今日，科学技術・産業技術の発展に伴い，社会インフラ，交通，家電，照明，スマートフォン，パソコンなどの性能・機能・利便性の大幅な向上により，快適な日常生活が可能となった。今後も持続発展社会を構築していくためには，環境・エネルギー産業の技術革新とともに，情報・エレク

Key factors to achieve functional metal oxide films deposited on flexible polymer-film substrates are discussed. The use of reactive plasma deposition with dc-arc discharge is an effective coating method to grow the metal oxide films with reduced residual stress, leading to the tailored functional films for wide applications.

Periodic micro-swelling structure was fabricated on silicone rubber by the 193-nm ArF excimer laser induced photodissociation of silicone; subsequent deposition of Al thin film on the sample surface significantly improved the superhydrophobicity. To discuss the improvement, Al thin film was deposited on a flat slide glass, silicone rubber and silicone resin substrates. Under a scanning electron microscope, textured structure of Al thin film was found only on the silicone rubber. As a result, contact angle of water on the sample with the textured Al indicated to be approximately 165 degrees, compared with the case of 155 degrees before Al deposition.

To prevent photocorrosion of a Cu₂O photocathode, composition of a TiO₂ layer onto the Cu₂O is one of the most effective solutions. For crystallization of the TiO₂ layer alone without heat-damage to the underlying Cu₂O layer which is easy to oxidize to CuO, we developed the integration process of O₂-plasma and an excimer-laser irradiation, that a metal-organic precursor film is crystalized by irradiation of the excimer-laser in O₂-plasma. The TiO₂ layer could be crystalized with lower oxygen vacancies by the laser irradiation in O₂-plasma compared to that prepared by the irradiation in air. Furthermore, the oxidation of Cu₂O to CuO was drastically restricted due to the highly crystalized TiO₂ in which oxygen ions were hard to diffuse to the interface of TiO₂/Cu₂O. The photocorrosion of the obtained film during water reduction reaction was also restricted. This O₂-plasma integrated process is effective for selective crystallization of metal-oxide films for functionalization of photoelectrodes.

Small GeO₂ single crystal was successfully grown on a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substrate at room temperature in oversaturate aqueous solution. The oversaturated solution could be prepared at strong acid condition (pH∼0) using distilled water, germanium oxide, dilute ammonia, and nitric acid. About 7 µm size of the GeO₂ single crystals with quartz-type structure was obtained by only keeping the PVC plate in the solution for about 10 days when appropriate concentration of the solution was used. The obtained GeO₂ single crystals were confirmed to be constructed by {101} and {011} surfaces based on powder X-ray diffraction pattern and particle morphology observed by scanning electron microscope.

Development of field-effect transistors (FETs) using functional oxide films is currently an area of active research. To effectively modulate electrical conduction properties, the formation of oxide channel/gate insulator interface is critical. In this technical note, a gate insulator fabrication technique based on a poly(para-xylylene) coating method, some examples of FETs on new oxide materials, and potential applications to flexible oxide FETs are described.

Most flexible polymer substrates are not heat-resistive. Therefore, flexible devices mainly consisted of amorphous oxides or organic materials showing excellent electric property and/or optical transparency because they are easy to prepare with the excellent properties even at low process temperature. In this study, we report a trial of transferring ferroelectric BaTiO₃ “epitaxial” thin film on flexible plastic sheet using acid etching process of MgO(100) single-crystal substrate.

Improvement of device simulation is necessary to improve efficiency of development of advanced MOSFETs miniaturized to nanoscale. In particular, improvement of the fluid simulation model with quick calculation make a substantial contribution. The fluid simulation model includes a drift diffusion (DD) model, which is conventionally used, a quantum drift diffusion (QDD) model including quantum effects, and a quantum energy transport (QET) model including quantum effects and non-equilibrium phenomena.

In this paper, we analyze the electric characteristics of advanced MOSFET using QET, QDD and DD models. It is found that the quantum effect greatly influences the analysis of the short channel effect. As the gate length becomes shorter, the influence of the non-equilibrium phenomenon on the electric characteristics becomes larger, and the superiority of QET becomes higher.

It is well known that inverted pendulums are difficult to control because of its non-minimum phase and non-linear characteristics. Car robot type inverted pendulums are developed and it provides small spacing than four wheel mobile robot. Moreover, car robot type inverted pendulums have high acceleration performance. In previous study, how to obtain the reference value of the body angle for driving at desired acceleration is proposed using zero dynamics of the non-linear system. This method use the exact values of the model parameters to obtain desired acceleration signal. Therefore, the robot cannot achieve desired acceleration if the plant parameters are different from its model parameters. So, it is necessary to minimize the effect of the model error to achieve robust acceleration performance. In this paper, we propose a method to achieve robust acceleration performance based on the model error compensator. Also, the performance of the model error compensator is improved using the virtual output to satisfy minimum phase condition. The effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated by the driving experiments of a car robot type inverted pendulum.

A large amount of power consumption information generated from private houses is being aggregated nowadays, particularly by the spread of smart electric meters. Applications that utilize these data are widely studied, and several services have been proposed. In order to utilize the power demand information effectively, an appropriate feature extraction and selection method is necessary. In this paper, a feature extraction method for power consumption information is proposed. Extracted features are used to predict the “number of household members (number of residents)” using typical machine learning algorithms, namely, Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighborhood (k-NN), and Random Forest (RF). The number of residents represents significant information for the marketing departments of several industries such as real estate and construction industries. The proposed feature extraction method consists of two steps: feature variable generation and feature variable selection. In the feature variable generation step, we have used both fundamental statics and an ARMA model to generate 33 feature variables. In the feature variable selection step, the extracted feature variables are first ranked by applying Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). An appropriate feature variable set is selected by assessing several combinations of the 33 features, based on proposed extended algorithm of Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE). Our overall feature extraction method is evaluated based on the prediction accuracy using extracted feature variables. Compared with the accuracy using feature variables extracted by conventional methods, the accuracy is improved by 6.78%, 4.98%, and 8.11% for k-NN, SVM, and RF, respectively, and we have successfully proven validity of our proposition.

The use of digital images has become quite widespread in legal, medical, and private contexts. However, anyone can easily edit or manipulate any digital image on a computer. In addition, the digital image are familiar to us with the population smartphone or mobile device. The morphological pattern spectrum is a mathematical method to describe size distributions of structuring element in an image. This algorithm is possible to execute effective image processing and has a lot of repeated calculation. Thus, conventional embedded processors low-throughput per power consumption for morphological pattern spectrum processing. A Massive-Parallel Memory-Embedded SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) Matrix Processor (MX-1), which is based on C language processing, has been developed for effective parallel processing to satisfy with required specification on the digital convergence. The MX-1 consists of two SRAMs and 2-bit processing elements. The MX-1 can execute fast morphological pattern spectrum processing by parallel operation. Thus, throughput per power consumption of MX-1 is up to about 22 times than conventional parallel processor. And throughput per CMOS process-based power consumption of MX-1 is up to about 22 times than conventional parallel processor. The MX-1 performance for morphological pattern spectrum processing becomes effective solution for mobile devices on the digital convergence era.

In recent days, people around the world are starting to be more aware of the disasters that are happening around the world. In most of the cases, technology is starting to play an important role as part of the preparedness and the management for disaster. Our research went further in this matter by the creation and implementation of a system that can be used specifically for disaster management. This implementation of a disaster management platform generates helped-helper links by a system's algorithm that use previously collected information from the users. In this paper, we evaluated the integration of this algorithm with the users and how reliable does this system is observed by the users.