The method of extracting impedance parameters of surface mounted (SMD) electronic components by test is suitable for components with unknown model or material information, but requires consideration of errors caused by non-coaxial and measurement fixtures. In this paper, a fixture for impedance measurement is designed according to the characteristics of passive devices, and the fixture de-embedding method is used to eliminate errors and improve the test accuracy. The method of obtaining S parameters of fixture based on full wave simulation proposed in this paper can provide a thought for obtaining S parameters in de-embedding. Taking a certain patch capacitor as an example, the S parameters for de-embedding were obtained using methods based on full wave simulation, 2×Thru, and ADS simulation, and de-embedding tests were conducted. The results indicate that obtaining the S parameter of the testing fixture based on full wave simulation and conducting de-embedding testing compared to ADS simulation can accurately extract the impedance parameters of SMD electronic components, which provides a reference for the study of electromagnetic interference (EMI) coupling mechanism.

This work shows a broadband, high-efficiency power amplifier (PA) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) that uses InP-based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) with an extended drain-side access region and broadband conjugate matching topology. Advanced device technologies, namely, double-side-doped structures, MOS gate structures, and asymmetric gate recess, were adopted, and the length of the drain-side access region was optimized to simultaneously obtain high power and efficiency. A common-source PA MMIC based on InP-based MOS-HEMTs was fabricated, and an interstage circuit was designed to maximize the S21 per unit stage in the broadband, resulting in a record-high power-added efficiency and wide bandwidth.

This letter presents a global feature-based method for evaluating the no reference quality of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) contrast-distorted images. Based on the characteristics of SEM images and the human visual system, the global features of SEM images are extracted as the score for evaluating image quality. In this letter, the texture information of SEM images is first extracted using a low-pass filter with orientation, and the amount of information in the texture part is calculated based on the entropy reflecting the complexity of the texture. The singular values with four scales of the original image are then calculated, and the amount of structural change between different scales is calculated and averaged. Finally, the amounts of texture information and structural change are pooled to generate the final quality score of the SEM image. Experimental results show that the method can effectively evaluate the quality of SEM contrast-distorted images.

We have proposed and demonstrated a device fabrication process of physically defined quantum dots utilizing electron beam lithography employing a negative-tone resist toward high-density integration of silicon quantum bits (qubits). The electrical characterization at 3.8K exhibited so-called Coulomb diamonds, which indicates successful device operation as single-electron transistors. The proposed device fabrication process will be useful due to its high compatibility with the large-scale integration process.

The proliferation of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has prompted changes in business models. To ensure a successful transition to non-face-to-face and electronic communication, the authenticity of data and the trustworthiness of communication partners are essential. Trust services provide a mechanism for preventing data falsification and spoofing. To develop a trust service, the characteristics of the service and the scope of its use need to be determined, and the relevant legal systems must be investigated. Preparing a document to meet trust service provider requirements may incur significant expenses. This study focuses on electronic signatures, proposes criteria for classification, classifies actual documents based on these criteria, and opens a discussion. A case study illustrates how trusted service providers search a document highlighting areas that require approval. The classification table in this paper may prove advantageous at the outset when business decisions are uncertain, and there is no clear starting point.

The prosperous Internet communication technologies have led to e-commerce in mobile computing and made Web of Things become popular. Electronic payment is the most important part of e-commerce, so many electronic payment schemes have been proposed. However, most of proposed schemes cannot give change. Based on proxy blind signatures, an e-cash payment system is proposed in this paper to solve this problem. This system can not only provide change divisibility through Web of Things, but also provide anonymity, verifiability, unforgeability and double-spending owner track.

A detailed investigation of DC and RF performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMT on 3C-SiC/low resistive silicon (LR-Si) substrate by introducing a thick GaN layer is reported in this paper. The hetero-epitaxial growth is achieved by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on a commercially prepared 6-inch LR-Si substrate via a 3C-SiC intermediate layer. The reported HEMT exhibited very low RF loss and thermally stable amplifier characteristics with the introduction of a thick GaN layer. The temperature-dependent small-signal and large-signal characteristics verified the effectiveness of the thick GaN layer on LR-Si, especially in reduction of RF loss even at high temperatures. In summary, a high potential of the reported device is confirmed for microwave applications.

