Strain-induced modification of magnetic structure and new magnetic phases in rare-earth epitaxial films

Rare earths exhibit complex magnetic phase diagrams resulting from the competition between various contributions to the magnetic energy: exchange, anisotropy and magnetostriction. The epitaxy of a rare-earth film on a substrate induces (i) a clamping to the substrate and (ii) pseudomorphic strains. Both these effects are shown to lead to modifications of the magnetic properties in (0 0 1)Dy, (0 0 1)Tb and (1 1 0)Eu films. In Dy and Tb films, spectacular variations of the Curie temperature have been evidenced. Additionally, Tb films exhibit a new large wavelength magnetic modulation. In Eu films, one of the helical magnetic domains disappears at low temperature whereas the propagation vectors of the other helices are tilted. The link between structural and magnetic properties is underlined via magnetoelastic models. Moreover, molecular beam epitaxy permits the growth of Sm in a metastable dhcp phase. The magnetic structure of dhcp Sm has been elucidated for the first time. In this review, neutron scattering is shown to be a powerful technique to reveal the magnetic structures of rare-earth films.     

Electro-optic pulse response of ferroelectric liquid crystals

The electro-optic response of ferroelectric smectic C* liquid crystals has been studied. Anomalous switching behaviour of such materials which possess a negative dielectric anisotropy has been reported. These materials show a minimum in response time at a sufficiently high field. We present results showing the dependency of this minimum upon spontaneous polarisation and the effect of AC bias. Calculations based upon the equation of motion of the director around the cone are presented which describe this effect and its dependence on the relative magnitudes of the spontaneous polarization and dielectric anisotropy of the material. Good agreement with the experimental results is found.     

Voltage transfer function synthesis using current conveyors

A synthesis procedure for generating current conveyor active filters is presented, and a novel network which realises the general 2nd-order voltage transfer function is given.<>     

Fast search techniques for use in vector quantisation and related pattern matching applications

Two techniques for the design and fast search of a vector quantiser codebook are proposed. These classify speech data vectors according to (i) the sign and (ii) the slope between successive samples. With both techniques the performance obtained is superior to that obtained from a conventional gain/shape vector quantiser and comparable to that of a full search vector quantiser. A major attraction of both approaches is that they significantly reduce the number of computations required for the codebook search.     

A 16-Mbit/s adapter chip for the IBM token-ring local area network

The authors describe a 9.02×9.02-mm chip built in 1-μm CMOS with two levels of metal and an additional mask level for fabricating capacitors. It contains both analog and digital circuits and has provisions for self-test. The function includes the transmitter, receiver, protocol handler, an microprocessor, as well as interfaces for RAM/ROM storage, IBM PC bus, IBM PS/2 bus, IBM 3174 bus, and Motorola 68000 bus. The physical design terrains are formed by 24K circuits of standard cell gates, a 10K-circuit equivalent hand-honed custom microprocessor, and an analog macro. The chip operates from a single 5-V supply, and the power consumption is 0.8 W nominal at 16 Mb/s. The chip can also be operated at 4 Mb/s     

Cognitive Radio Transmission Based on Direct Sequence MC-CDMA

In this paper, we propose a cognitive cellular system based on DS MC-CDMA to coexist with a number of narrow-band legacy systems in the same frequency range. If the bandwidth and the frequency location of each narrow-band system are known to this cognitive MC-CDMA, it is possible to mitigate their interfering effect in the cognitive receivers by adaptive transmission. We will develop an algorithm for calculating the adaptive transmission parameters and show that it combats interference in the channel effectively.     

The Silicon Backplane Design for an LCOS Polarization-Insensitive Phase Hologram SLM

Polarization-insensitivity is achieved in a reflective spatial light modulator by laying a quarter-wave plate (QWP) at the incident wavelength directly over the mirror pixels of a silicon backplane, and forming a nematic Freedrickcz cell over the QWP to modulate the reflected phase. To achieve the highest drive voltage from the available silicon process, a switched voltage common front electrode design is described, with variable amplitude square wave drive to the pixels to maintain constant root-mean-square drive and minimize phase fluctuations during the dc balance refresh cycle. The silicon has been fabricated and liquid-crystal-on-silicon cells both with and without the QWP assembled; applications include optically transparent switches for optical networks, beam steering for add-drop multiplexers for wavelength-division-multiplexing telecommunications, television multicast, and holographic projection.     

A Radiation Imaging Detector Made by Postprocessing a Standard CMOS Chip

An unpackaged microchip is used as the sensing element in a miniaturized gaseous proportional chamber. This letter reports on the fabrication and performance of a complete radiation imaging detector based on this principle. Our fabrication schemes are based on wafer-scale and chip-scale postprocessing. Compared to hybrid-assembled gaseous detectors, our microsystem shows superior alignment precision and energy resolution, and offers the capability to unambiguously reconstruct 3D radiation tracks on the spot.     

On some p-adic properties of Siegel-Eisenstein series

We introduce a formula for the p-adic Siegel-Eisenstein series which demonstrates a connection with the genus theta series and the twisted Eisenstein series with level p. We then prove a generalization of Serre's formula in the elliptic modular case.     

Depth profile analysis of polyimide film treated by potassium hydroxide

The structural change in the depth direction of a polyimide (UPILEX‐S) film treated in alkaline solution, which was a representative surface treatment used to form a seed layer for plating and to improve the adhesive strength, was analyzed by means of micro Fourier transform infrared attenuated total reflection (FTIR‐ATR) line analysis with gradient shaving preparation. The polyimide film was treated with KOH. The imide ring opened through the alkaline treatment, and the amide structure and carboxylic acid salt were formed. The attainment depth of this structural change was almost proportional to the treatment time, and it reached about 8 μm after a 30‐min treatment. The degree of structural change through the alkaline treatment was almost constant after it reached a considerably degraded stage, and the chemically changed region penetrated into the inner part of the film from the surface. An intermediate layer before the final degraded stage appeared in the treated layer, and its thickness increased with the treatment time. The region that was changed chemically by the alkaline treatment progressed to the inner part simultaneously and continuously as the treatment time increased. The combined use of gradient shaving preparation and micro FTIR‐ATR line analysis was found to be extremely effective for the depth profiling of organic materials. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 41: 2071–2078, 2003