Ambient intelligence is the vision of a technology that will become invisibly embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context-sensitive, and autonomous. High-quality information access and personalized content must be available to everybody, anywhere, and at any time. This book addresses ambient intelligence used to support human contacts and accompany an individual's path through the complicated modern world. From the technical standpoint, distributed electronic intelligence is addressed as hardware vanishing into the background. Devices used for ambient intelligence are small, low-power, low weight, and (very importantly) low-cost; they collaborate or interact with each other; and they are redundant and error-tolerant. This means that the failure of one device will not cause failure of the whole system. Since wired connections often do not exist, radio methods will play an important role for data transfer. This book addresses various aspects of ambient intelligence, from applications that are imminent since they use essentially existing technologies, to ambitious ideas whose realization is still far away, due to major unsolved technical challenges.

Defects in semiconductors have been studied for many years, in many cases with a view toward controlling their behaviour through various forms of "defect engineering." For example, in the bulk, charging significantly affects the total concentration of defects that are available to mediate phenomena such as solid-state diffusion. Surface defects play an important role in mediating surface mass transport during high temperature processing steps such as epitaxial film deposition, diffusional smoothing in reflow, and nanostructure formation in memory device fabrication. "Charged Defects in Semiconductors" details the current state of knowledge regarding the properties of the ionized defects that can affect the behaviour of advanced transistors, photo-active devices, catalysts, and sensors. Features: group IV, III-V, and oxide semiconductors; intrinsic and extrinsic defects; and, point defects, as well as defect pairs, complexes and clusters.

This book contains the selected papers of the Sixth International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots (MESROB 2018), held in Cassino, Italy, in 2018. The main topics of the workshop include: design of medical devices, kinematics and dynamics for medical robotics, exoskeletons and prostheses, anthropomorphic hands , therapeutic robots and rehabilitation, cognitive robots, humanoid and service robots, assistive robots and elderly assistance, surgical robots, human-robot interfaces, haptic devices, and medical treatments.

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the Josephson effect, a topic of never-ending interest in both fundamental and applied physics. In this volume, world-renowned experts present the unique aspects of the physics of the Josephson effect, resulting from the use of new materials, of hybrid architectures and from the possibility of realizing nanoscale junctions. These new experimental capabilities lead to systems where novel coherent phenomena and transport processes emerge. All this is of great relevance and impact, especially when combined with the didactic approach of the book. The reader will benefit from a general and modern view of coherent phenomena in weakly-coupled superconductors on a macroscopic scale. Topics that have been only recently discussed in specialized papers and in short reviews are described here for the first time and organized in a general framework. An important section of the book is also devoted to applications, with focus on long-term, future applications. In addition to a significant number of illustrations, the book includes numerous tables for comparative studies on technical aspects.

The first comprehensive text on microhotplate-based chemical sensor systems in CMOS-technology covers all aspects of successful sensor prototyping: theoretical considerations for modelling, controller- and system design, simulation of circuits and microsensors, design considerations, microfabrication, packaging and testing. A whole family of metal-oxide based microsensor systems with increasing complexity is presented, including fully integrated sensor arrays. This represents one of the first examples of integrated nanomaterials, microtechnology and embedded circuitry.

This book illustrates original pathways to manipulate light at the nanoscale by means of surface electromagnetic waves (here, Bloch surface waves, BSWs) on planar dielectric multilayers, also known as one-dimensional photonic crystals. This approach is particularly valuable as it represents an effective alternative to the widely exploited surface plasmon paradigm. After a brief overview on the fundamentals of BSWs, several significant applications of BSW-sustaining structures are described. Particular consideration is given to the propagation, guiding, and diffraction of BSW-coupled radiation. Further, the interaction of organic emitters with BSWs on planar and corrugated multilayers is investigated, including fluorescence beaming in free space. To provide greater insight into sensing applications, an illustrative example of fluorescent microarray-based detection is presented. The book is intended for scientists and researchers working on photon management opportunities in fields such as biosensing, optical circuitry, and lighting.

A review of the electrical properties, performance and physical mechanisms of the main silicon-on-insulator (SOI) materials and devices. Particular attention is paid to the reliability of SOI structures operating in harsh conditions. The first part of the book deals with material technology and describes the SIMOX and ELTRAN technologies, the smart-cut technique, SiCOI structures and MBE growth. The second part covers reliability of devices operating under extreme conditions, with an examination of low and high temperature operation of deep submicron MOSFETs and novel SOI technologies and circuits, SOI in harsh environments and the properties of the buried oxide. The third part deals with the characterization of advanced SOI materials and devices, covering laser-recrystallized SOI layers, ultrashort SOI MOSFETs and nanostructures, gated diodes and SOI devices produced by a variety of techniques. The last part reviews future prospects for SOI structures, analyzing wafer bonding techniques, applications of oxidized porous silicon, semi-insulating silicon materials, self-organization of silicon dots and wires on SOI and some new physical phenomena.

