacts, unlike Guo's prediction, the measured current spreading length also showed a strong dependence on the injected current density. This was attributed to thermal heating at the p-contact, resulting in the reduction of the voltage drop across the p-contact and so junction voltage, which is also in agreement with Thompson's model. Based on the measured parameters and the design rule, efficient p-type reflectors, namely, hybrid reflectors were designed. Compared with conventional ones, LEDs fabricated with the hybrid reflectors exhibited better output power at a reasonable forward voltage, indicating that the proposed method is effective in understanding the actual current spreading and hence the practical design of high-efficiency LEDs.     

An ultraminiature CMOS pressure sensor for a multiplexedcardiovascular catheter

A multiplexed ultraminiature pressure sensor designed for use in a cardiovascular catheter is described. The sensor operates from only two loads, which are shared by two sensors per catheter. The sensing chip is 350 μm wide by 1.4 mm long by 100 μm thick. CMOS readout circuitry at the sensing site converts applied pressure to a frequency variation in the supply current, which is detected at the end of the catheter by a microprocessor-controlled interface. The nominal pressure sensitivity is 2 kHz/fF about a zero-pressure output frequency of 2.7 MHz. This on-site circuitry contains two reference capacitors which allow external compensation for nonlinearity and temperature sensitivity and has an idle-state power dissipation of less than 50 μW. With the transducer sealed at ambient pressure, the device can resolve pressure variations of about 3 mmHg, while vacuum-sealed devices do considerably better and should permit <2 mmHg resolution in practical systems     

Synchronous current control scheme with reference voltage estimation for voltage-fed PWM inverter

A new current control scheme with the reference voltage estimation for a voltage-fed pulsewidth modulated (PWM) inverter is presented. This scheme is simple and can provide smaller current error than predictive control with the same switching frequency when the load parameters are mismatched.<>     

An equalization technique for orthogonal frequency-divisionmultiplexing systems in time-variant multipath channels

A loss of subchannel orthogonality due to time-variant multipath channels in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems leads to interchannel interference (ICI) which increases the error floor in proportion to the Doppler frequency. A simple frequency-domain equalization technique which can compensate for the effect of ICI in a multipath fading channel is proposed. In this technique, the equalization of the received OFDM signal is achieved by using the assumption that the channel impulse response (CIR) varies in a linear fashion during a block period and by compensating for the ICI terms that significantly affect the bit-error rate (BER) performance     

ATM switch with distributed queue windowing scheme

The input queueing switch can be enhanced using a non-first come-first-service (non-FCFS) discipline like window scheme. However, large window sizes are not feasible in centralised contention resolution algorithms due to the increased internal bit rate. Based on the distributed queue concept, a new window scheme for the ATM switch is proposed where the window size can be easily extended. The proposed scheme does not require that the scheduling hardware be speeded up in proportion to the window size, which is essential in the conventional window scheme     

A /spl Sigma/-/spl Delta/ fractional-N frequency synthesizer using a wide-band integrated VCO and a fast AFC technique for GSM/GPRS/WCDMA applications

A fractional-N frequency synthesizer (FNFS) in a 0.5-/spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS technology is implemented. In order to operate in a wide-band frequency range, a switched-capacitors bank LC tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and an adaptive frequency calibration (AFC) technique are used. The measured VCO tuning range is as wide as 600 MHz (40%) from 1.15 to 1.75 GHz with a tuning sensitivity from 5.2 to 17.5 MHz/V. A 3-bit fourth-order /spl Sigma/-/spl Delta/ modulator is used to reduce out-of-band phase noise and to meet a frequency resolution of less than 3 Hz as well as agile switching time. The experimental results show -80 dBc/Hz in-band phase noise within the loop bandwidth of 25 kHz and -129 dBc/Hz out-of-band phase noise at 400-kHz offset frequency. The fractional spurious is less than -70 dBc/Hz at 300-kHz offset frequency and the reference spur is -75 dBc/Hz. The lock time is less than 150 /spl mu/s. The proposed synthesizer consumes 19.5 mA from a single 2.8-V supply voltage and meets the requirements of GSM/GPRS/WCDMA applications.     

Optoelectronic and microwave transmission characteristics of indium solder bumps for low-temperature flip-chip applications

This paper describes low-temperature flip-chip bonding for both optical interconnect and microwave applications. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays were flip-chip bonded onto a fused silica substrate to investigate the optoelectronic characteristics. To achieve low-temperature flip-chip bonding, indium solder bumps were used, which had a low melting temperature of 156.7/spl deg/C. The current-voltage (I-V) and light-current (L-I) characteristics of the flip-chip bonded VCSEL arrays were improved by Ag coating on the indium bump. The I-V and L-I curves indicate that optical and electrical performances of Ag-coated indium bumps are superior to those of uncoated indium solder bumps. The microwave characteristics of the solder bumps were investigated by using a flip-chip-bonded coplanar waveguide (CPW) structure and by measuring the scattering parameter with an on-wafer probe station for the frequency range up to 40 GHz. The indium solder bumps, either with or without the Ag coating, provided good microwave characteristics and retained the original characteristic of the CPW signal lines without degradation of the insertion and return losses by the solder bumps.