Fast switching speed, low power consumption, and good stability are some of the important properties of spin transfer torque assisted voltage controlled magnetic anisotropy magnetic tunnel junction (STT-assisted VCMA-MTJ) which makes the non-volatile full adder (NV-FA) based on it attractive for Internet of Things. However, the effects of process variations on the performances of STT-assisted VCMA-MTJ and NV-FA will be more and more obvious with the downscaling of STT-assisted VCMA-MTJ and the improvement of chip integration. In this paper, a more accurate electrical model of STT-assisted VCMA-MTJ is established on the basis of the magnetization dynamics and the process variations in film growth process and etching process. In particular, the write voltage is reduced to 0.7 V as the film thickness is reduced to 0.9 nm. The effects of free layer thickness variation (γtf) and oxide layer thickness variation (γtox) on the state switching as well as the effect of tunnel magnetoresistance ratio variation (β) on the sensing margin (SM) are studied in detail. Considering that the above process variations follow Gaussian distribution, Monte Carlo simulation is used to study the effects of the process variations on the writing and output operations of NV-FA. The result shows that the state of STT-assisted VCMA-MTJ can be switched under -0.3%≤γtf≤6% or -23%≤γtox≤0.2%. SM is reduced by 16.0% with β increases from 0 to 30%. The error rates of writing ‘0’ in the NV-FA can be reduced by increasing Vb1 or increasing positive Vb2. The error rates of writing ‘1’ can be reduced by increasing Vb1 or decreasing negative Vb2. The reduction of the output error rates can be realized effectively by increasing the driving voltage (Vdd).

For exploration of the functional use of dielectric anisotropy of liquid crystals (LCs), we investigated the dynamic response of molecular alignment in a nematic-phase LC cell with compressive force-induced flow behavior. The results showed that the initial alignment and thickness of the LC layer affect the capacitance of the cell when mechanical pressure is applied.

Deposition of inclined anisotropy film for bit-patterned media was studied using an oblique incidence collimated sputtering. Pt underlayer increased the inclination angle of magnetic layer more than 5° on a Ta seed layer. Further increase of the angle was obtained by annealing Pt/Ru underlayer resulting an inclination angle of 9.4° for a Co-Cr15.5 film on the underlayer. The magnetic properties of the Co-Cr15.5 film with an inclined orientation was estimated comparing measured hysteresis loops with simulated ones, which indicated to have inclined magnetic anisotropy with an anisotropy field of about 4.5kOe and a deflection angle of the anisotropy about the same as that of the crystalline orientation.

Co/Pd multilayer films are prepared on fcc-Pd underlayers of (001), (011), and (111) orientations hetero-epitaxially grown on MgO single-crystal substrates at room temperature. The effects of underlayer orientation, Co and Pd layer thicknesses, and repetition number of Co/Pd bi-layer on the structure and the magnetic properties are investigated. fcc-Co/fcc-Pd multilayer films of (001), (011), and (111) orientations epitaxially grow on the Pd underlayers of (001), (011), and (111) orientations, respectively. Flatter and sharper Co/Pd interface is formed in the order of (011) < (111) < (001) orientation. Atomic mixing around the Co/Pd interface is enhanced by deposition of thinner Co and Pd layers, and Co-Pd alloy phase is formed. With increasing the repetition number (decreasing the thicknesses of Co and Pd layers), perpendicular magnetic anisotropy is promoted. Stronger perpendicular anisotropy is observed in the order of film orientation of (001) < (011) < (111). Perpendicular anisotropy of Co/Pd multilayer film is considered to be originated from the two sources; the interface anisotropy and the magnetocrystalline anisotropy associated with Co-Pd lattice shrinkage along the perpendicular direction. In order to enhance the perpendicular anisotropy of Co/Pd multilayer film, it is important to align the film orientation to be (111) and to enhance the lattice distortion along the perpendicular direction.

CoPt and Co3Pt alloy thin films are prepared on MgO(111), SrTiO3(111), and Al2O3(0001) single-crystal substrates by varying the substrate temperature in a range from room temperature to 600°C by using an ultra-high vacuum radio-frequency magnetron sputtering system. The formation of metastable ordered phase and the structural thermal stability are briefly investigated. CoPt and Co3Pt films with the close-packed plane parallel to the substrate surface grow epitaxially on these oxide single-crystal substrates. CoPt epitaxial films are also formed by employing Pt, Pd, Cu, Cr, Ti, and Ru underlayers hetero-epitaxially grown on MgO(111) substrates. The crystal structure is evaluated by considering the order degree and the atomic stacking sequence of close-packed plane. Metastable ordered phases of L11, Bh, and D019 are preferentially formed in the CoPt and the Co3Pt films deposited around 300°C. Metastable ordered phase formation is influenced by the substrate temperature, the film composition, and the underlayer material. With increasing the substrate temperature up to around 300°C, the order degree increases. As the substrate temperature further increases, the order degree decreases. Annealing a disordered film at 300°C does not effectively enhance ordering. The CoPt and the Co3Pt films which include metastable ordered phases have flat surfaces and show strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropies reflecting the magnetocrystalline anisotropies of ordered crystals.

