Liquid Metal Grid Patterned Thin Film Devices Toward Absorption‑Dominant and Strain‑Tunable Electromagnetic Interference Shielding

The demand of high-performance thin-film-shaped deformable electromagnetic interference(EMI)shielding devices is increasing for the next generation of wearable and miniaturized soft electronics.Although highly reflective conductive materials can effectively shield EMI,they prevent deformation of the devices owing to rigidity and generate secondary electromagnetic pollution simultaneously.Herein,soft and stretchable EMI shielding thin film devices with absorption-dominant EMI shielding behavior is presented.The devices consist of liquid metal(LM)layer and LM grid-patterned layer separated by a thin elastomeric film,fabricated by leveraging superior adhesion of aerosol-deposited LM on elastomer.The devices demonstrate high electromagnetic shielding effectiveness(SE)(SE_(T) of up to 75 dB)with low reflectance(SER of 1.5 dB at the resonant frequency)owing to EMI absorption induced by multiple internal reflection generated in the LM grid architectures.Remarkably,the excellent stretchability of the LM-based devices facilitates tunable EMI shielding abilities through grid space adjustment upon strain(resonant frequency shift from 81.3 to 71.3 GHz@33%strain)and is also capable of retaining shielding effectiveness even after multiple strain cycles.This newly explored device presents an advanced paradigm for powerful EMI shielding performance for next-generation smart electronics.

Electroluminescent Excitation Mechanism of Erbium－activated Zinc Sulfide Semiconductor Thin Film Devices

The electroluminescunce (EL) transient characteristics of erbium-doped zinc sulfide thin film (TF) devices excited by short rectangular pulses are studied, the luminescence delay after de-exciting and the relaxation luminance peaks during decay are observed. A model description for energy transfer has been proposed. The experimental results can be theoretically explained with the computer curve fittings.

Efficiency analysis of a-SiC:H thin film light emitting diodes

The hole injection,the radiative recombination and the device luminescent efficiencies of amorphous silicon carbide thin film p-i-n junction light emitting diodes are quantitatively calculated,and the effect of the carrier(especially the hole) injection and recombination processes on the device luminescent characteristics are revealed.Without considering the device junction temperature,it is found that the device luminescent efficiency mainly depends on the hole injection efficiency at low field and the hole radiative recombination efficiency at high field respectively.The theoretical analyses are in well agreement with the experimental results.

Review of My Research Work on Ferroelectric Films and Si-Based Device Applications: Opportunity and Challenge

Ferroelectric materials have many interesting physical properties such as ferroelectricity, pyroelectricity, piezoelectricity, and opto-electricity, and applying ferroelectric materials in the forms of thin and thick films and integrating them on the silicon substrate as electronic and MEMS devices is a very attractive research area and challenging. In this paper, we report our research works on ferroelectric MEMS and ferroelectric films for electronic device applications. Pyroelectric thin film infrared sensors have been made, characterized, and a 32×32 array with its size of 1cm×1cm has been obtained on Si membrane. Ferroelectric thin films in amorphous phase have been applied to make silicon based hydrogen gas sensors with the metal/amorphous ferroelectric film/metal device structure, and its turn-on voltage of about 4.5V at ～1000 ppm in air is about 7 times of the best value reported in the literature. For the application of electron emission flat panel display, ferroelectric BST thin films with excess Ti concentrations have been coated on Si tips, the threshold voltage of those ferroelectric film coated tips has been reduced about one order from ～70 V/μm to 4～10 V/μm for different Ti concentrations, and however, the electron emission current density has been increased at least 3～4 order for those coated tips compared to that of the bare Si tips. To fulfill in the thickness gap between thin film of typical ～1 μm made by PVD/CVD and polished ceramic wafer of ～50 μm from the bulk, piezoelectric films with thickness in a range of 1～30 μm have been successfully deposited on Si substrate at a low temperature of 650oC by a novel hybridized deposition technique, and piezoelectric MEMS ultrasonic arrays have been very recently obtained with the sound pressure level up to ～120 dB. More detailed results will be presented and mechanisms will be discussed.

