In order to fabricate nano-gap electrodes for organic field effect transistors (OFETs), we proposed a simple technique to fabricate the nano-gap electrodes using over etching method. The gap was controlled about 250 nm on Si substrate. We have succeeded making nano-gap electrodes whose resistance was 7.5 TΩ. Then, the nano-gap electrodes as source-drain electrodes were applied to OFETs and characteristics were measured. The Id-Vd characteristics of the similar value as OFETs with micron channel were observed.

Thin film of polyurethane having metal complex was prepared by vapor deposition polymerization of bis (5,8-dihydroxyquinoline) zinc (ZnHq2) and 4, 4'-diphenylmethane diisocyanate monomers. The film was applied for the electron-transporting emissive layer of the organic light emitting diode. The deposition-polymerized film was found to give higher quantum efficiency of luminescence than the ZnHq2 monomer film.

Photoacoustic (PA) spectra on the 3, 4, 9, 10-perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) films deposited by the vacuum evaporation were measured. The films have layered structures constructed from the perylene molecule plane structures. The crystal quality depended on the deposited substrate and the photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) seems to be the very useful tools to evaluate these properties from the non-radiative features. The films deposited on the three different substrate had the almost same PL spectra, but the films deposited on the glass substrate had the large non-radiative peaks in the PA spectra contrary to the films deposited on the alumina or crystal Si (100) those had the non-radiative peaks only observed at the short wavelength region.

The luminance of about 10,000 cd/m2 at an applied voltage of 9.2 V and the external emission efficiency 5.5 cd/A at an injection current density of 50 mA/cm2 have been obtained from an organic light emitting diode (OLED) using starburst molecule doped with 5,6,11,12-tetraphenylnaphthacene fabricated by wet-processing. We demonstrate that the OLEDs fabricated by wet-processing can be applied to fields of short range optical communication as the electro-optical conversion device for transmitting the signals of moving picture.

We have developed a high-power organic radical battery for information technology equipment such as personal computers (PCs). The battery provides several minutes of backup power without an external uninterrupted power source. Since the built-in battery makes energy conversion from AC to DC, or DC to AC, unnecessary, it protects equipment from power failure with no loss of energy. The fabricated battery shows a high power density of 1 kW/L and is capable of driving a desktop PC for several minutes. The use of purely organic polyradicals, poly (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyloxy mathacrylate), for the cathode active material opens up a new field of high power density, environmentally friendly batteries.

We have demonstrated improvement in the efficiency of TDAPB-based OLEDs. The external quantum efficiency of 8.2% and a power efficiency of 17.3 lm/W were achieved. The results suggest that using the starburst small-molecule TDAPB allows for easy fabrication and is effective for achieving high efficiencies in simple device structures.

This paper describes a new fast learning algorithm for Self-Organizing Map employing a "rough comparison winner-take-all" and its digital hardware architecture. In rough comparison winner-take-all algorithm, the winner unit is roughly and strictly assigned in early and later learning stage, respectively. It realizes both of high accuracy and fast learning. The digital hardware of the self-organizing map with proposed WTA algorithm is implemented using FPGA. Experimental results show that the designed hardware is superior to other hardware with respect to calculation speed.

Feedforward neural networks have been successfully developed and applied in many areas because of their universal approximation capability. However, there still remains the problem of determining a suitable network structure for the given task. In this paper, we propose a novel self-organizing neural network which automatically adjusts its structure according to the task. Utilizing both the constructive and the pruning procedures, the proposed algorithm finds a near-optimal network which is compact and shows good generalization performance. One of its important features is reliability, which means the randomness of neural networks is effectively reduced. The resultant networks can have suitable numbers of hidden neurons and hidden layers according to the complexity of the given task. The simulation results for the well-known function regression problems show that our method successfully organizes near-optimal networks.

This paper presents a simple learning algorithm for network formation. The algorithm is based on self-organizing maps with growing cell structures and can adapt input data which correspond to nodes of the network. In basic numerical experiments, as a parameter is selected suitably, our algorithm can generate network having small-world-like structure. Such network structure appears in some natural networks and has advantages in practical systems.

A new mesh reconstruction method, called the shrink-wrapped boundary face (SWBF) algorithm, is proposed for approximating a surface from a set of unorganized 3D points. SWBF overcomes the genus-0 spherical topology restriction of previous shrink-wrapping based mesh generation technique. Furthermore, SWBF is much faster since it requires only local nearest-point-search in the shrinking process. Our experimental results demonstrate that SWBF is very robust and efficient, and it is expected to become a general solution for reconstructing a mesh from an unorganized points cloud.

This work explores generative models of handwritten digit images using natural elastic nets. The analysis aims to extract global features as well as distributed local features of handwritten digits. These features are expected to form a basis that is significant for discriminant analysis of handwritten digits and related analysis of character images or natural images.

Malignant melanoma is a skin cancer that can be mistaken as a harmless mole in the early stages and is curable only in these early stages. Therefore, dermatologists use a microscope that shows the pigment structures of the skin to classify suspicious skin lesions as malignant or benign. This microscope is called "dermoscope." However, even when using a dermoscope a malignant skin lesion can be mistaken as benign or vice versa. Therefore, it seems desirable to analyze dermoscopic images by computer to classify the skin lesion. Before a dermoscopic image can be classified, it should be segmented into regions of the same color. For this purpose, we propose a segmentation method that automatically determines the number of colors by optimizing a cluster validity index. Cluster validity indices can be used to determine how accurately a partition represents the "natural" clusters of a data set. Therefore, cluster validity indices can also be applied to evaluate how accurately a color image is segmented. First the RGB image is transformed into the L*u*v* color space, in which Euclidean vector distances correspond to differences of visible colors. The pixels of the L*u*v* image are used to train a self-organizing map. After completion of the training a genetic algorithm groups the neurons of the self-organizing map into clusters using fuzzy c-means. The genetic algorithm searches for a partition that optimizes a fuzzy cluster validity index. The image is segmented by assigning each pixel of the L*u*v* image to the nearest neighbor among the cluster centers found by the genetic algorithm. A set of dermoscopic images is segmented using the method proposed in this research and the images are classified based on color statistics and textural features. The results indicate that the method proposed in this research is effective for the segmentation of dermoscopic images.