We have fabricated two-tiered heterostructures consisting of phosphorus δ-doped Si quantum dots (Si-QDs) and undoped Si-QDs and studied their electron field emission properties. Electron emission was observed from the P-doped Si-QDs stack formed on the undoped Si-QDs stack by applying a forward bias of ∼6 V, which was lower than that for pure Si-QDs stack. This result is attributed to electric field concentration on the upper P-doped Si-QD layers beneath the layers of the undoped Si-QDs stack due to the introduction of phosphorus atom into the Si-QDs, which was positively charged due to the ionized P donor. The results lead to the development of planar-type electron emission devices with a low-voltage operation.

This paper presents the design, implementation, and verification of a blockchain-based online electronic voting system that ensures accuracy and reliability in electronic voting and its application to various types of voting using blockchain technologies, such as distributed ledgers and smart contracts. Specifically, in this study, the connection between the electronic voting system and blockchain nodes is simplified using the REST API design, and the voting opening and counting information is designed to store the latest values in the distributed ledger in JSON format, using a smart contract that cannot be falsified. The developed electronic voting system can provide blockchain authentication, secret voting, forgery prevention, ballot verification, and push notification functions, all of which are currently not supported in existing services. Furthermore, the developed system demonstrates excellence on all evaluation items, including 101 transactions per second (TPS) of blockchain online authentication, 57.6 TPS of secret voting services, 250 TPS of forgery prevention cases, 547 TPS of read transaction processing, and 149 TPS of write transaction processing, along with 100% ballot verification service, secret ballot authentication, and encryption accuracy. Functional and performance verifications were obtained through an external test certification agency in South Korea. Our design allows for blockchain authentication, non-forgery of ballot counting data, and secret voting through blockchain-based distributed ledger technology. In addition, we demonstrate how existing electronic voting systems can be easily converted to blockchain-based electronic voting systems by applying a blockchain-linked REST API. This study greatly contributes to enabling electronic voting using blockchain technology through cost reductions, information restoration, prevention of misrepresentation, and transparency enhancement for a variety of different forms of voting.

This paper reports on the ambipolar conduction for the λ-Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) field effect transistor (FET) with 450, 400 and 250 base pair experimentally and theoretically. It was found that the drain current of the p-type DNA/Si FET increased as the ratio of the guanine-cytosine (GC) pair increased and that of the n-type DNA/Si FET decreased as the ratio of the adenine-thymine (AT) pair decreased, and the ratio of the GC pair and AT pair was controlled by the total number of the base pair. In addition, it was found that the hole conduction mechanism of the 400 bp DNA/Si FET was polaron hopping and its activation energy was 0.13eV. By considering the electron affinity of the adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, the ambipolar characteristics of the DNA/Si FET was understood. The holes are injected to the guanine base for the negative gate voltage, and the electrons are injected to the adenine, thymine, and cytosine for the positive gate voltage.

The adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP) is an energy-efficient superconductor logic element based on the quantum flux parametron. AQFP circuits can operate with energy dissipation near the thermodynamic and quantum limits by maximizing the energy efficiency of adiabatic switching. We have established the design methodology for AQFP logic and developed various energy-efficient systems using AQFP logic, such as a low-power microprocessor, reversible computer, single-photon image sensor, and stochastic electronics. We have thus demonstrated the feasibility of the wide application of AQFP logic in future information and communications technology. In this paper, we present a tutorial review on AQFP logic to provide insights into AQFP circuit technology as an introduction to this research field. We describe the historical background, operating principle, design methodology, and recent progress of AQFP logic.

