A quartz-crystal-microbalance (QCM) and surface-plasmon-resonance (SPR) hybrid sensor was prepared, and the depositions of polymer electrolytes layer-by-layer (LbL) films were observed in situ. The estimated thicknesses obtained from the QCM method were different from those obtained from the SPR method. This was estimated to be caused by film swelling and water contained in the film.

In the theory of periodic gratings, there is no method to make up a numerical solution that satisfies the reciprocity so far. On the basis of the shadow theory, however, this paper proposes a new method to obtain a numerical solution that satisfies the reciprocity. The shadow thoery states that, by the reciprocity, the $m$th order scattering factor is an even function with respect to a symmetrical axis depending on the order $m$ of diffraction. However, a scattering factor obtained numerically becomes an even function only approximately, but not accurately. It can be decomposed to even and odd components, where an odd component represents an error with respect to the reciprocity and can be removed by the average filter. Using even components, a numerical solution that satisfies the reciprocity is obtained. Numerical examples are given for the diffraction of a transverse magnetic (TM) plane wave by a very rough periodic surface with perfect conductivity. It is then found that, by use of the average filter, the energy error is much reduced in some case.

The main purpose of this paper is to apply the boundary integral equation (BIE) method to the analysis of spoof localized surface plasmons (spoof LSPs) excited in a perfectly conducting cylinder with longitudinal corrugations. Frequency domain BIE schemes based on electric field integral equation (EFIE), magnetic field integral equation (MFIE) and combined field integral equation (CFIE) formulations are used to solve two-dimensional electromagnetic (EM) problems of scattering from the cylinder illuminated by a transverse electric plane wave. In this approach effects of spoof LSPs are included in the secondary surface current and charge densities resulting from the interaction between the plane wave and the cylinder. Numerical results obtained with the BIE schemes are validated by comparison with that of a recently proposed modal solution based on the metamaterial approximation.

To improve metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFET) performance, flat interface between gate insulator and silicon (Si) should be realized. In this paper, the influence of Si surface roughness on electrical characteristics of MOSFET with hafnium oxynitride (HfON) gate insulator formed by electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma sputtering was investigated for the first time. The surface roughness of Si substrate was reduced by Ar/4.9%H2 annealing utilizing conventional rapid thermal annealing (RTA) system. The obtained root-mean-square (RMS) roughness was 0.07nm (without annealed: 0.18nm). The HfON was formed by 2nm-thick HfN deposition followed by the Ar/O2 plasma oxidation. The electrical properties of HfON gate insulator were improved by reducing Si surface roughness. It was found that the current drivability of fabricated nMOSFETs was remarkably increased by reducing Si surface roughness. Furthermore, the reduction of Si surface roughness also leads to decrease of the 1/f noise.

We propose a parameterized multisurface fitting method for multi-frame super-resolution (SR) processing. A parameter assumed for the unknown high-resolution (HR) pixel is used for multisurface fitting. Each surface fitted at each low-resolution (LR) pixel is an expression of the parameter. Final SR result is obtained by fusing the sampling values from these surfaces in the maximum a posteriori fashion. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.

“How to get the original ideas” is the fundamental and critical issue for the researchers in science and technology. In this paper, the author writes his experiences concerning how he could encounter the interesting and original ideas of three research subjects, i.e., the accelerating medium effect, the guided-mode extracted integral equation and the surface plasmon gap waveguide.

This paper deals with an integral equation method for analyzing the diffraction of a transverse magnetic (TM) plane wave by a perfectly conductive periodic surface. In the region below the periodic surface, the extinction theorem holds, and the total field vanishes if the field solution is determined exactly. For an approximate solution, the extinction theorem does not hold but an extinction error field appears. By use of an image Green's function, new formulae are given for the extinction error field and the mean square extinction error (MSEE), which may be useful as a validity criterion. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate that the formulae work practically even at a critical angle of incidence.