Optical anisotropy was induced in azobenzene copolymer film using linearly or elliptically polarized laser beams. The Jones matrix of the anisotropic film was calculated from the change in polarization of the probe light. Two eigenpolarization states were obtained from the matrix. These two eigenstates are useful as a polarization basis for a polarization-tunable component.

Shift margins in down and cross track directions and skew angle were investigated using micromagnetic simulation with a shielded planar head for patterned media with an areal density of 1 Tbit/in2. The shift margins were quantitatively estimated using parameters of the head field and the magnetic properties of media. It is essential to use a head with a higher field gradient and a medium with a small field width between saturation and nucleation fields, to obtain a larger down track shift margin, and a head with a narrower cross track field distribution to obtain a larger cross track shift margin and skew angle margin.

A novel purely distributed two-dimensional (2D) planar structure with a negative refractive index (NRI) is proposed. The structure consists of a 2D periodic array of unit cells with metal patterns on the both sides of a substrate. The unit cell with the dimension of 55 mm2 is designed at an operation frequency of about 5 GHz by full-wave finite element method simulations. Numerical simulations on the dispersion characteristics are carried out and NRI property of the structure is confirmed. A equivalent circuit taking into account the mutual capacitance between the adjacent ports in the unit cell is introduced, and theoretical investigations based on the equivalent circuit reveals that the anisotropy can be controlled by the mutual capacitance. A 1020 unit-cell NRI material is fabricated and the NRI property has been confirmed experimentally in excellent agreement with Snell's law.

Eigenvalue equations and expressions of EM fields for volume modes in an anisotropic single-negative slab with tensor material parameters is presented. By the comparison with the eigenvalue equation of surface modes along single-negative slab with negative scalar permeability, the validity of the present study is confirmed. We have also made clear which elements of the material parameter tensors affect existence of TE and TM modes in the slab. Taking the dispersion of material parameters into consideration, we demonstrate in detail that TE modes propagate in a slab with one negative element of the permeability tensor numerically. These TE modes turn out to be the magnetostatic waves (MSWs), which is the first demonstration of the MSW in a nonmagnetic material.

This paper takes full advantage of polarimetric scattering parameters and total power to classify polarimetric SAR image data. The parameters employed here are total power, polarimetric entropy, and averaged alpha angle (alphabar). Since these parameters are independent each other and represent all the scattering characteristics, they seem to be one of the best combinations to classify Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) images. Using unsupervised classification scheme with iterative Maximum Likelihood classifier, it is possible to decompose multi-look averaged coherency matrix with complex Wishart distribution effectively. The classification results are shown using Pi-SAR image data set comparing with other representative methods.

Recent new technologies of electro-mechanical conversion devices have been reviewed. Especially, the electrochemical properties of anisotropic actuators using polypyrrole have been reviewed in detailed and the realization of the bimorph (or bending beam) structure without artificial adhesive agent is introduced.

This study investigate the rectangular microstrip patch antenna on anisotropy substrates with superstrate and air gap, based on rigorous full-wave analysis and Galerkin's moment method. Results show that radiation patterns with varying air gap, permittivity of the superstrate and substrate, and thickness of the superstrate can be determined and analyzed.

Segmentation of a dielectric resonator enables one to control its spurious property. When a dielectric plate is divided into some planar pieces, the effective permittivity does not change appreciably along the divided plane, while it decreases quite an amount perpendicular to it. This anisotropy is useful for shifting the resonant frequencies of unwanted modes of a dielectric resonator. Since its eigen modes have their own electric field distribution, segmentation of a resonator along the electric line of force of a certain mode will not affect its resonant frequency. When the type of segmentation is changed, we can select the wanted mode, and thus control the resonant frequencies of the unwanted modes. Calculated results with an EM field simulator and experimental results of controlling the resonant frequency are shown for divided dielectric resonators.

This study investigates the anisotropy substrate and dielectric cover effects of the rectangular microstrip patch antenna on anisotropy substrates with air gap, based on rigorous full-wave analysis and Galerkin's moment method. Results show that the resonant frequencies in the variation of air gap, patch length, and permittivity of superstrate can be determined and analyzed with varying dielectric cover thickness.

