With smaller electronic devices and higher transmission speeds, a digital circuit will cause potential electromagnetic interference (EMI) and signal integrity (SI) problems. Nowadays, the flexible printed circuit board (FPC) is widely used in electronic systems, especially in the video circuit. In this thesis, we used transmission line model to explain effect of the structure of the flexible printed circuit board transmission lines. Eye-diagram is a fast and convenient tool to analyze the quality of the high speed transmission, and we can use the equivalent model to substitute for the electromagnetic (EM) model to simulate the performance. We used differential circuit and the reflection gain to increase the height and width parameters of Eye-diagram, and make the quality of signal transmission higher. For video driver circuit, since the terminal resistance is different depending on whether the IC is on or off, the standard probe cannot measure mixed-mode S-parameter directly due to the connectors. Thus, we provided a de-embedding method to remove the effects of high speed interconnect line on the test board. Finally, we use a simple structure to verify the method, and it can be used to measure mixed-mode S-parameter on the standard of Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) for D-PHY, v0.90.00.

This thesis studies the reliability issues of encapsulated cholesteric LCD, and analyzes the defective pixel. Adjusting fabrication process parameters, we change the thickness of the buffer layer and absorption layer to explore the influence of different boundaries to CLC. It is found that the buffer layer can provide a good protection. When the buffer layer is getting thicker, the less the defective pixels appear, and the absorption layer cannot induce defect. The reflection band of the ITRI¡¦s encapsulated CLCs blue shifts to UV band and then become defective pixel. When CLCs exposed to the atmosphere with large area, the reflected color will be shifted. The shift of reflection band is due to CLC¡¦s inherent properties. Different kind of CLC has different properties, and we found the reflection band of ITRI¡¦s CLC is blue shift and the nematic E48 with chiral dopant R811 is red. Mixing different features of CLCs with appropriate proportion can reduce the color shift. In conclusion, mixing different characteristics CLCs with appropriate proportion and providing good protection to encapsulated CLC, we can reduce CLC¡¦s color shift and restrain the defective pixel.

Due to the increasing global competition in today¡¦s business environment, current Transaction Processing Systems and Management Information Systems can no longer satisfy the enterprise¡¦s needs. Mangers need to analyze data from different views to recognizing business status, making decisions, and setting up the policies. To support such works, many information systems and technologies are developed including Decision Support Systems, Executive Information Systems, data warehouses, and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP). The implementation of OLAP and data warehousing project are expensive and risky. The results of implementing OLAP and data warehousing in most of the organizations do not, however, always prove a success. The common problem occurs in the requirement analysis phase when analyzing the dimensions and hierarchical relationships for OLAP. The user requirement can not be defined completely and the developers often need to modify or reconstruct the dimensions and hierarchical relationships to meet the user¡¦s changing needs. This is an enormous burden to the system developers. Although many tools with OLAP provide the flexibility for user creating analytical reports by using predefined dimensions and hierarchical relationships. However, a methodology for designing flexible report for OLAP to support ad hoc analysis is still lacking. This study proposes a methodology that is developed for designing flexible report for OLAP, which presents the dimensions and hierarchical relationships by visualized meta-templates and templates to help users create analysis reports. The methodology provides the flexibility not only in representing dimensions and hierarchical relationships for OLAP, but also in producing flexible reports. With such flexibility, the users can create analytical reports to support ad hoc analysis by choosing appropriated meta-template and template easily.

Abstract Recently, a-Si:H TFT based liquid-crystal display has encroached on the territory of the cathode ray tubes. There is a tendency to fabricate the active matrix LCD on the plastic or flexible substrates. Instead of glass, flexible substrates will make the application of TFT-LCD extensive due to the several advantages: i.e. ultra-slim, light-weight and unbreakable, etc. Nevertheless, the limitation of process temperature for the low-melting substrates is an important issue. In this thesis, the feasibility of a-Si TFT devices fabricated on flexible substrates by using two different technologies have been evaluated. First, a-Si TFT devices were fabricated on glass at 150¢Jsuccessfully and the characteristics of films deposited at lowtemperature have been studied sequentially. For improving the adhesion between organic and inorganic layers and protecting substrate against water or gas during processes, several hot coating layers were investigated. With hot coating layer be introduced, glass was substituted by plastic substrates. We chose PES as the flexible substrate from several candidates due to better optical transmittance and good thermal stability below 200¢J. After direct fabrication on flexible substrate, the stability of electronic characteristics were been investigated with bending examination. In addition, TFT devices were successfully separated from glass and transferred to flexible substrates such as PES or metal foil. Using this technology, temperature limitation has been circumvented and TFT devices still exhibit good electronic characteristic. Furthermore, the bending measurements have been also applied to devices.

The thesis is mainly divided into three parts. The first part will discuss about structures, manufacture, and design flow of embedded passives in organic and flexible substrates, and the results of measurement and electromagnetic (EM) simulation will be compared as well. Second part will discuss the theory and the process of establishing broadband model, and the broadband model will be compared to Pi model and EM simulation. In the third part, we will try to design embedded bandpass filters in organic substrate by the experience of establishing the library of embedded passives. Because of lacking of the fabrication of large capacitance devices in organic substrate, we design bandpass filters by using T type in order to limit the lump devices in the larger inductance and smaller capacitance. The final result of the filters are small in size and have high performance, thus they can be well applied to the RF system in chip (SIP) of wireless communication.

