Thermochromic transitions in poly(di-n-hexylsilane) films

The spectra of absorption (77–398 K) and luminescence (5 K) of poly(di-n-hexylsilane) films are studied in relation to the heating of the films above the phase transition temperature. Two new absorption bands in the region of the band of the gauche conformation are found. The position and intensity of these bands depend on the annealing temperature, annealing regime, and sample thickness. These bands are assumed to be associated with the appearance of a liquid crystalline phase in the polymer, which is determined by intermolecular interactions between neighboring polymer chains. The appearance of the liquid crystalline phase in the heat-treated polymer films is confirmed by the increase in their birefringence in comparison with the birefringence of the initial films and by the observation of a stable orientation of an E 7 nematic liquid crystal applied to the surface of an annealed sample. In addition, the absorption spectra of the films cooled after the annealing exhibit many new bands in comparison with the spectra of the initial samples. These bands are associated with the appearance in the polymer of defect states and longer segments as a result of orientation of polymer chains. The appearance of longer segments is consistent with the observation of a long-wavelength band in the luminescence spectra of the annealed samples.     

Dehydrative glycosylation of tri-O-benzylated 1-hydroxyribofuranose catalyzed by a copper(II) complex

A phosphine/Cu(II) complex catalyzes the dehydrative glycosylation of tri-O-benzylated 1-hydroxyribofuranose to give the ribofuranoside with high stereoselectivity.     

Decay and regularity for dispersive equations with constant coefficients

This article discusses some smoothing estimates of the initial value problem for dispersive equations with constant coefficients. In particular, it is shown that a certain condition for the principal part of the symbol (see the assumption (1.3) below, which is equivalent to the one “of principal type” in the paper by Ben-Artzi and Devinatz [2]) is necessary and sufficient for the maximal smoothing in space-time. Dedicated to Professor Norio Shimakura The author was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (No. 13640187).     

Stage-specific and age-dependent profiles of zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium in rat seminiferous tubules

Stage-specific and age-dependent profiles of zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium in testis were examined in Wistar rats by both inductively coupled argon plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with a microdissection technique and in situ elemental imaging of micro-PIXE analysis. The young adult animals (10 weeks old) contained higher levels of zinc and manganese in the seminiferous tubules at stages VII-VIII than stages XI through VI and IX-X and the levels were higher than those of the immature and old animals. Copper and selenium levels at stages VII-VIII of the young adult animals were also higher than those of the immature and old animals. In stages VII and VIII, zinc was higher in the central area of the seminiferous epithelium, where spermatozoa were localized, demonstrating a cell-specific property. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An all-digital analog-to-digital converter with 12-/spl mu/V/LSB using moving-average filtering

A compact, high-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC) especially for sensors is presented. The basic structure is a completely digital circuit including a ring-delay-line with delay units (DUs), along with a frequency counter, latch, and encoder. The operating principles are: (1) the delay time of the DU is modulated by the analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion voltage and (2) the delay pulse passes through a number of DUs within a sampling (= integration) time and the number of DUs through which the delay pulse passes is output as conversion data. Compact size and high resolution were realized with an ADC having a circuit area of 0.45 mm/sup 2/ (0.8-/spl mu/m CMOS) and a resolution of 12 /spl mu/V (10 kS/s). Its nonlinearity is /spl plusmn/0.1% FS per 200-mV span (1.8-2.0 V), for 14-b resolution. Sample holds are unnecessary and a low-pass filter function removes high-frequency noise simultaneously with A/D conversion. Thus, the combination of this ADC and a digital filter that follows can eliminate an analog prefilter to prevent the aliasing before A/D conversion. Also, both this ADC can be shrunk and operated at low voltages, so it is an ideal means to lower the cost and power consumption. Drift errors can be easily compensated for by digital processing.     