Ocean surface current radar is a Doppler radar to observe oceanographic information using the Bragg scattering resonance mechanism. In this paper, we consider angular resolution improvement of the radar. The radar employs an antenna array with FMICW operation, then it can resolve angular distribution by Digital Beam Forming (DBF) and distance by Fourier transform of the beat signal obtained by the FMICW radar. In order to obtain sufficient angular resolution, large array length or aperture with increasing the number of elements is needed, that is often difficult to realize in the HF/VHF ocean surface current radar. In this paper we propose to apply the Khatri-Rao (KR) product array processing to the radar. To verify effectiveness of the KR product array processing in angular resolution enhancement for the ocean surface current radar, we apply the KR product array to actual experimental data set of the radar, and show that the method is available to angular resolution enhancement and Doppler spectrum improvement.

This paper describes a robust three-dimensional (3D) surface reconstruction method that can automatically eliminate shadowing errors. For modeling shadowing effect, a new shadowing compensation model based on the angle distribution of backscattered electrons is introduced. Further, it is modified with respect to some practical factors. Moreover, the proposed iterative shadowing compensation method, which performs commutatively between the compensation of image intensities and the modification of the corresponding 3D surface, can effectively provide both an accurate 3D surface and compensated shadowless images after convergence.

Multi-Walled CNT (MWCNT) are synthesized on a silicon wafer and sputter coated with a gold film. The planar surfaces are mounted on the tip of a piezo-electric actuator and mated with a gold coated hemispherical surface to form an electrical contact. These switching contacts are tested under conditions typical of MEMS relay applications; 4V, with a static contact force of 1mN, at a low current between 20-50mA. The failure of the switch is identified by the evolution of contact resistance which is monitored throughout the switching cycles. The results show that the contact resistance can be stable for up to 120 million switching cycles, which are 106 orders of higher than state-of-the-art pure gold contact. Bouncing behavior was also observed in each switching cycle. The failing mechanism was also studied in relation to the contact surface changes. It was observed that the contact surfaces undergo a transfer process over the switching life time, ultimately leading to switching failure the number of bounces is also related to the fine transfer failure mechanism.

A plane coupler has been developed for a two-dimensional (2D) wireless power transmission. This coupler can construct a continuous wireless power transmission system for mobile devices due to its small, light characteristics. This coupler has two elements connected with a 2D waveguide sheet, and coupling capacitances between the elements and the sheet decrease the coupler size by reducing their resonance frequencies. A propagation loss of -10.0 dB is obtained using the small 0.025-λ2 coupler. Continuous operation of the mobile device is demonstrated by applying wireless power transmission to the 2D waveguide sheet with the small plane coupler.

We investigated the effects of chemical treatments for removing native oxide layers on InAlN surfaces by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The untreated surface of the air exposed InAlN layer was covered with the native oxide layer mainly composed of hydroxides. Hydrochloric acid treatment and ammonium hydroxide treatment were not efficient for removing the native oxide layer even after immersion for 15 min, while hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment led to a removal in a short treatment time of 1 min. After the HF treatment, the surface was prevented from reoxidation in air for 1 h. We also found that the 5-min buffered HF treatment had almost the same effect as the 1-min HF treatment. Finally, an attempt was made to apply the HF-based treatment to the metal-InAlN contact to confirm the XPS results.

To improve metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFET) performance, flat interface between gate insulator and silicon should be realized. In this paper, flattening process of Si surface below 1000 utilizing Ar/4.9%H2 annealing and its effect on ultrathin HfON gate insulator formation were investigated. The Si(100) substrates were annealed using conventional rapid thermal annealing (RTA) system in Ar or Ar/4.9%H2 ambient for 1 h. The surface roughness of Ar/4.9%H2-annealed Si was small compared to that of Ar-annealed Si because the surface oxidation was suppressed. The obtained root mean square (RMS) roughness was 0.08 nm (as-cleaned: 0.20 nm) in case of Ar/4.9%H2-annealed at 1000 measured by tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). The HfON surface was also able to be flattened by reduction of Si surface roughness. The electrical properties of HfON gate insulator were improved by the reduction of Si surface roughness. We obtained equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 0.79 nm (as-cleaned: 1.04 nm) and leakage current density of 3.510-3 A/cm2 (as-cleaned: 6.110 -1 A/cm2) by reducing the Si surface roughness.