Extremely energy-efficient logic devices are required for future low-power high-performance computing systems. Superconductor electronic technology has a number of energy-efficient logic families. Among them is the adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP) logic family, which adiabatically switches the quantum-flux-parametron (QFP) circuit when it is excited by an AC power-clock. When compared to state-of-the-art CMOS technology, AQFP logic circuits have the advantage of relatively fast clock rates (5 GHz to 10 GHz) and 5 - 6 orders of magnitude reduction in energy before cooling overhead. We have been developing extremely energy-efficient computing processor components using the AQFP. The adder is the most basic computational unit and is important in the development of a processor. In this work, we designed and measured a 16-bit parallel prefix carry look-ahead Kogge-Stone adder (KSA). We fabricated the circuit using the AIST 10 kA/cm2 High-speed STandard Process (HSTP). Due to a malfunction in the measurement system, we were not able to confirm the complete operation of the circuit at the low frequency of 100 kHz in liquid He, but we confirmed that the outputs that we did observe are correct for two types of tests: (1) critical tests and (2) 110 random input tests in total. The operation margin of the circuit is wide, and we did not observe any calculation errors during measurement.

The electromagnetic environment is increasingly complex and changeable, and radar needs to meet the execution requirements of various tasks. Modern radars should improve their intelligence level and have the ability to learn independently in dynamic countermeasures. It can make the radar countermeasure strategy change from the traditional fixed anti-interference strategy to dynamically and independently implementing an efficient anti-interference strategy. Aiming at the performance optimization of target tracking in the scene where multiple signals coexist, we propose a countermeasure method of cognitive radar based on a deep Q-learning network. In this paper, we analyze the tracking performance of this method and the Markov Decision Process under the triangular frequency sweeping interference, respectively. The simulation results show that reinforcement learning has substantial autonomy and adaptability for solving such problems.

In conclusion, an initialization method has been introduced and studied to improve the SET speed in PCM. Before experiment verification, a two-dimensional finite analysis is used, and the results illustrate the proposed method is feasible to improve SET speed. Next, the R-I performances of the discrete PCM device and the resistance distributions of a 64 M bits PCM test chip with and without the initialization have been studied and analyzed, which confirms that the writing speed has been greatly improved. At the same time, the resistance distribution for the repeated initialization operations suggest that a large number of PCM cells have been successfully changed to be in an intermediate state, which is thought that only a shorter current pulse can make the cells SET successfully in this case. Compared the transmission electron microscope (TEM) images before and after initialization, it is found that there are some small grains appeared after initialization, which indicates that the nucleation process of GST has been carried out, and only needs to provide energy for grain growth later.

During the detection of maritime targets, the jitter of the shipborne camera usually causes the video instability and the false or missed detection of targets. Aimed at tackling this problem, a novel algorithm for maritime target detection based on the electronic image stabilization technology is proposed in this study. The algorithm mainly includes three models, namely the points line model (PLM), the points classification model (PCM), and the image classification model (ICM). The feature points (FPs) are firstly classified by the PLM, and stable videos as well as target contours are obtained by the PCM. Then the smallest bounding rectangles of the target contours generated as the candidate bounding boxes (bboxes) are sent to the ICM for classification. In the experiments, the ICM, which is constructed based on the convolutional neural network (CNN), is trained and its effectiveness is verified. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperformed the benchmark models in all the common metrics including the mean square error (MSE), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM), and mean average precision (mAP) by at least -47.87%, 8.66%, 6.94%, and 5.75%, respectively. The proposed algorithm is superior to the state-of-the-art techniques in both the image stabilization and target ship detection, which provides reliable technical support for the visual development of unmanned ships.