The off-state leakage current under back light illumination is, in particular, a serious problem in the multimedia displays that require high intensity backlight illumination. The photo leakage current characteristic of flexible a-Si:H TFTs has been measured in this study . The device activation energy (Ea) of a-Si:H TFTs extracted from various temperature measurements are different from those of typical a-Si:H TFTs, because the Fermi level of a-Si:H TFTs are modulate by the density of states (DOS) in the a-Si:H band gap. The information on DOS is important for understanding the physical mechanisms responsible for the device behavior. It¡¦s related to the threshold voltage,iii subthreshold slope, field effect mobility and the stability of the TFTs. Experimental results show the photo leakage currents of a-Si:H TFTs under tensile stress are less than that of flattened a-Si:H TFTs stemmed the weak light intensity. In addition, the small shifts of threshold voltage and subthreshold swing are resulted from the smaller Ea in a-Si:H channel material.

In this thesis, we consider a capacity allocation problem in flexible manufacturing systems. We assume limited time and tool magazine capacities on the Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines. We have a set of operations that have to be assigned to the machines and each operation requires a set of tools to be processed. Our problem is to allocate the available capacity of the CNC machines to operations and their required tools. We consider two problems in this study: maximizing the total weight of operations where there are a limited number of tools of each type available and maximizing total weight minus total tooling cost where the tools can be used or purchased at a cost. We model the problems as Integer Linear Programs and show that they are NP-hard in the strong sense. For the total weight problem, we propose upper bounds, branch and bound algorithm for exact solutions and several heuristics for approximate solutions. For the bicriteria problem, we use Lagrangean relaxation technique to obtain lower and upper bounds. Our computational results have revealed that all solution approaches give satisfactory results in reasonable times.

Expanding product variety and high customer service provision are both major challenges for manufacturers to compete in the global operating environment. In addition to reduce cost and response customers¡¦ needs quickly, redesigning products and processes so as to delay the point of product differentiation is becoming an emerging means to meet these challenges. Consequently, this is the concept of postponement. The principle of postponement calls for redesigning products and processes so that the stages of the production process in which a common process is used are prolonged. Once orders are received, manufacturers finish the final operation to address the demands of mass customization. However, the product / process redesign will produce additional costs and the trade-off between costs will make enterprises hesitate to change the points of differentiation. Moreover, when the outside conditions change, the framework of total costs also changes and the operating decisions must be reconsidered again. In this paper, we develop a simple model that captures the costs and benefits associated with the redesign strategy in various scenarios. We apply this model to discuss the following three key questions: (1). In each scenario, where is the point of differentiation in the production process¡H (2). How should a firm design its processes to lower the total cost when changing is impossible or too costly in the fast changing environment¡H (3). If an agile firm can change its mode of production to respond to the ever changing environment, how should it adjust the pattern of postponement to lower the total cost¡H Since there are wide varieties of postponement, we focus our model to analyze two different product / process redesign approaches, namely, standardization and modular design, that are motivated by many real examples. We also compare these two approaches in all respects to provide more explicit principles and directions for enterprises. Finally, we draw the following conclusions. First, in determining the stage at which the point of differentiation should occur, the key variables are the investment cost per operation and the additional cost, including the processing cost and inventory holding cost, that are resulted from postponement. The trade-off between those variables will determine the optimal postponement strategy. In the case when outside condition is unfavorable for firms, it may not be advisable to apply the principle of postponement. On the hand, when the condition is beneficial, postponement is a better choice.

The purpose of this paper is to study the design of robust control for a flexible beam. First, the finite element method (FEM) is used to formulate the ordinary differential equations (ODEs) of the dynamic system of the beam model, and a controller is designed via the H-inf control theory. From the computer simulation results, the following conclusions could be drawn. 1. The developed controller is capable of precision positioning and tolerating external disturbance. 2. The robust stability for the system is assured. Furthermore, robust control of linear one-dimensional systems is extended here to two-dimensional systems. The finite difference method (FDM) is applied to partial differential equations (PDEs) to obtain the so-called Roesser discrete state-space model. We discussed the application of H¡Û control for two-dimensional systems and the design of H-inf controller is formulated into a convex optimization problem characterized by linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, the solutions of the LMIs are then used to construct a two-dimensional H¡Û controller.

In this research, CuInSe2 thin film is grown at 350¢J low temperature by photo-assisted co-evaporation system to fabricate PI (polyimide) substrate flexible thin film solar cells. The low temperature growing CuInSe2 is analyzed by raman spectroscopy. Besides, sputtering Mo thin film on PI and CIS/Mo/PI contact properties are also researched for device fabrication. By studying the Ar pressure and Mo internal stress relationship during the deposition, the Mo layer has been fabricated with both low resistivity and good adhesion. The sheet resistance of Mo layer is 1.95 £[/¡¼ and shows ohmic contact with CuInSe2 at temperature below 350¢J. Raman spectroscopy shows that photo-assisted CuInSe2 has stronger and thinner A1 peak than which without light. Two-stage growing can help eliminating Cu2Se and background signals further. CA structure vibration modes are involved in the asymmetric A1 peak broadening. The SLG/Mo/CIS/CdS/ZnO:Al/Al structured device has open voltage, Voc = 0.320 V, short cut current, Isc = 3.61 mA, and solar cell fill factor, FF = 49.8 %. On the other hand, PI/Mo/CIS/CdS/ZnO:Al/Al structured device has open voltage, Voc = 0.318 V, short cut current, Isc = 2.71 mA, and solar cell fill factor, FF = 39.0 %¡C