A discussion of recently developed experimental methods for noise research in nanoscale electronic devices, conducted by specialists in transport and stochastic phenomena in nanoscale physics. The approach described is to create methods for experimental observations of noise sources, their localization and their frequency spectrum, voltage-current and thermal dependences. Our current knowledge of measurement methods for mesoscopic devices is summarized to identify directions for future research, related to downscaling effects.

The directions for future research into fluctuation phenomena in quantum dot and quantum wire devices are specified. Nanoscale electronic devices will be the basic components for electronics of the 21st century. From this point of view the signal-to-noise ratio is a very important parameter for the device application. Since the noise is also a quality and reliability indicator, experimental methods will have a wide application in the future.

This book is devoted to nonmetal-to-metal transitions. The original ideas of Mott for such a transition in solids have been adapted to describe a broad variety of phenomena in condensed matter physics (solids, liquids, and fluids), in plasma and cluster physics, as well as in nuclear physics (nuclear matter and quark-gluon systems). The book gives a comprehensive overview of theoretical methods and experimental results of the current research on the Mott effect for this wide spectrum of topics. The fundamental problem is the transition from localized to delocalized states which describes the nonmetal-to-metal transition in these diverse systems. Based on the ideas of Mott, Hubbard, Anderson as well as Landau and Zeldovich, internationally respected scientists present the scientific challenges and highlight the enormous progress which has been achieved over the last years. The level of description is aimed to specialists in these fields as well as to young scientists who will get an overview for their own work. A common feature of all contribution is the extensive discussion of bound states," i.e. their formation and dissolution due to medium effects. This applies to atoms and molecules in plasmas, fluids, and small clusters, excitons in semiconductors, or nucleons, deuterons, and alpha-particles in nuclear matter. In this way, the transition from delocalized to localized states and vice versa can be described on a common level."

This book describes the design of a receiver front-end circuit for operation in the 60GHz range in 90nm CMOS. Physical layout of the test circuit and post-layout simulations for the implementation of a test chip including the QVCO and the first stage divider are also presented. The content of this book is particularly of interest to those working on mm-wave frequency generation and signal reception.

Regular Nanofabrics in Emerging Technologies gives a deep insight into both fabrication and design aspects of emerging semiconductor technologies, that represent potential candidates for the post-CMOS era. Its approach is unique, across different fields, and it offers a synergetic view for a public of different communities ranging from technologists, to circuit designers, and computer scientists. The book presents two technologies as potential candidates for future semiconductor devices and systems and it shows how fabrication issues can be addressed at the design level and vice versa. The reader either for academic or research purposes will find novel material that is explained carefully for both experts and non-initiated readers. Regular Nanofabrics in Emerging Technologies is a survey of post-CMOS technologies. It explains processing, circuit and system level design for people with various backgrounds.

This book presents an innovative concept for the realization of sensors based on a planar metamaterial microwave array and shows their application in biomedical analysis and treatment. The sensors are able to transduce the dielectric properties of materials in their direct vicinity into an electric signal. The specific array organization permits a simultaneous analysis of several materials using a single readout signal or a relative characterization of one material where information about its spatial distribution can be extracted. Two applications of the designed sensors are described here: the first is a cytological screening using micro fluidic technology, which shows that the sensors may be integrated into lab-on-chip technologies; the second application regards the use of the sensor in both the analysis and treatment of organic tissues. The developed sensor is able not only to screen the tissues for abnormalities, but also, by changing the applied signals, to perform thermal ablation and treat the abnormalities in a highly focused way. Thus, the research described in this book represents a considerable advancement in the field of biomedical microwave sensing.

This book describes innovative design solutions for radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and antennas. Focusing mainly on passive ultra-high-frequency (UHF)-RFID tag antennas, it examines novel approaches based on the use of metamaterial-inspired resonators and other resonant structures as radiating elements. It also offers an exhaustive analysis of the radiation properties of several metamaterial-inspired resonators such as the split ring resonator (SRR) and related structures. Further, it discusses in detail an innovative technology for the RFID tagging of optical discs, which has demonstrated a significant improvement over the state of the art and resulted in a patent. By covering the entire research cycle of theory, design/simulation and fabrication/evaluation of RFID tags and antennas, while also reporting on cutting-edge technologies, the book provides graduate students, researchers and practitioners alike with a comprehensive and timely overview of RFID systems, and a closer look at several radiating structures.