Lowering the driving voltage and improving the luminance of blue fluorescent organic light-emitting devices by thermal annealing a hole injection layer of pentacene

We chose pentacene as a hole injection layer（HIL） to fabricate the high performance blue fluorescent organic lightemitting devices（OLEDs）. We found that the carrier mobility of the pentacene thin films could be efficiently improved after a critical annealing at temperature 120℃. Then we performed the tests of scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Kelvin probe to explore the effect of annealing on the pentacene films. The pentacene film exhibited a more crystalline form with better continuities and smoothness after annealing. The optimal device with 120℃ annealed pentacene film and n-doped electron transport layer（ETL） presents a low turn-on voltage of 2.6 V and a highest luminance of 134800 cd/m^2 at 12 V, which are reduced by 26% and improved by 50% compared with those of the control device.

MECHANICAL DEFLECTION OF POLYSILICON MICROCANTILEVER BEAMS USING NANOINDENTATION

The validity of a novel, direct and convenient method for micromechanical property measurements by beam bending using a nanoindenter is demonstrated. This method combines a very high load resolution with a nanometric precision in the determination of the microcantilever beam deflection. The method is described clearly. In the deflection of microbeams, the influence of the indenter tip pushing into the top of the microbeams and the curvature across its width must be considered. The measurements were made on single-layer, micro-thick, several kinds of width and length polysilicon beams that were fabricated using conventional integrated circuit (IC) fabrication techniques. The elastic of a polysilicon microcantilever beam will vary linearly with the force and the deformation is thought to be elastic. Furthermore, it suggests that Young modulus of the beam can be determined from the slope of this linear relation. From the load deflection data acquired during bending the mechanical properties of the thin films were determined. Measured Young modulus is 137 GPa with approximately a ±2.9%～±6.3% difference in Young modulus.

Flexible magnetic thin films and devices

Flexible electronic devices are highly attractive for a variety of applications such as flexible circuit boards, solar cells, paper-like displays, and sensitive skin, due to their stretchable, biocompatible, light-weight,portable, and low cost properties. Due to magnetic devices being important parts of electronic devices, it is essential to study the magnetic properties of magnetic thin films and devices fabricated on flexible substrates. In this review, we mainly introduce the recent progress in flexible magnetic thin films and devices, including the study on the stress-dependent magnetic properties of magnetic thin films and devices, and controlling the properties of flexible magnetic films by stress-related multi-fields, and the design and fabrication of flexible magnetic devices.

Improvements of the Analytical Model of Monte Carlo

By extending the conduction band structure, we set up a new analytical model in ZnS. Compared the results with both the old analytical model and the full band model, it is found that they are possibly in reasonable agreement with the full band method and we can improve the calculation precision. Another important work is to reduce the programme computation time using the method of data fitting scattering rate curves.

Analysis of laser induced thermal mechanical relationship of HfO_2/SiO_2 high reflective optical thin film at 1064 nm

A numerical model is developed for the calculation of transient temperature field of thin film coating induced by a long-pulsed high power laser beam. The electric field intensity distribution of HfO2/Si02 high reflective （HR） film is investigated to calculate the thermal field of the film. The thermal-mechanical relationships are discussed to predict the laser damage area of optical thin film under long pulse high energy laser irradiation.

Measurement of absolute phase shift on reflection of thin films using white-light spectral interferometry

A novel method to measure the absolute phase shift on reflection of thin film is presented utilizing a white-light interferometer in spectral domain. By applying Fourier transformation to the recorded spectral interference signal, we retrieve the spectral phase function Ф, which is induced by three parts： the path length difference in air L, the effective thickness of slightly dispersive cube beam splitter Teff and the nonlinear phase function due to multi-reflection of the thin film structure. We utilize the fact that the overall optical path difference （OPD） is linearly dependent on the refractive index of the beam splitter to determine both L and Teff. The spectral phase shift on reflection of thin film structure can be obtained by subtracting these two parts from Ф. We show theoretically and experimentally that our new method can provide a simple and fast solution in calculating the absolute spectral phase function of optical thin films, while still maintaining high accuracy.

