Photobleaching of γ-Glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane-Chelated Metal Alkoxide Gel Films

Thick photosensitive inorganic-organic hybrid gel films are fabricated using a silica–PEO(poly(ethylene oxide)) polymeric network and several chelated metal alkoxides: Ti(OEt)₄, Al(OBu^sec)₃, Zr(OPr ⁿ )₄. The -glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GPTS) and the metal alkoxides stabilized by -ketoester or -diketone are used as precursors. The chelated metal complex in the gel films are photodecomposed and forms the oxide network by UV exposure. The photodecomposition of the chelate ring and the photobleaching of the UV absorption bands are investigated as a function of UV exposure time. The photobleaching rates with respect to chelating agents, metal alkoxides and photon energy are compared.     

Accurate Solution to Overdetermined Linear Equations with Errors Using L1 Norm Minimization

It has been known for many years that a robust solution to an overdetermined system of linear equations Ax b is obtained by minimizing the L1 norm of the residual error. A correct solution x to the linear system can often be obtained in this way, in spite of large errors (outliers) in some elements of the (m × n) matrix A and the data vector b. This is in contrast to a least squares solution, where even one large error will typically cause a large error in x. In this paper we give necessary and sufficient conditions that the correct solution is obtained when there are some errors in A and b. Based on the sufficient condition, it is shown that if k rows of [A b] contain large errors, the correct solution is guaranteed if (m – n)/n 2k/, where > 0, is a lower bound of singular values related to A. Since m typically represents the number of measurements, this inequality shows how many data points are needed to guarantee a correct solution in the presence of large errors in some of the data. This inequality is, in fact, an upper bound, and computational results are presented, which show that the correct solution will be obtained, with high probability, for much smaller values of m – n.     

Exotic smooth structures on , Part II

We construct exotic and using the surgery techniques of R. Fintushel and R.J. Stern. We show that these 4-manifolds are irreducible by computing their Seiberg-Witten invariants.

     

Partial-wave decomposition of the ionization continuum accessed by vibrational autoionization of the NO 14s ( nu = 1, N = 20, N(+)(R) = 20) level

Rotationally resolved photoelectron angular distributions from vibrational autoionization of the NO 14s ( nu = 1, N = 20, N(+)(R) = 20) level are measured by photoelectron spectroscopy, and they are analyzed using a theoretical model based on first-order coupling between the Rydberg level and the ionization continuum. The analysis reveals that lambda-changing collisions and l-changing collisions between the molecular-ion core and the outgoing electron are comparable in magnitude and account for 40% of the partial waves produced in the ionization continuum.     

Dimer to monomer phase transition in alkali-metal fullerides: magnetic susceptibility changes

Ab initio calculations have been employed to investigate the peculiar change in magnetic property (from diamagnetic to paramagnetic) of the dianionic C60-dimer phase in a rapidly cooled AC60 samples ( A: alkali metal). We first note that the triplet state of (C60)-22 which was never considered previously is nearly degenerate with the singlet state, and the transition barrier between the two states is reasonably small. This explains the susceptibility increase with an increase in temperature and the magnetic phase transition in the process of the dimer to monomer phase transition.     

Resolution enhancement in a reflection mode near-field optical microscope by second-harmonic modulation signals

The motion of the probe tip in a near-field scanning optical microscope, dithered by vibration of a tuning fork, can modulate the reflection signal from the sample surface not only at the fundamental dithering frequency but also at its second harmonic. By lock-in amplification of these modulated signals, enhanced optical images are obtained, even with an uncoated fiber probe. In particular, accurate optical images with higher resolution are obtained when the second-harmonic signal is detected, which results from the parametric modulation of the tip-sample separation at the double frequency of the horizontal dithering motion of the tip. Using a DVD ROM with a track pitch of 0.74 mum as a test sample, we observed that the sharp edges around the pits are clearly resolved with the second-harmonic signals and obtained enhanced resolution of ~70 nm full width at half-maximum.     

Origin of the high piezoelectric response in PbZr1-xTixO3

High resolution x-ray powder diffraction measurements on poled PbZr1-xTixO3 (PZT) ceramic samples close to the rhombohedral-tetragonal phase boundary (the so-called morphotropic phase boundary) have shown that for both rhombohedral and tetragonal compositions the piezoelectric elongation of the unit cell does not occur along the polar directions but along those directions associated with the monoclinic distortion. This work provides the first direct evidence for the origin of the very high piezoelectricity in PZT.     

Improvement of Reliability of GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes by Selective Wet Etching With p-GaN

In an attempt to enhance the reliability of GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the selective wet chemical etching of p-GaN surface in the GaN-based LEDs using KOH+NaOH in an ethylene glycol solution was investigated. The leakage currents of the etched LED under forward and reverse bias voltages were much lower, compared to those of a nonetched LED. The etched LED also showed improved light extraction efficiency and the degradation rate of light output power at a high injection current of 300 mA was slower than that for a nonetched LED. These results can be attributed to a decrease in the surface defects, an increase in hole concentration, and the increased surface roughness of the etched p-GaN     

A Hybrid AlGaInAs–Silicon Evanescent Amplifier

We report a hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent amplifier incorporating a silicon waveguide with a III-V gain medium. The optical mode of the hybrid amplifier is mostly confined to the silicon waveguide and evanescently coupled to the AlGaInAs quantum-well (QW) region where optical gain is provided by electrical current injection. These two different material systems are bonded by low-temperature oxygen plasma assisted wafer bonding at 300 degC. The fabricated device shows 13 dB of maximum chip gain with 11 dBm of output saturation power. Evanescent coupling allows a lower active region confinement factor to provide a higher saturation output power than amplifiers with centered QWs, which is important for applications that require linear amplification     

Improving Quality of Service and Assuring Fairness in WLAN Access Networks

As public deployment of wireless local area networks (WLANs) has increased and various applications with different service requirements have emerged, fairness and quality of service (QoS) are two imperative issues in allocating wireless channels. This study proposes a fair QoS agent (FQA) to simultaneously provide per-class QoS enhancement and per-station fair channel sharing in WLAN access networks. FQA implements two additional components above the 802.11 MAC: a dual service differentiator and a service level manager. The former is intended to improve QoS for different service classes by differentiating service with appropriate scheduling and queue management algorithms, while the latter is to assure fair channel sharing by estimating the fair share for each station and dynamically adjusting the service levels of packets. FQA assures (weighted) fairness among stations in terms of channel access time without decreasing channel utilization. Furthermore, it can provide quantitative service assurance in terms of queuing delay and packet loss rate. FQA neither resorts to any complex fair scheduling algorithm nor requires maintaining per-station queues. Since the FQA algorithm is an add-on scheme above the 802.11 MAC, it does not require any modification of the standard MAC protocol. Extensive ns-2 simulations confirm the effectiveness of the FQA algorithm with respect to the per class QoS enhancement and per-station fair channel sharing