In vacuum-deposited film composed of organic polar molecules, polarization charges appear on the film surface owing to spontaneous orientation of the molecule. Because its density (σpol) determines an amount of accumulation charge (σacc) in organic light-emitting diodes and output power in polar molecular-based vibrational energy generators (VEGs), control of molecular orientation is highly required. Recently, several groups have reported that dipole-dipole interaction between polar molecules induces anti-parallel orientation which does not contribute to σpol. In other words, perturbation inducing the attenuation of the dipole interaction is needed to enhance σpol. In this study, to investigate an effect of light irradiation on σpol, we prepared 1,3,5-tris(1-phenyl-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)benzene (TPBi) film under illumination during its deposition, and evaluated the σacc in TPBi-based bilayer device, which equals to σpol. We found that the σacc was increased by light irradiation, indicating that average orientation of TPBi is enhanced. These results suggest that light irradiation during device fabrication is promising process for organic electronic devices including polar molecule-based VEGs.

We review our research progress of multi-port optical switches based on the silicon photonics platform. Up to now, the maximum port-count is 32 input ports×32 output ports, in which transmissions of all paths were demonstrated. The switch topology is path-independent insertion-loss (PILOSS) which consists of an array of 2×2 element switches and intersections. The switch presented an average fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 10.8 dB. Moreover, -20-dB crosstalk bandwidth of 14.2 nm was achieved with output-port-exchanged element switches, and an average polarization-dependent loss (PDL) of 3.2 dB was achieved with a non-duplicated polarization-diversity structure enabled by SiN overpass waveguides. In the 8×8 switch, we demonstrated wider than 100-nm bandwidth for less than -30-dB crosstalk with double Mach-Zehnder element switches, and less than 0.5 dB PDL with polarization diversity scheme which consisted of two switch matrices and fiber-type polarization beam splitters. Based on the switch performances described above, we discuss further improvement of switching performances.

For the RF power amplifier, its exposed input and output are susceptible to damage from Electrostatic (ESD) damage. The bi-direction protection is required at the input in push-pull operating mode. In this paper, considering the process compatibility to the power amplifier, cascaded Grounded-gate NMOS (ggNMOS) and Polysilicon diodes (PDIO) are stacked together to form an ESD clamp with forward and reverse protection. Through Transmission line pulse (TLP) and CV measurements, the clamp is demonstrated as latch-up immune and low parasitic capacitance bi-direction ESD protection, with 18.67/17.34V holding voltage (Vhold), 4.6/3.2kV ESD protection voltage (VESD), 0.401/0.415pF parasitic capacitance (CESD) on forward and reverse direction, respectively.

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are often used as island electrodes of single-electron (SE) devices. One of technical challenges in fabrication of SE devices with GNPs is the placement of GNPs in a nanogap between two lead electrodes. Utilization of dielectrophoresis (DEP) phenomena is one of possible solutions for this challenge, whereas the fabrication process with DEP includes stochastic aspects. In this brief paper, we present our experimental results on electric resistance of GNP arrays assembled by DEP. More than 300 pairs of electrodes were investigated under various DEP conditions by trial and error approach. We evaluated the relationship between the DEP conditions and the electric resistance of assembled GNP arrays, which would indicate possible DEP conditions for fabrication of SE devices.

The electromagnetic interference (EMI) generated by power electronic converters is largely influenced by parasitic inductances and capacitances of the converter. One of the most popular EMI simulation methods that can take account of the parasitic parameters is the three-dimensional electromagnetic simulation by finite element method (FEM). A noise-source model should be given in the frequency domain in comprehensive FEM simulations. However, the internal impedance of the noise source is static in the frequency domain, whereas the transient switching of a power semiconductor changes its internal resistance in the time domain. In this paper, we propose the use of a voltage-source noise model and a current-source noise model to simulate EMI noise with the two components of voltage-dependent noise and current-dependent noise in the frequency domain. In order to simulate voltage-dependent EMI noise, we model the power semiconductor that is turning on by a voltage source, whose internal impedance is low. The voltage-source noise is proportional to the amplitude of the voltage. In order to simulate current-dependent EMI noise, we model the power semiconductor that is turning off by a current source, whose internal impedance is large. The current-source noise is proportional to the amplitude of the current. The measured and simulated conducted EMI agreed very well.