Comparative studies of femtosecond to microsecond laser pulses on selective pigmented cell injury in skin

Threshold radiant exposures for grossly apparent immediate whitening and ultrastructural alterations of melanosomes in black guinea pig skin were determined for a series of red visible laser pulses ranging from 4 x 10(-4) to 6.5 x 10(-14) s. Threshold exposures for melanosomal injury were found to be independent of pulsewidth when the pulsewidths were below the estimated thermal relaxation time of melanosomes. Threshold radiant exposures for melanosomal injury were found to increase when the pulsewidths were approximately equal to or above the thermal relaxation time of melanosomes. At longer pulse durations, fracturing of melanosomes was not observed despite the longer exposures necessary for injury. Instead, perimelanosomal vacuoles were noted. These findings are consistent with the theory of selective photothermolysis and provide evidence for the thermal initiation of melanosomal disruption.     

Photoluminescence properties of trace amounts of Pr and Tb in yttria-stabilized zirconia

We have investigated the photoluminescence (PL) properties of trace amounts of Pr and Tb in single-crystal samples of yttria-stabilized zironia (YSZ), and found that Pr of the order of 10⁻⁶ mass% and Tb of the order of 10⁻⁵ mass% in YSZ can be detected by the PL spectroscopy. The PL spectra of the YSZ samples for the 280 nm excitation were comprised of several peaks and a broad emission. The peaks were attributed to transitions of Pr³⁺ and Tb³⁺ in the YSZ samples, whereas the broad emission seemed to be attributed to the yttria-associated oxygen vacancies. The peak intensities corresponded to the amounts of Pr and Tb in the YSZ samples, the amounts of which were analyzed by glow discharge mass spectrometry. In the PL excitation spectra, but not in the photoabsorption spectra, small peaks at 376 and 381 nm were observed, and were attributed to the transitions of Tb³⁺ in the YSZ samples. The results of the PL excitation spectra corresponding to the Pr³⁺ line emissions suggest that the charge transfer occurs between the YSZ and Pr ion in it. The trace amounts of these lanthanoids in YSZ would disturb the decay process of the photoinduced electrons to the yttria-associated oxygen vacancies.     

0.5-μm 3.3-V BiCMOS standard cells with 32-kilobyte cache andten-port register file

BiCMOS standard cell macros, including a 0.5-W 3-ns register file, a 0.6-W 5-ns 32-kbyte cache, a 0.2-W 3-ns table look-aside buffer (TLB), and a 0.1-W 3-ns adder, are designed with a 0.5-μm BiCMOS technology. A supply voltage of 3.3 V is used to achieve low power consumption. Several BiCMOS/CMOS circuits, such as a self-aligned threshold inverter (SATI) sense amplifier and an ECL HIT logic are used to realize high-speed operation at the low supply voltage. The performance of the BiCMOS macros is verified using a fabricated test chip     

A 1.5-V full-swing BiCMOS logic circuit

A BiCMOS logic circuit applicable to sub-2-V digital circuits has been developed. A transiently saturated full-swing BiCMOS (TS-FS-BiCMOS) logic circuit operates twice as fast as CMOS at 1.5-V supply. A newly developed transient-saturation technique, with which bipolar transistors saturate only during switching periods, is the key to sub-2-V operation because a high-speed full-swing operation is achieved to remove the voltage loss due to the base-emitter turn-on voltage. Both small load dependence and small fan-in dependence of gate delay time are attained with this technique. A two-input gate fabricated with 0.3-μm BiCMOS technology verifies the performance advantage of TS-FS-BiCMOS over other BiCMOS circuits and CMOS at sub 2-V supply     

A 286 mm2 256 Mb DRAM with ×32 both-ends DQ

This paper describes a 256 Mb DRAM chip architecture which provides up to ×32 wide organization. In order to minimize the die size, three new techniques: an exchangeable hierarchical data line structure, an irregular sense amp layout, and a split address bus with local redrive scheme in the both-ends DQ were introduced. A chip has been developed based on the architecture with 0.25 μm CMOS technology. The chip measures 13.25 mm×21.55 mm, which is the smallest 256 Mb DRAM ever reported. A row address strobe (RAS) access time of 26 ns was obtained under 2.8 V power supply and 85°C. In addition, a 100 MHz×32 page mode operation, namely 400 M byte/s data rate, in the standard extended data output (EDO) cycle has been successfully demonstrated