In this letter, we present an efficient method for high quality surface reconstruction from simulation data of smoothed particles hydrodynamics (SPH). For computational efficiency, instead of computing scalar field in overall particle sets, we only construct scalar field around fluid surfaces. Furthermore, an adaptive scalar field model is proposed, which adaptively adjusts the smoothing length of ellipsoidal kernel by a constraint-correction rule. Then the isosurfaces are extracted from the scalar field data. The proposed method can not only effectively preserve fluid details, such as splashes, droplets and surface wave phenomena, but also save computational costs. The experimental results show that our method can reconstruct the realistic fluid surfaces with different particle sets.

We describe 25-Gb/s error-free transmission over multi-mode fiber (MMF) by using a transmitter based on a 1.3-µm lens-integrated surface-emitting laser (LISEL) and a CMOS laser-diode driver (LDD). It demonstrates 25-Gb/s error-free transmission over 30-m MMF under the overfilled-launch condition and over 150-m MMF with a power penalty less than 1.0 dB under the underfilled-launch condition.

In this letter, we propose an error surface modeling-based segmentalized motion estimation for video coding. We proposed two algorithms previously, one was MBQME [1] and the other is HMBQME [2]. However, these algorithms are not based on locally quadratic MC prediction errors around an integer-pixel motion vector and the hypothesis that the local error plane is a convex function. Therefore, we propose an error surface considered segmentalized modeling algorithm. In this scheme, the tendency of the error surface is first assessed. Using the Sobel operation at the error surface, we classify the error surface region as plain or textured. For plain regions, conventional MBQME is appropriate as the quarter-pixel motion estimation method. For textured regions, we search the additional interpolation points for more accurate modeling. After the interpolation, we perform double precision mathematical modeling so as to find the best motion vector (MV). Experiments show that the proposed scheme has better PSNR performance than conventional modeling algorithms with minimum operation time.

We demonstrated the reduced surface roughness of poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT):(6,6)-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) thin films with different ratios fabricated by the electrospray deposition (ESD) method. Aggregated structures were observed at the lower voltage, and the uniformity became bad at the higher voltage. Anyway, the minimum root mean square (RMS) roughness was 1.46 nm by optimizing the applied voltage.

We report enhanced photocurrent properties of dye/Au-loaded titanium dioxide (TiO2) films on Au gratings. Au-loaded TiO2 nanopowders were first synthesized by a modified sol-gel method and then prepared by the impregnation method. We also fabricated dye-sensitized solar cells, which were composed of Au grating/Au-TiO2/TMPyP-SCC LbL (20 bilayers)/electrolyte/ITO substrates. Short-circuit photo-current measurements showed that Au-loaded TiO2 with grating-coupled surface plasmon excitation can enhance the short-circuit photocurrentof the fabricated cells.

To better understand antenna properties in a narrow space such as in a densely-packed device, a circular microstrip antenna in a narrow parallel-plate waveguide is theoretically studied. An analytical expression is derived for the input impedance in a parallel-plate waveguide by using the cavity model with surface admittance on the side wall. The surface admittance is defined by the external magnetic field due to the equivalent magnetic current at the aperture and takes into account the contribution of the parallel plates to the antenna. The magnetic field external to the antenna, that is in the parallel-plate region, is determined by using a dyadic Green's function. The input impedance is then calculated by a basic definition based on the conservation of the complex power. An analytical expression which couples the resonant frequency and the surface susceptance is also formulated. Presented expressions are validated by comparison with experimental results.

For the modeling of multipath propagation in every wireless systems, the ray tracing method has been widely studied. However, large errors may result due to the approximation of geometrical optics in curved surfaces. This paper therefore focused on the curved surfaces and edges, which are difficult to handle in ray tracing. Examples of curved surfaces can be found in arched cross-section tunnels which are common in highway networks of mountainous areas. The traditional ray tracing method of dividing the curved surface into smaller flat plates is not so accurate as the size of smaller plates may not satisfy the geometrical optics assumption, and the reflection point which satisfies Fermat's principle may not exist. In this work, a new ray tracing method is proposed with 2 contributions. The first one is the implementation of the reflection coefficient for curved surfaces in ray tracing. The second is applying the physical optics method on the caustics region. To evaluate these methods, path gain simulation results for an arched cross-section model are compared with measurements made inside an arched tunnel. To further improve the simulation results, the effect of rough surface is introduced, and the results are again compared with measurement.