This comprehensive book reports on recent investigations of lattice imperfections in semiconductors by means of positron annihilation. It reviews positron techniques, and describes the application of these techniques to various kinds of defects, such as vacancies, impurity vacancy complexes and dislocations.

To handle many standards and ever increasing bandwidth requirements, large number of filters and switches are used in transceivers of modern wireless communications systems. It makes the cost, performance, form factor, and power consumption of these systems, including cellular phones, critical issues. At present, the fixed frequency filter banks based on Film Bulk Acoustic Resonators (FBAR) are regarded as one of the most promising technologies to address performance -form factor-cost issues. Even though the FBARs improve the overall performances the complexity of these systems remains high. Attempts are being made to exclude some of the filters by bringing the digital signal processing (including channel selection) as close to the antennas as possible. However handling the increased interference levels is unrealistic for low-cost battery operated radios. Replacing fixed frequency filter banks by one tuneable filter is the most desired and widely considered scenario. As an example, development of the software based cognitive radios is largely hindered by the lack of adequate agile components, first of all tuneable filters. In this sense the electrically switchable and tuneable FBARs are the most promising components to address the complex cost-performance issues in agile microwave transceivers, smart wireless sensor networks etc. Tuneable Film Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonators discusses FBAR need, physics, designs, modelling, fabrication and applications. Tuning of the resonant frequency of the FBARs is considered. Switchable and tuneable FBARs based on electric field induced piezoelectric effect in paraelectric phase ferroelectrics are covered. The resonance of these resonators may be electrically switched on and off and tuned without hysteresis. The book is aimed at microwave and sensor specialists in the industry and graduate students. Readers will learn about principles of operation and possibilities of the switchable and tuneable FBARs, and will be given general guidelines for designing, fabrication and applications of these devices.

This thesis presents an experimental study of ordering phenomena in rare-earth nickelate-based heterostructures by means of inelastic Raman light scattering and elastic resonant x-ray scattering (RXS). Further, it demonstrates that the amplitude ratio of magnetic moments at neighboring nickel sites can be accurately determined by RXS in combination with a correlated double cluster model, and controlled experimentally through structural pinning of the oxygen positions in the crystal lattice. The two key outcomes of the thesis are: (a) demonstrating full control over the charge/bond and spin order parameters in specifically designed praseodymium nickelate heterostructures and observation of a novel spin density wave phase in absence of the charge/bond order parameter, which confirms theoretical predictions of a spin density wave phase driven by spatial confinement of the conduction electrons; and (b) assessing the thickness-induced crossover between collinear and non-collinear spin structures in neodymium nickelate slabs, which is correctly predicted by drawing on density functional theory.

The information revolution of the twentieth century was brought about by microelectronics based on a simple and common material, silicon. Although silicon will continue to be of central importance in the next century, carbon, silicon's upstairs neighbor in the periodic table, will also be of great impor tance in future technology. Carbon has more flexible bonding and hence has various unique physical, chemical and biological properties. It has two types of bonding, sp3 and sp2, in diamond and graphite, respectively. The existence of the latter, "7r-electron bonding," is responsible for carbon's versatile tal ents. Those materials having extended 7r-electron clouds are called '7r-electron materials'. They include graphite, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and various carbonaceous materials. They may be called "supercarbon" because of their fabulous multiformity and versatile properties. This volume is a status report on the synthesis, properties and appli cations of 7r-electron materials, representing an updated proceedings of the International Workshop on 7r-Electron Materials held at the Northwestern University, 'Evanston, Illinois, USA, August 13-14,1996. The Workshop was organized jointly by the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) and the Materials Research Center at the Northwestern University (NWU) in order to provide an opportunity for scientists and engineers to meet and dis cuss the latest advances in this field and in commemoration of the Yoshimura 7r-Electron Materials Project, one of Japan's national projects in the JST's ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) program."

Liquid Crystal Display Drivers deals with Liquid Crystal Displays from the electronic engineering point of view and is the first expressively focused on their driving circuits. After introducing the physical-chemical properties of the LC substances, their evolution and application to LCDs, the book converges to the examination and in-depth explanation of those reliable techniques, architectures, and design solutions amenable to efficiently design drivers for passive-matrix and active-matrix LCDs, both for small size and large size panels. Practical approaches regularly adopted for mass production but also emerging ones are discussed. The topics treated have in many cases general validity and found application also in alternative display technologies (OLEDs, Electrophoretic Displays, etc.).

The purpose of this book is to review the current state of this quickly developing field. Up until now, there has been no concise review available of the rather diverse aspects of this field. This book gives a basic introduction to the concepts behind Bloch oscillations. It describes how the physics of high field transport has been investigated through a broad range of experimental techniques such as interband and intraband optical spectroscopy and transport experiments. Possible applications and further trends are also discussed.

