Driving methods for TFT-OLEDs are explained with their features and classified from the viewpoints of grayscale methods and uniformizing methods. This classification leads us to a novel proposal using time ratio grayscale and current uniformization. This driving method maintains current uniformity and simultaneously overcomes charging shortage of the pixel circuit for low grayscale levels and current variation due to the shift of operating points. Tolerance toward degraded characteristics, linearity of grayscale and luminance uniformity against degraded characteristics are confirmed using circuit simulation.

We have developed new current demultiplexer TFT circuits for AMOLED and applied the circuits to 2.2-in. QVGA AMOLED. The combination of the current demultiplexer and our voltage boosted current programmed pixel can achieve good uniformity of display image and a compact module.

White-light emitting diode lamps for general illumination can be realized by a combination of a blue light-emitting diode semiconductor die and phosphors. Newly developed oxynitride and nitride phosphors are promising candidates for this application because they have suitable excitation and emission wavelengths and stable optical properties in a high temperature environment. High brightness warm-white LED lamps have been realized using a yellowish-orange α-SiAlON oxynitride phosphor. High color-rendering index white LED lamps have been also realized using three color oxynitride/nitride phosphors.

A new technique incorporating combinatorial deposition to develop thin-film phosphors by r.f. magnetron sputtering is demonstrated using subdivided powder targets. In comparison with development using conventional r.f. magnetron sputtering, the atomic ratios of Si and Ge as well as the Mn content in Zn₂Si_1-XGe_XO₄:Mn thin film phosphors could be more efficiently optimized in order to obtain the highest intensity in electroluminescent and photoluminescent emissions. High luminances of 11800 and 1536 cd/m² were obtained in Zn₂Si_0.6Ge_0.4O₄:Mn thin-film electroluminescent devices fabricated under optimized conditions and driven at 1 kHz and 60 Hz, respectively.

We developed material and process technologies concerned to DDF, which is formed on MgO surface around the inter-pixel gap to prevent vertical crosstalk discharge in stripe rib structure. First we tried with thin film deposition and lift-off patterning to find Al₂O₃ and TiO₂ are both available for DDF material. Next we tried with thick film printing in favor of mass productivity for large size PDPs. In case DDF included PbO glass, we met serious hardship in generating discharge. The problem was perfectly solved by having thick film DDF composed of 100 nm sized Al₂O₃ grains without glass component. Its γ_i was about 1/5 that of MgO, suggesting that the thick film DDF is almost compatible with thin film Al₂O₃ in electron emission characteristics. Such very small grain size contributes to DDF transparency, which is excellently high. In addition to it, such DDF is equipped with cushioning effect to prevent dot defects caused by rib breakage. Furthermore the DDF functions as getter during panel exhaustion to bring deep blue color by promoting deoxidization of blue phosphor provided that its volume is small enough. Transparent DDF may be rather better than black one with respect to bright room contrast ratio, not to mention to avoiding terrible sparking discharge. Thus material and process technologies for DDF have been almost fixed in success.

Color CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) are still evolving in competition with other display devices in the growing TV markets, with continuing demands for enhanced performance and lower cost. In response to these trends, we have developed a new self-converging system of CRT with simple structure. It offers advantages in terms of high resolution for HDTV and large deflection angle for short depth TV sets. The system realizes less spot distortion at the screen periphery of the CRT and lower horizontal dynamic focus voltage than those in a conventional self-converging system, while keeping the cost just as low. In the system, a uniform horizontal deflection field and a newly-developed magnet lens are utilized. The uniform field reduces the spot distortion in exchange for occurrences of raster distortion and convergence error, both of which can be corrected by the newly-developed magnet lens without additional circuit modifications. As a core part of the new system, the lens power of the newly-developed magnet lens varies along the horizontal axis in order to simultaneously achieve convergence and correct the pincushion distortion of the raster. Furthermore, countermeasures for magnet-related issues are taken from the viewpoints of real operation and mass production. The system with the new DY was evaluated in experiments using 86 cm CRTs (16 : 9), and it has been found that the system realizes substantially smaller spot distortions as well as favorable convergence and raster performances, with a drawback of decrease in horizontal deflection sensitivity. The spot oblateness, defined as horizontal spot diameter divided by vertical spot diameter, has decreased from 2.65 to 1.70 accompanying a 15% reduction of horizontal spot sizes at the corners of the screen with 30% decreased dynamic focus voltages and 10% decreased horizontal deflection sensitivity.

