Stability of polymer thin-film transistors based on poly(2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene)

Polymer thin-film transistors (PTFTs) based on poly(2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene) (MEH-PPV) semiconductor are fabricated by spin-coating process and characterized. In the experiments, solution preparation, deposition and device measurements are all performed in air for large-area applications. Hysteresis effect and gate-bias stress effect are observed for the devices at room temperature. The saturation current decreases and the threshold voltage shifts toward the negative direction upon gate-bias stress, but carrier mobility hardly changes. By using quasi-static C-V analysis for MOS capacitor structure, it can be deduced that the origin of threshold-voltage shift upon negative gate-bias stress is predominantly associated with hole trapping within the SiO₂ gate dielectric near the SiO₂/MEH-PPV interface due to hot-carrier emission.     

A Skorokhod Problem formulation and large deviation analysis of a processor sharing model

Generalized processor sharing has been proposed as a policy for distributing processing in a fair manner between different data classes in high-speed networks. In this paper we show how recent results on the Skorokhod Problem can be used to construct and analyze the mapping that takes the input processes into the buffer content. More precisely, we show how to represent the map in terms of a Skorokhod Problem, and from this infer that the mapping is well defined (existence and uniqueness) and well behaved (Lipschitz continuity). As an elementary application we present some large deviation estimates for a many data source model. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A higher-order hybrid spline difference method on adaptive mesh for solving singularly perturbed parabolic reaction–diffusion problems with robin-boundary conditions

We propose a hybrid numerical scheme to discretize a class of singularly perturbed parabolic reaction–diffusion problems with robin-boundary conditions on an equidistributed grid. The hybrid difference scheme is developed by using a modified backward difference scheme in time, a combination of the cubic spline and exponential spline difference scheme in space. The proposed scheme uses a cubic spline difference scheme for the discretization of robin-boundary conditions. For the time discretization of the problem, we use the standard uniform mesh while a layer adapted equidistributed grid is generated for the spatial discretization. By equidistributing a curvature-based monitor function, the spatial adaptive grid is able to capture the presence of parabolic boundary layers without using any prior information about the solution. Parameter uniform error estimates are derived to illustrate an optimal convergence of first-order in time and second-order in space for the proposed discretization. The accuracy of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the numerical experiments that underpin the theoretical analysis.