As a promising lamination-loss-free fabrication technique, diffusion bonding of etched thin metal plates is used to realize double-layer waveguide slot antennas. Alternating-phase feed is adopted in this paper to reduce the number of laminated plates to simplify fabrication as well as to reduce cost. A 20 × 20-element double-layer waveguide slot antenna with a bottom partially-corporate feed circuit is designed for 39GHz band operation as an example. The adjacent radiating waveguides as well as the 2 × 2 sub-arrays fed in an alternating-phase manner eliminate the need for complete electrical contact in the top layer. However, the feed circuit in the bottom layer has to be completely diffusion-bonded. These two layers are simply assembled by screws. An antenna laminated by only diffusion bonding is also fabricated and evaluated for comparison. The comparison proved that the simply fabricated antenna is comparable in performance to the fully diffusion-bonded one.

A point-to-point fixed wireless access (FWA) system with a maximum throughput of 1Gbps has been developed in the 39GHz band. A double-layer plate-laminated waveguide slot array antenna is successfully realized with specific considerations of practical application. The antenna is designed so as to hold the VSWR under 1.5. The antenna input as well as feeding network is configured to reduce the antenna profile as well as the antenna weight. In addition, integrating the antenna into a wireless terminal is taken into account. A shielding wall, whose effectiveness is experimentally demonstrated, is set in the middle of the wireless terminal to achieve the spatial isolation of more than 65dB between two antennas on the H-plane. 30 test antennas are fabricated by diffusion bonding of thin metal plates, to investigate the tolerance and mass-productivity of this process. An aluminum antenna, which has the advantages of light weight and anti-aging, is also fabricated and evaluated with an eye to the future.

The Maxwell-Wagner type interfacial charging processes were characterized by time-resolved second harmonic generation method (TR-SHG) using three typical organic double-layer devices, i.e., IZO/α-NPD/Alq3/Al for OLED and ITO/PI/α-NPD (or pentacene)/Au for MIM elements. Devices with a PI blocking layer represent one-carrier transport case, while the OLED is a typical two-carrier transport device. It is found that three devices show similar behavior of charging of the electrodes, however, interfacial charging behavior was different from case to case. On the basis of Maxwell-Wagner model, the different transients were analyzed with consideration of carrier species responsible for the interfacial charging. The observed TR-SHG well support the results of I-V measurements.

Introducing diffusion bonding of laminated thin metal plates to the fabrication of slotted waveguide arrays enlightens the high potential and the feasibility of multi-layer antennas with high-performance. It is a promising process with low cost even for a double-layer antenna, because the number of etching patterns for thin metal plates is only five. In this paper, a double-layer antenna for broadband characteristics is designed in 39 GHz band as demonstration. A 20 20-element antenna is composed of 2 2 sub-arrays by installing a partially-corporate feed circuit in the bottom layer underneath radiating waveguides in the top layer. The five-element sub-arrays in both the feeding and radiating parts are designed first. A new structure for the last slot coupler with shortened termination is also proposed to avoid an extra slot-free region when assembling the neighbor sub-arrays. As the simulation results by HFSS, the maximum gain of 34.55 dBi with the antenna efficiency of 85.5% is estimated at 38.5 GHz. The test antenna is fabricated by the diffusion bonding of thin copper plates. As the measurement results, a very high aperture efficiency of 83.2% with the directivity of 34.5 dBi is realized at the center frequency of 38.75 GHz, where the antenna gain of 34.4 dBi with the high antenna efficiency of 81.4% is achieved. The bandwidth of 5.0% defined as 1 dB down from the maximum gain is achieved.

A novel resonant eight-way divider/combiner based on a double-layer finline is presented and studied. Experiments on the compact eight-way passive divider/combiner demonstrate a minimum overall insertion loss of 1 dB at 35.3 GHz, and the inserting loss across 34-36 GHz is less than 1.9 dB.

The effect of NiP as a seed layer for the [Co/Pd]n multilayer perpendicular recording media was studied. It was found that a thin layer of 2 nm NiP inserted between the FeCoC soft magnetic underlayer and the [Co/Pd]n recording layer improved the magnetic properties such as coercivity, squareness and nucleation field. These improvements may be due to the enhanced grain isolation promoted by the NiP seed layer, as well as the lower surface roughness of the NiP seed layer. Read/write test using Guzik spin stand with a ring-type head showed a D50 value 220 kFCI in the roll-off curve. The magnetic transitions recorded up to 390 kFCI for [Co/Pd]n media with the NiP seed layer can be observed clearly with MFM.

Stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) power systems are potential power sources for telecommunications equipment especially equipment installed outdoors. To be practical, they must have a high conversion efficiency and a long lifetime. We have proposed a stand-alone photovoltaic power system that uses electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and lead acid batteries as power storage devices. This system smooths out the fluctuations in power generated by the PV array by using the EDLC's charge-and-discharge power; this reduces the number of battery charge-and-discharge cycles. We simulated the system's operating characteristics and evaluated the photovoltaic array mismatching loss, system conversion loss, battery contribution factor, averaged battery state-of-charging, and maximum depth-of-discharging. The results show that the system is effective at reducing the mismatching loss and battery contribution factor, so the system efficiency is expected to be improved by using high conversion efficiency DC-DC converters. Moreover the system can maintain the averaged battery state-of-charging during operation. This indicates that smaller batteries can be used. The maximum depth-of-discharging can be kept lower than in the conventional system. Consequently, the proposed system should have a longer battery lifetime.

Demand for power in Japan has been increasing year by year, and steep demand is projected during daily peak load periods: particularly in summer, due to growing demand for air conditioning. This has resulted in a large gap between day and night demand for power. The daily and seasonal regularity of this demand gap is placing pressure on power utilities to reduce service costs and create a more dependable power supply. This study demonstrates the feasibility of an energy storage system for load leveling based on the electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC). This device is safer, has a longer service life and needs far less maintenance than the secondary cell. The system works to store surplus energy from a commercial AC line in an EDLC bank during the night, and release this energy for use during the daytime peak load period, using a novel interface circuit. This paper focuses in particular on the working principles and experimental results of the interface circuit, which comprises a voltage control oscillator (VCO), a bi-directional DC/DC converter, a bi- directional inverter, and a coupling inductor. The whole circuit is subjected to PLL control, so that automatic connection between DC from an EDLC bank and AC from a commercial power line may take place in a simpler, more reliable and less costly manner. The system allows for energy transfer on the basis of DC voltage as if electric charging and discharging had taken place in a full DC system.

The link properties of double-layered constellation composed of inclined orbits for an advanced global satellite communications network connected by optical inter-satellite links (ISLs) have been evaluated. The constellation consists of lower layer satellites for mobile and personal satellite communications, and upper layer satellites for large-capacity fixed satellite communications and feeder links. Optical inter-satellite links, which can perform high-capacity communications with small terminals, are used for all inter-satellite data transmission. Although a satellite constellation using polar orbits in both layers offers the merit of simplicity in network configurations, it has disadvantages caused by the satellite consentration above high latitudes. The inclined orbit constellation offers the potential for reducing the required number of satellites improving ling properties, and enhancing the coverage in middle and low latitudes, by selecting the optimum orbital inclinations. The link properties between the satellites and terminals on the ground, optical ISL properties, and required number of satellites were evaluated for constellations using inclined orbits, and compared with those of a polar orbit constellation. Three kinds of inclined orbit constellations achieving continuous double coverage, which is a minimum requirement for future advanced satellite communications applying satellite diversity, were assumed for each layer.

It has been 15 years since we started producing the electric double-layer capacitors (also known as Super Capacitor) in 1978. Over the years we have introduced improvements that increased reliability and increased life. For example, after subjecting capacitors manufactured in 1984 and 1990 to load life tests (70, 5.5 V) for 2,000 hours, we discovered that the rate of change in capacitance (ΔC/C) of capacitors manufactured in 1990 was less than one-half that of capacitors manufactured in 1984. This shows that we have successfully increased the life of our electric double-layer capacitors. We conducted investigations regarding factors that contribute to volume of the electrolyte solution and better sealing properties. In the load life test, we observed that when the ratio of the weights of the electrolyte solution and the powdered activated carbon (hereinafter referred to as LB) was increased, the time it took before ΔC/C reached -30% was lengthened. This means that increasing LB also increases life. Furthermore, we also observed that when the gas permeability rate of the collector's rubber material was decreased in the load life test (70, 5.5 V), the time it took befor (ΔC/C) reached -30% was longer. Therefore life is dependent on the gas permeability rate (sealing property) of the collector rubber.

256 MbDRAM chips have been fabricated by mix-and-match method using high NA KrF excimer laser stepper and i-line stepper. In the case of KrF stepper, the negative siloxane resist is used for rectangular and wiring patterns and the positive novolak-resin resist is used for hole patterns. Both of these two kinds of resist produce accurate pattern shape, allow-able pattern profile, satisfactory depth of focus and sufficient overlay accuracy for device fabrication in 0.25 µm design rule.