The lossy magnetic composite material made from soft magnetic metal powder and rubber is widely used as an EMI countermeasure material, due to its higher magnetic loss than those of spinel ferrites in microwave frequencies. In this paper, we clarify the material characteristics by measuring the relative complex permeability r and relative complex permittivity r of two kinds of composite materials in microwave frequencies. Since the composite materials are anisotropic, both r and r are measured as diagonal tensors by utilizing extended S-parameter method. The results show that the imaginary part of r of flaky-powder composite exceeded the Snoek's limit for the spinel ferrites which has been reported so far. The measured r and r are partially compared with those measured by cavity resonator method, and good agreement is obtained.

A Co/Pd multilayer film with perpendicular coercivity of 2.2 kOe and remanence ratio (SQ) of unity was prepared by electron beam evaporation in vacuum. In the MFM image of signal patterns of 4 kFRPI recorded using a ring-type MIG head, many reversed domains were observed. However, when the film was magnetized along the film normal direction using an electromagnet (H = -13 kOe), only few reversed magnetic domains were observed, which was consistent with SQ = 1. Therefore, the reversed domains in the signal patterns were induced in the recording process. dc erasing was also studied with the magnetic field inclined to the film normal. The domain structures were almost the same when the perpendicular component of the field was kept constant while the in-plane component was varied, implying that the in-plane field component did not contribute to the formation of the reversed domains. It was found that reversed magnetic domains were easily induced even by a weak reversing magnetic field applied along the film normal. Hence, although the possibility of an insufficient recording head field was not excluded, it seemed more likely that the reversed magnetic domains in the signal patterns were caused by some erasing effect of the ring-type MIG head. For a Co/Pd multilayer medium with a negative nucleation field in the perpendicular M-H loop, a stronger reversing field was needed to induce the reversed magnetic domains. No reversed magnetic domains were observed in the MFM image for signal patterns of 4 kFRPI in this medium, indicating that a negative nucleation field was effective to suppress the formation of reversed magnetic domains.

A low bit-rate encoding method which yields a good performance in edge reconstruction while achieving a high compression is proposed through MTF function and the spatial anisotropy of human vision. Human visual weighting factors applied to sub-blocks within each subband in wavelet domain are produced by the spatial anisotropic-filter, then a good perceptual performance can be obtained.

This paper presents a three-dimensional polarimetric detection result of targets buried in snowpack by synthetic aperture FM-CW radar system. Since the FM-CW radar is suitable for short range sensing and can be equipped with fully polarimetric capability, we further extended it to a polarimetric three-dimensional SAR system. A field experiment was carried out to image and detect targets in a natural snowpack of 280 cm deep. The polarimetric detection and identification schemes are the polarimetric filtering, three-component decomposition, and the power polarization anisotropy coefficient. These approaches to acquired data show the usefulness of three-dimensional polarimetric FM-CW SAR system.

This paper discusses the classification of targets buried in the underground by radar polarimetry. The subsurface radar is used for the detection of objects buried beneath the ground surface, such as gas pipes, cables and cavities, or in archeological exploration operation. In addition to target echo, the subsurface radar receives various other echoes, because the underground is inhomogeneous medium. Therefore, the subsurface radar needs to distinguish these echoes. In order to enhance the discrimination capability, we first applied the polarization anisotropy coefficient to distinguish echoes from isotropic targets (plate, sphere) versus anisotropic targets (wire, pipe). It is straightforward to find the man-made target buried in the underground using the polarization anisotropy coefficient. Second, we tried to classify targets using the polarimetric signature approach, in which the characteristic polarization state provides the orientation angle of an anisotropic target. All of these values contribute to the classification of a target. Field experiments using an ultra-wideband (250 MHz to 1 GHz) FM-CW polarimetric radar system were carried out to show the usefulness of radar polarimetry. In this paper, several detection and classification results are demonstrated. It is shown that these techniques improve the detection capability of buried target considerably.

In the spatial network method (SNM) for the vector potential, both the current continuity law including polarization vector and the conservation law of generalized momentum including vector potential field can introduce simpler expressions for dispersive property than that by the electromagnetic field variables. But for the anisotropic medium conditions, the conventional expanded node expression has some difficulties in treating the coupling mechanism among field variables. On the other hand, in the condensed node expression, in which all field components exist at each node, every connections among field components can be simply formulated. In this paper, after proposing the condensed node spatial network method for the vector potential, the advantage of the method such as performing the simplified formulation by utilization of both the vector potential and the condensed node expressions is presented for the magnetized plasma which has the gyro-anisotropy. The validity of the computation is shown by some examples such as Faraday rotation.