We applied a roll-to-sheet imprinting process to a large-scale substrate. Patterned ruthenium oxide (RuO₂) electrodes were fabricated on both glass and flexible substrates. The resistivity of the electrodes on a glass substrate was 3.5 × 10^-5 Ω cm, which indicates that this technique is useful for the fabrication of thin-film transistor (TFT) electrodes.

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Self-aligned four-terminal (4T) planar metal double-gate (DG) polycrystalline-silicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated on a glass substrate at a low temperature (LT), which is below 550°C, to realize high performance and low power dissipation system-on-glass (SoG). The top gate (TG) and bottom gate (BG) were formed from tungsten (W); the BG was embedded in the glass substrate and the TG was fabricated by a self-alignment process using the BG as a photomask. This structure is called embedded metal double-gate (E-MeDG) in this paper. The poly-Si channel with lateral large grains was fabricated using a continuous-wave laser lateral crystallization (CLC). The self-aligned 4T E-MeDG LT poly-Si TFT, with a gate length of 5 μm and TG and BG SiO₂ thicknesses of 50 and 100 nm, respectively, exhibited a subthreshold swing of 120 mV/dec and a threshold voltage (V_th) of -0.5 V in the connecting DG mode; i.e. when TG is connected to BG. In the TG operation at various BG control voltage, a threshold voltage modulation factor (γ = Δ V_th/Δ V_BG) of 0.47 at negative BG control voltage and 0.60 at positive BG control voltage are demonstrated, which values are nearly equal to theoretical prediction of 0.40 and 0.75. Trend of subthreshold swing (s.s.) of TG operation under different BG control voltage are also consistent with theoretical prediction. In addition to TG operation, successful BG operation under various TG control voltages was confirmed. Field-effect mobility derived from g_m also varied depending on control gate voltage. The high controllability of device parameter of individual LT poly-Si TFTs is caused by excellent crystalline quality of CLC poly-Si film and will enable us to the fabrication of high-speed and low power-dissipation SoG.

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We have investigated the microwave-detected photoconductivity responses from the amorphous In--Ga--Zn--O (a-IGZO) thin films. The time constant extracted by the slope of the slow part of the reflectivity signals are correlated with TFT performances. We have evaluated the influences of the sputtering conditions on the quality of a-IGZO thin film, as well as the influences of gate insulation films and annealing conditions, by comparing the TFT characteristics with the microwave photoconductivity decay (μ-PCD). It is concluded that the μ-PCD is a promising method for in-line process monitoring for the IGZO-TFTs fabrication.

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New HEu_1-xGd_x(MoO₄)₂ nanophosphors were synthesized by a simple one-step ion-exchange method. These nanophosphors have rod-like particle morphology with 0.5–15 μ m in length and outer diameters in the range of 50–500 nm. By optimization of the composition, the highest emission intensity was obtained for the samples with x = 0.50 for both KEu_1-xGd_x(MoO₄)₂ and HEu_1-xGd_x(MoO₄)₂.

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We propose a temperature sensor employing a ring oscillator composed of poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFTs). Particularly in this research, we compare temperature sensors using TFTs with lightly-doped drain structure (LDD TFTs) and TFTs with offset drain structure (offset TFTs). First, temperature dependences of transistor characteristics are compared between the LDD and offset TFTs. It is confirmed that the offset TFTs have larger temperature dependence of the on current. Next, temperature dependences of oscillation frequencies are compared between ring oscillators using the LDD and offset TFTs. It is clarified that the ring oscillator using the offset TFTs is suitable to detect the temperature. We think that this kind of temperature sensor is available as a digital device.

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In this paper, we introduce a parallax barrier system that shows high definition autostereoscopy and holds wide viewing zone. The proposed method creates a 4-view parallax barrier system with full display resolution per view by setting aperture ratio to one quarter and using time-division quadplexing, then applies obtained 4-view to 2-view, so that the viewing zone for each eye becomes wider than that from the conventional methods. We build a prototype with two 120 Hz LCD panels and manage to achieve continuous viewing zone with common head-tracking device involved. However, moire patterns and flickers stand out, which are respectively caused by the identical alignments of the color filters on the overlaid LCD panels and a lack of refresh rate of 240 Hz. We successfully remove the moire patterns by changing the structure of the system and inserting a diffuser. We also reduce the flickers by proposing 1-pixel aperture, while stripe shaped noise due to the lack of refresh rate occurs during a blink or a saccade. The stripe noise can be effectively weakened by applying green and magenta anaglyph to the proposed system, where extra crosstalk takes place since the default RGB color filters on LCD panels share certain ranges of wavelength with each other. Although a trade-off turns out to exist between stripe noise and crosstalk from our comparison experiment, results from different settings all hold acceptable quality and show high practicability of our method. Furthermore, we propose a solution that shows possibility to satisfy both claims, where extra color filters with narrow bandwidths are required.