This thesis examines a novel class of flexible electronic material with great potential for use in the construction of stretchable amplifiers and memory elements. Most remarkably the composite material produces spontaneous oscillations that increase in frequency when pressure is applied to it. In this way, the material mimics the excitatory response of pressure-sensing neurons in the human skin. The composites, formed of silicone and graphitic nanoparticles, were prepared in several allotropic forms and functionalized with naphthalene diimide molecules. A systematic study is presented of the negative differential resistance (NDR) region of the current-voltage curves, which is responsible for the material's active properties. This study was conducted as a function of temperature, graphite filling fraction, scaling to reveal the break-up of the samples into electric field domains at the onset of the NDR region, and an electric-field induced metal-insulator transition in graphite nanoparticles. The effect of molecular functionalization on the miscibility threshold and the current-voltage curves is demonstrated. Room-temperature and low-temperature measurements were performed on these composite films under strains using a remote-controlled, custom-made step motor bench.

Ferroelectric thin films continue to attract much attention due to their developing applications in memory devices, FeRAM, infrared sensors, piezoelectric sensors and actuators. This book, aimed at students, researchers and developers, gives detailed information about the basic properties of these materials and the associated device physics. The contributing authors are acknowledged experts in the field.

This book presents the state of the art in surface wrinkling, including current and future potential applications in biomedicine, tissue engineering, drug delivery, microfluidic devices, and other promising areas. Their use as templates, flexible electronics, and supports with controlled wettability and/or adhesion for biorelated applications demonstrate how the unique characteristics of wrinkled interfaces play a distinguishing and remarkable role. The fabrication approaches employed to induce wrinkle formation and the potential to fine-tune the amplitude and period of the wrinkles, their functionality, and their final morphology are thoroughly described. An overview of the main applications in which these buckled interfaces have already been employed or may have an impact in the near future is included. Presents a detailed description of the physical phenomena and strategies occurring at polymer surfaces to produce wrinkled surface patterns; Examines the different methodologies to produce morphology-controlled wrinkled surface patterns by means of physical and chemical treatment methods; Provides clear information on current and potential applications in flexible electronics and biomaterials, which are leading the use of these materials.

This book offers a new approach to the long-standing problem of high-Tc copper-oxide superconductors. It has been demonstrated that starting from a strongly correlated Hamiltonian, even within the mean-field regime, the "competing orders" revealed by experiments can be achieved using numerical calculations. In the introduction, readers will find a brief review of the high-Tc problem and the unique challenges it poses, as well as a comparatively simple numerical approach, the renormalized mean-field theory (RMFT), which provides rich results detailed in the following chapters. With an additional phase picked up by the original Hamiltonian, some behaviors of interactive fermions under an external magnetic field, which have since been experimentally observed using cold atom techniques, are also highlighted.

This book deals with optical properties of semiconductors at extremely short (pico- and femtosecond) time scales. The contributions, by an international roster of researchers, cover current research on a wide array of topics.Topics covered include: 1. Coherent Dynamics of Photoexcited Semiconductor Superlattices with Applied Homogeneous Electric Fields (Koch,Meier,Thomas) 2. Ultrafast non-equilibrium dynamics of intersubband excitations in quasi two dimensional semiconductors (Elsaesser,Woerner MPI Berlin) 3. Bloch-Oscillations in Semiconductors: Principles and Applications (Leo, TU Dresden) 4. Electron-velocity overshoot, electron ballistic transport and nonequilibrium phonon dynamics in nanostructure semiconductors (Tsen, Arizona State) 5. Coherent Control of Photocurrents in Semiconductors (Van Driel,Sipe U Toronto ) 6. Ensemble Monte Carlo Simulations of Ultrafast Phenomena in Semiconductors (Ferry & Goodnick, Arizona State) 7. Theory of Coherent Phonon Oscillations in Bulk GaAs (Stanton & Kuznetsov, U Florida) 8.Coherent Spectroscopy on Quantum Wires (Forchel, Bayer, & Bacher, U Wuerzburg) 9. The Vectorial Dynamics of Coherent Emission from Excitions (Smirl, U Iowa)

Strain Effect in Semiconductors: Theory and Device Applications presents the fundamentals and applications of strain in semiconductors and semiconductor devices that is relevant for strain-enhanced advanced CMOS technology and strain-based piezoresistive MEMS transducers. Discusses relevant applications of strain while also focusing on the fundamental physics pertaining to bulk, planar, and scaled nano-devices. Hence, this book is relevant for current strained Si logic technology as well as for understanding the physics and scaling for future strained nano-scale devices.