The RGB signals generated by different cameras are not equal for the same scene. Therefore, cameras are characterized based on a CIE standard colorimetric observer. One method of deriving a colorimetric characterization matrix between camera RGB output signals and CIE XYZ tristimulus values is least squares polynomial modeling. Yet, this involves tedious experiments to obtain a camera transfer matrix under various white balance points for the same camera. Accordingly, the current paper proposes a new method for obtaining camera transfer matrices under different white balances using a 33 camera transfer matrix under a specific white balance point.

The gamma correction for the CMOS image sensors are implemented by the method of piecewise linear approximation through a look-up table. In this paper, we propose a quantitative criterion to select the piece linear segment with the same output interval for the reduction of the error between the value of piece linear approximation and gamma correction. After the gamma correction is implemented, the average error occurred by implementing color interpolation in each segment is a basis for the optimum selecting of the piece linear segment of the gamma correction for the CMOS image sensors.

The pulsed backlight system has been introduced for reducing motion blurs of LCDs in high motion pictures. But applying the pulsed backlight, full screen flicker and inconsistency of transmissivity for entire frame at a lightening time should be considered. This paper discusses the analysis of blurs in high motion pictures and proposes the design method for more suitable display terminal of LCDs.

A polarization-independent liquid crystal (LC) grating with a microscale LC molecular alignment pattern is proposed. The microscale LC alignment pattern is achieved using a microrubbing technique. The optical properties of the proposed LC grating are theoretically discussed in detail using Jones matrix method. Optimum condition for obtaining maximum +1st or -1st diffraction efficiencies is derived. The diffraction efficiency of the LC grating is measured and the diffraction efficiency characteristics are compared with the theoretical result. Furthermore, the dependence of the polarization direction of the incident light on the diffraction efficiency is discussed.

To understand the brightness uniformity for the driver of the LED array display, automatic electronic measurement equipment and its testing scheme will be proposed in this paper. The driving performance and dynamic characteristics will be investigated by using the proposed current-based bias voltage regulator. A complete testing procedure will be provided to assess the performance for the LED array display driver.

This paper proposes a backlight module which drives multiple cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) with a current mirror technique to equalize the driving current for each lamp. We first adopt a half-bridge parallel-resonant inverter as the main circuit and use a single-input, multiple-output transformer to drive the multi-CCFLs. Next, we introduce current-mirror circuits to create a new current-sharing circuit, in which its current reference node and the parallel-connected multi-load nodes are used to accurately equalize all CCFLs' driving current. This will balance each lamp's brightness and, consequently, improve the picture display quality of the related liquid crystal display (LCD). This paper details the design concept for each component value with the assistance of an actual design example. The results of the example are examined with its actual measurements, which consequently verify the correctness of the proposed control strategy.

Authors have developed a wide color gamut and high brightness WUXGA LCD monitor with color calibrators. This monitor has the world's highest performance level for color gamut and brightness for a UXGA rating or greater (number of pixels). This monitor provides the necessary performance in fields requiring advanced color control, such as DTP, prepress operations, printing and moving images. This paper describes the background of the development, technical problems and the results of evaluation.

Frequency-domain and time-domain novel uniform asymptotic solutions for the scattered fields by an impedance cylinder and a dielectric cylinder, with a radius of curvature sufficiently larger than the wavelength, are presented in this paper. The frequency-domain novel extended UTD and the modified UTD solutions, derived by retaining the higher-order terms in the integrals for the scattered fields, may be applied in the deep shadow region in which the conventional UTD solutions produce the substantial errors. The novel time-domain uniform asymptotic solutions are derived by applying the saddle point technique in evaluating the inverse Fourier transform. We have confirmed the accuracy and validity of the uniform asymptotic solutions both in the frequency-domain and in the time-domain by comparing those solutions with the reference solutions calculated from the eigenfunction expansion (frequency-domain) and from the hybrid eigenfunction expansion and fast Fourier transform (FFT) method (time-domain).