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This study investigated the distribution of attention to frontal space in augmented reality (AR). We conducted two experiments to compare binocular and monocular observation when an AR image was presented. According to a previous study, when participants observed an AR image in monocular presentation, they perceived the AR image as more distant than in binocular vision. Therefore, we predicted that attention would need to be shifted between the AR image and the background in not the monocular observation but the binocular one. This would enable an observer to distribute his/her visual attention across a wider space in the monocular observation. In the experiments, participants performed two tasks concurrently to measure the size of the useful field of view (UFOV). One task was letter/number discrimination in which an AR image was presented in the central field of view (the central task). The other task was luminance change detection in which dots were presented in the peripheral field of view (the peripheral task). Depth difference existed between the AR image and the location of the peripheral task in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that the UFOV became wider in the monocular observation than in the binocular observation. In Experiment 2, the size of the UFOV in the monocular observation was equivalent to that in the binocular observation. It becomes difficult for a participant to observe the stimuli on the background in the binocular observation when there is depth difference between the AR image and the background. These results indicate that the monocular presentation in AR is superior to binocular presentation, and even in the best condition for the binocular condition the monocular presentation is equivalent to the binocular presentation in terms of the UFOV.

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Thickness of crystalline layer induced by annealing after rubbing at surface of polyimide film for liquid crystal displays was estimated to be 3–5 nm by grazing-incidence X-ray diffractions with multi incident angles. Agreement of thickness of crystalline layer with that of initially oriented layer suggests polymer orientation induced by rubbing proceeds crystallization by annealing. Furthermore, no in-plane smectic ordering in bottom 20 nm region of polyimide film was suggested.

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Amplification characteristics of the signal and the noise in the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), without facet mirrors for the intensity modulated light, are theoretically analyzed and experimentally confirmed. We have found that the amplification factor of the temporarily varying intensity component is smaller than that of the continuous wave (CW) component, but increases up to that of the CW component in the high frequency region in the SOA. These properties are very peculiar in the SOA, which is not shown in conventional electronic devices and semiconductor lasers. Therefore, the relative intensity noise (RIN), which is defined as ratio of the square value of the intensity fluctuation to that of the CW power can be improved by the amplification by the SOA. On the other hand, the signal to the noise ratio (S/N ratio) defined for ratio of the square value of the modulated signal power to that of the intensity fluctuation have both cases of the degradation and the improvement by the amplification depending on combination of the modulation and the noise frequencies. Experimental confirmations of these peculiar characteristics are also demonstrated.

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A fully-integrated double-channel 5-Gb/s/ch 2:1 serializer array is designed and fabricated in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS technology, which can be easily expanded to any even-number-channel array, e.g. 12 channels, by means of arrangement in a parallel manner. Besides two conventional half-rate 2:1 serializers, both phase-locked loop and delay-locked loop techniques are employed locally to deal with the involved clocking-related issues, which make the serializer array self-contained, compact and automatic. The system architecture, circuit and layout designs are discussed and analyzed in detail. The chip occupies a die area of 673 μm×667 μm with a core width of only 450 μm. Measurement results show that it works properly without a need for additional clock channels, reference clocks, off-chip tuning, external components, and so on. From a single supply of 1.8 V, a power of 200 mW is consumed and a single-ended swing of above 300 mV for each channel is achieved.

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It is clarified that the SiN_X film with a thickness of 1.7 nm, which was formed at the interface between the poly-Si source/drain and Al layer, suppresses the hump phenomenon of TFT with a channel length of 10 μm. The mechanism of the hump suppression by this structure is discussed. It is thought that the fixed charge in the SiN_X film suppresses the formation of the parasitic channel in the poly-Si edge by the Coulomb repulsion.

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A test structure for charge-based capacitance measurement (CBCM) method has been developed to evaluate the threshold voltage variability from capacitance-voltage (C-V) curves of actual size metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistors (MOSFETs). The C-V curves from accumulation to inversion are measured for the MOSFETs having various channel dimensions using this test structure. Intrinsic capacitance components between the MOSFET electrodes are extracted from those C-V curves which are considered to include parasitic capacitance component. The intrinsic C-V curves are used for attempting to extract threshold voltage variations of their MOSFETs. It is found that the developed test structure is very useful for the evaluation of MOSFETs variability, because the derivation in MOSFET C-V curves is not influenced by current measurement noise.

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This paper presents a design of the software and hardware modules of an embedded board with both a sensor and an interface circuit which not only control home light-emitting diode (LED) lighting appliances but also reduce their differences in brightness caused by luminous decay. This design consists of four parts: an automatically adjusted LED driver, environment illumination detection, a wireless remote control unit and an automatic brightness control.

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In this paper, the spatial smoothing (SS) method is extended to the wideband multipath case. By reordering the array input signal and the weight vector, the corresponding covariance matrix of each subarray can be constructed conveniently. Then, a novel wideband beamforming algorithm, based on the SS method (SS-WB), can be achieved by linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV). Further improvement of the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for SS-WB can be obtained by removing the desired signal in the observed array data with the reconstruction of covariance matrix, which is denoted as wideband beamformer based on modified SS method (MSS-WB). Both proposed algorithms can reduce the desired signal cancellation due to the super decorrelation ability of SS method and MSS-WB can lead to a significantly improved output SINR. The simulations verify their effectiveness in the multipath environment.

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