In a high-rate indoor wireless personal communication system, the delay spread due to multi-path propagation results in intersymbol interference which can significantly increase the transmission bit error rate (BER). The technique most commonly used for combating the intersymbol interference and frequency-selective fading found in communications channels is the adaptive equalization. In this paper, we propose a novel neural detector based on self-organizing map (SOM) to improve the system performance of the receiver. In the proposed scheme, the SOM is used as an adaptive detector of equalizer, which updates the decision levels to follow the received faded signal. To adapt the proposed scheme to the time-varying channel, we use the Euclidean distance, which will be updated automatically according to the received faded signal, as an adaptive radius to define the neighborhood of the winning neuron of the SOM algorithm. Simulations on a 16 QAM system show that the receiver using the proposed neural detector has a significantly better BER performance than the traditional receiver.

Simultaneous wavelength conversion utilizing four-wave mixing in optically-pumped GaN/AlN intersubband optical amplifiers has been investigated by means of a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) model. The conversion efficiencies at a pump power of +7-+10 dBm were predicted to be -9-+6 dB depending on the frequency detuning (0.3-10.9 THz). The difference in efficiency among 18 channels of WDM signals with 100-GHz spacing was within about 3 dB.

Using ultrafast nonlinear-optical response of organic dye films, a train of picosecond optical pulses can be converted into a space pattern of a mm scale. As applications of this technique we demonstrate a single-shot multichannel optical switching for 1 Tbit/s pulse trains, and a timing jitter suppression of pulse trains using a control system with femtoseconds time resolution.

This paper describes an analysis of IP-network traffic in terms of the time variation of self-similarity. To get a comprehensive view in analyzing the degree of long-range dependence (LRD) of IP-network traffic, this paper used a self-organizing map, which provides a way to map high-dimensional data onto a low-dimensional domain. Also, in the LRD-based analysis, this paper employed detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which is applicable to the analysis of long-range power-law correlations or LRD in non-stationary time-series signals. In applying this method to traffic analysis, this paper performed two kinds of traffic measurement: one based on IP-network traffic flowing into NTT Musashino R&D center (Tokyo, Japan) from the Internet and the other based on IP-network traffic flowing through at an interface point between an access provider (Tokyo, Japan) and the Internet. Based on sequential measurements of IP-network traffic, this paper derived corresponding values for the LRD-related parameter α of measured traffic. As a result, we found that the characteristic of self-similarity seen in the measured traffic fluctuated over time, with different time variation patterns for two measurement locations. In training the self-organizing map, this paper used three parameters: two α values for different plot ranges, and Shannon-based entropy, which reflects the degree of concentration of measured time-series data. We visually confirmed that the traffic data could be projected onto the map in accordance with the traffic properties, resulting in a combined depiction of the effects of the degree of LRD and network utilization rates. The proposed method can deal with multi-dimensional parameters, projecting its results onto a two-dimensional space in which the projected data positions give us an effective depiction of network conditions at different times.

This paper presents a compensating method based on Self-Organizing Map (SOM) for nonlinear distortion, which is caused by high-power amplifier (HPA) in 16-QAM-OFDM system. OFDM signals are sensitive to nonlinear distortions and different methods are studied to solve them. In the proposed scheme, the correction is done at the receiver by a SOM algorithm. Simulations are carried out considering an additive white Gaussian (AWG) transmission channel. Simulation results show that the SOM algorithm brings perceptible gains in a complete 16-QAM-OFDM system.

Energy consumption has become one of the most critical constraints in the design of portable multimedia systems. For media applications, address buses between processor and data memory consume a considerable amount of energy due to their large capacitance and frequent accesses. This paper studies impacts of memory data organization on the address bus energy. Our experiments show that the address bus activity is significantly reduced by 50% through exploring memory data organization and encoding address buses.

This paper proposes a new steganographic method utilizing features of JPEG compression. The method embeds secret information using the number of zeroes in a block of quantized DCT coefficients in minimum coding units (MCU) of JPEG images. In the method, we can embed secret information into JPEG images with degradation like that by JPEG compression. Furthermore, the method causes little change of the histogram of quantized DCT coefficients, so it is hard to perceive secret information embedded by the method. The method mainly modifies boundaries between zero and non-zero DCT coefficients, so we can use the low frequency side of DCT coefficients for another steganographic method.

Both Cr2O3 and NiO absorb 28 GHz milli-meter-wave energy well and this strong coupling with millimeter-waves can be used to promote a chemical reaction with La2O3 to form perovskite-type LaCrO3 or LaNiO3 ceramics. In La2O3-Cr2O3 system, the reaction proceeded rapidly and single phase LaCrO3 could be synthesized within 15 min even at lower temperature (400) as compared to conventional synthesis (T > 800). In the case of LaNiO3, the reaction proceeded rapidly in the early stage of heating (t < 15 min), but not completed even after prolonged millimeter-wave irradiation. The results suggest an importance of millimeter-wave penetration depth, especially for processing of conductive materials.