The performance of avalanche photodiodes with deep guard rings for Geiger mode operation is studied. The electric field distribution is calculated using the finite element method and the carrier multiplication characteristic is calculated along typical lines in the device. The nonlinear dependence of the ionization rates on the electric field strength can make a guard ring less effective in Geiger mode operation. The maximum single photon detection efficiency that can be obtained without breakdown at the guard ring is calculated for several structure parameters. It is shown that the single photon detection efficiency strongly depends on the guard ring design.

A novel scheme for a multi-band power amplifier (PA) that employs a low-loss reconfigurable matching network is presented and discussed. The matching network basically consists of a cascade of single-stub tuning circuits, in which each stub is connected to a transmission line via a Single-Pole-Single-Throw (SPST) switch. By controlling the on/off status of each switch, the matching network works as a band-switchable matching network. Based on a detailed analysis of the influence of non-ideal switches in the matching network, we conceived a new design perspective for the reconfigurable matching network that achieves low loss. A 900/1900-MHz dual-band, 1 W class PA is newly designed following the new design perspective, and fabricated with microelectro mechanical system (MEMS) SPST switches. Owing to the new design and sufficient characteristics of the MEMS switches, the dual-band PA achieves over 60% of the maximum power-added efficiency with an output power for each band exceeding 30 dBm. These results are comparable to the estimated results for a single-band PA. This shows that the proposed scheme provides a band-switchable highly efficient PA that has superior performance compared to the conventional multi-band PA that has a complex structure.

A new sub-1-V CMOS bandgap voltage reference without using low-threshold-voltage device is presented in this paper. The new proposed sub-1-V bandgap reference with startup circuit has been successfully verified in a standard 0.25-µm CMOS process, where the occupied silicon area is only 177 µm106 µm. The experimental results have shown that, with the minimum supply voltage of 0.85 V, the output reference voltage is 238.2 mV at room temperature, and the temperature coefficient is 58.1 ppm/ from -10 to 120 without laser trimming. Under the supply voltage of 0.85 V, the average power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) is -33.2 dB at 10 kHz.

It is known that the thickness of the λ/4 type EM wave absorber having a resistive film with the capacitive reactance is thinner than 1/4 wavelength. This paper investigates EM wave absorbers using the resistive film with capacitive reactance. We introduced the impedance into the resistive film, and then clarified the relationship between the impedance and the matching thickness in the single layer EM wave absorber. Practically, we carried out to grasp the impedance of the resistive films, which were prepared using the conductive flake powder. As the results, we have proven that the matching thickness in the single layer EM wave absorber could be realized 0.17 λ-0.09 λ in the frequency range from 2 GHz to 8 GHz by using these resistive films. We also fabricated the single resistive layer and the double resistive layers EM wave absorber using these resistive films for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) and wireless Local Area Network (LAN), in which the matching thickness could be reduced to 45% and 30%, respectively, as compared with the each absorber using the non-capacitive reactance.

This paper considers the low-frequency scattering by a circular dielectric cylinder and modifies the exact polarizability tensor to extend the valid region of the known low-frequency solution. When compared to the traditional formulation, the proposed solution is shown to be valid for cylinders with a higher dielectric constant and larger radius.

A novel microstrip dual-mode bandpass filter with ultra-broad stopband is proposed using the aperture-backed stepped-impedance ring resonator (SIRR). This SIRR consists of low-impedance strips in the four bended corners and high-impedance strips in the four straight sides. With the cross-shaped aperture placed on the ground underneath the SIRR, the upper stopband is significantly broadened. In particular, the 2nd resonant frequency of this proposed SIRR is confirmed to exceed the four times of its 1st counterpart. The dual-mode filter with the passband of 7.5% at 1.59 GHz is then designed and implemented, demonstrating the measured stopband of 1.70-5.80 GHz and size reduction of 56.0%.