Impact of cascaded thin-film filters on metro networks employing NRZ, LPF-DB, and CSRZ formats

We studied the transmission performance of metro networks employing cascaded thin-film filters (TFFs) for three modulation formats including non-return-to-zero (NRZ), duobinary, and carrier-suppressed RZ (CSRZ). The effects caused by TFFs' dispersion and passband characteristics are investigated for 10- and 40-Gb/s signals, respectively. Simulation results show that the penalty resulted from dispersion can be partially compensated by the passband effects of the cascaded filters. CSRZ is shown to be a preferred format compared with NRZ and duobinary primarily originating from its good back-to-back performance.

Enhanced ultraviolet emission from ZnO thin film covered by TiO_2 nanoparticles

A ZnO thin film covered by TiO2 nanoparticles is prepared by electron beam evaporation. The structure and surface morphology of the sample are analyzed by X-ray diffraction （XRD） and atomic force microscopy （AFM）, respectively. Photoluminescence is used to investigate the fluorescent property of the ample. The results show that the ultraviolet （UV） emission of the ZnO thin film is greatly enhanced after it is covered by TiO2 nanoparticles while the green emission is suppressed. The enhanced UV emission mainly results from the fluorescence resonance energy transfer （FRET） between ZnO thin film and TiO： nanoparticles. This TiO2-ZnO composite thin film can be used to fabricate high-efficiency UV emitters.

Review of recent progresses on flexible oxide semiconductor thin film transistors based on atomic layer deposition processes

The current article is a review of recent progress and major trends in the field of flexible oxide thin film transistors（TFTs）, fabricating with atomic layer deposition（ALD） processes. The ALD process offers accurate controlling of film thickness and composition as well as ability of achieving excellent uniformity over large areas at relatively low temperatures. First, an introduction is provided on what is the definition of ALD, the difference among other vacuum deposition techniques, and the brief key factors of ALD on flexible devices. Second, considering functional layers in flexible oxide TFT, the ALD process on polymer substrates may improve device performances such as mobility and stability, adopting as buffer layers over the polymer substrate, gate insulators, and active layers. Third, this review consists of the evaluation methods of flexible oxide TFTs under various mechanical stress conditions. The bending radius and repetition cycles are mostly considering for conventional flexible devices. It summarizes how the device has been degraded/changed under various stress types（directions）. The last part of this review suggests a potential of each ALD film, including the releasing stress, the optimization of TFT structure, and the enhancement of device performance. Thus, the functional ALD layers in flexible oxide TFTs offer great possibilities regarding anti-mechanical stress films, along with flexible display and information storage application fields.

Free-space 1×2 wavelength-selective switches for wavelength-division multiplexing optical networks

A free-space 1 ×2 wavelength-selective switch （WSS） based on thin-film filter technology is proposed. The 1 × 2 WSS is fabricated with an electromagnetic actuator, a reflecton prism, a narrow-band thin-film filter, and three fiber collimators. The working principle and the configuration of WSS are illuminated. The experimental results indicate a fiber-to-fiber insertion loss ranging from 1.109 to 1.249 dB with 2-V voltage input, which satisfies the application of optical fiber communication.

A 500-600 MHz GaN power amplifier with RC-LC stability network

The GaAs-based TF-IPD fabrication process and equivalent lumped element circuit are utilized to re- duce the circuit size for double-section Wilkinson power divider. Ultimately the dimension of the proposed S-band power divider is reduced to 1.03 × 0.98 mm2. Its measured results show an operating fractional bandwidth of 54%, and return losses and isolation of greater than 20 dB. In addition the excess insertion loss is less than 1.1 dB. More- over the good features contain amplitude and phase equilibrium with the values of better than 0.03 dB and 1.5° separately. This miniaturized power divider could be widely used in RF/microwave circuit systems.