We demonstrated transparent and flexible film based on single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) using solution and room temperature processing. The direct film fabrication and curing onto a plastic substrate requiring no transfer processing enables a low-cost potential and large-scale fabrication of devices while restraining defects and damage to the transparent and flexible CNT devices. A sheet resistance as low as 70Ω/sq at transparency 90% was obtained. Further, the CNT film on PEN (polyethylene naphthalate) exhibited superior flexibility and stability in flexure endurance test of 200,000 cycles with a curvature radius of 10mm. The simple method with these excellent performance characteristics can open a wide range of opportunities for flexible electrical devices such as flexible touch panel and heater. The developed ultra-thin heaters show high saturation temperature and extremely high response speed, as indicated by reaching over 100°C within 1s at an input voltage of 7V.

Jetted ink from the piezo head does not merge into a single drop, but is split into multiple droplets causing problems such as satellites and mists. By using a device that can observe the behavior of the jet droplets in detail, we found that droplet merging is correlated with the “end of tail” position of the droplet immediately after jetting, and that the “end of tail” position depends on the ink, but is independent of the driving voltage. The “end of tail” position is correlated with the Ohnesorge number, calculated from the viscosity, dynamic surface tension, and density of the ink. In particular, the dynamic surface tension was found to be affected by the surface tension at 80μs to explain best correlation. The simulation of droplet formation was also performed, and experimental observation was well explained to confirm our simulation to be useful design tool of inks.

Rapid-developing drone technology is expected to contribute to the development of smart agriculture, which is urgently needed to address the serious challenges posed by the aging and decreasing number of farmers in the agricultural sector. While drones are already used for agricultural applications such as pesticide spraying, their utilization in remote sensing is expected to bring significant efficiency gains through data analysis of meaningful aerial imagery. Typically, a drone-based multi-spectral camera is capable of capturing images at multiple wavelengths, which are useful for assessing the health and growth of crops. By measuring vegetation indices that represent plant growth and activity based on the multi-spectral images, the quality of crop growth can be assessed for further filed management decision-making. The highly efficient, field-specific growth diagnosis can be easily achieved by setting the drone flight altitude to over 100m and utilizing professional agricultural mapping software to process large amounts of aerial imagery.

Currently, the beef-grade-evaluation is determined by visual inspection, that has three issues. Its criterion varies from person to person;it can be influenced by the inspector's standard, and mood and fatigue. Therefore, this study aimed to quantify the complexity of beef marbling and quantitatively evaluate beef grading by performing fractal analysis on beef marbling with fractal characteristic. The grade evaluation for beef marbling is based on BMS (beef marbling standard) No., a beef marbling index set by the Japan Meat Grading Association (JMGA). In the experiment, a cross-section of the area used to visually determine BMS No. was considered, and fractal analysis was performed on the image. As a result, the existence of a correlation between BMS No. and fractal dimension was confirmed, indicating the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In the design of the image formation process of electrophotographic technology, it is important to accurately measure the surface potential of the electrophotographic photoreceptor. Furthermore, it is required to improve the performance of surface potential measurement in high response and micro area for high speed and high image quality. Analysis of charge decay phenomenon by photo-induced discharge curve (PIDC) measurement and X-TOF (xerographic time of flight) measurement contributes to elucidation of charge generation and transportation mechanism in the photoreceptor. Our company has developed and provided various measuring instruments, high-voltage supply equipment, and photoreceptor process simulators. In this article, we report an overview of our measuring instruments and surface potential meter X1 with inductive current detection.

The structure of the perovskite photoabsorber is one of the utmost key aspects to influence the performance of perovskite solar cells. However, it is quite challenging to attain perovskite films meeting of the essential properties scuh as, large grain sizes with few grain boundaries, high crystallinity and homogeneous morphology, by the present preparation methods. In this mini review, we report on the recent progress of perovskite nanostructured solar cells fabricated by simple, low-cost techniques, and their physical properties. We discuss challenges and future research direction for the fabrication of nanostructured perovskite solar cells.

The digitization of factories in the manufacturing industry and the accompanying transformation of processes have created a wide variety of values, and are indispensable measures for the sustainable development of companies. For a printing factory, we extracted problems and constructed the necessary technology to advance it, and carried out a trial at the printing factory using them.

As the necessary sensing technology, we organized the technology to collect the data of the movement of equipment/things/people and the movement of people. It was shown that the operation status (operating, stopping, adjusting) of many equipment units necessary for the printing process can be collected by analyzing the sound of the movement of the devices. It was shown that the working state of human work can be collected by video recording and moving object detection.

We analyzed the operating status and job order data, and performed a computational simulation of business optimization through the coexistence of offset printing and digital printing. As a result, it was found that compared to the number of branched sheets, which was calculated based on the unit price per sheet, by greatly increasing the use of digital printing, it leads to shortening of work hours and reduction of work costs.