Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.

Panasonic Electric Works Co., Ltd.

Other

Junji Imai

Shuji Yamada

Tadashi Hamada

Shinya Murase

Hiroshi Inoue

Hiroaki Okada

Nobuteru Maekawa

Hiroyuki Inoue

Masayuki Sagawa

Teruaki Komatsu

Narimasa Iwamoto

Michimasa Tsuzaki

Yuri Sakai

Hiroshi Yamada

Hitoshi Makinaga

Fumio Iwane

Shinji Fujimoto

Masao Tanahashi

Akihide Sugawa

Hirokazu Yoshioka

Shousuke Akisada

Shigetoshi Sakon

Toshihisa Hirai

Kentaro Kobayashi

Osamu Imahori

Fumio Mihara

Kishiko Hirai, Legal Representative

Hiroaki Yoshida

Hajime Kojima

Mitsuru Kobayashi

Kouichi Hirai

Yasufumi Masaki

Youichiro Nakahara

Naoto Ikegawa

Tomoharu Watanabe

Supply of power is ensured on use without requiring troublesome works such as battery replacement work and charging work. Specifically, hearing aids, which collect sound, amplify the collected sound, and output the amplified sound, boosts electromotive force generated by the Peltier module derived from temperature difference between a human-body contact portion and an ambient-air contact portion, and causes sound collecting units, a controller IC, a speaker to operate by the boosted voltage.

Hearing aid

In a pressure sensor including a pressure detecting element in an intermediate portion or at a deep side of a through hole formed in a protrusion, a body portion (a base portion and the protrusion) is made of ceramic or an insulative resin material and molded into a predetermined shape, and the pressure sensor is constituted as a molded interconnect device in which a conductive pattern is formed on a surface thereof. Accordingly, a smaller pressure sensor can be obtained.

Pressure sensor

An electrostatically atomizing device capable of instantly giving an electrostatically atomizing effect without requiring a water tank. The electrostatically atomizing device includes an emitter electrode, an opposed electrode opposed to the emitter electrode, a water feeder configured to give water on the emitter electrode, and a high voltage source configured to apply a high voltage across said emitter electrode and said opposed electrode to electrostatically charge the water on the emitter electrode for spraying charged minute water particles from a discharge end of the emitter electrode. The water feeder is configured to condense the water on the emitter electrode from within the surrounding air, enabling to supply the water on the emitter electrode in a short time without relying upon an additional water tank. Thus, an atomization of the charged minute water particles can be obtained immediately upon use of the device.

Electrostatcially atomizing device

A thermoelectric module is capable of successfully reducing the heat stress for increased reliability. The module includes a plurality of thermoelectric chips of P-type and N-type arranged in a matrix between sets of first and second contacts to form a series electrical circuit. The chips are arranged to give at least three chip arrays each having a limited number of the chips. A first carrier is provided on one side of the chips to carry the first contacts and to include first bridges each integrally joining two adjacent first contacts to define first discrete couples for electrical connection of the chips in each chip array. The first carrier further includes at least two inter-array bridges which are solely responsible for electrical interconnection between the adjacent chip arrays. On the opposite side of the chips, there are formed a plurality of second bridges each integrally joining the two adjacent second contacts to give second discrete couples for electrical connection of the two adjacent chips in each of the chip arrays. Thus, the inter-array bridges are formed only on one side of the chips for interconnection of the first contacts between the adjacent chip arrays. Therefore, the heat stress applied to the end of the chip array where the two adjacent chip arrays are interconnected can be well relieved on the side of the second contacts in which the second discrete couples are kept totally isolated from each other.

Thermoelectric module with interarray bridges

Thermoelectric module and a method of fabricating the same

An intermetallic-compound coated stainless steel having excellent rigidity, toughness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance comprises a substrate of a martensite stainless steel having a Vickers hardness of 400 or more, and a hard film having a bottom surface adhered to the substrate and an exposed top surface. The hard film has an outermost layer made of a compound selected from the group consisting of a Ti&mdash;Ni intermetallic compound, Ti&mdash;Fe intermetallic compound, and a mixture of the Ti&mdash;Ni intermetallic compound and a Ti&mdash;Cu intermetallic compound. The coated stainless steel can be produced by cladding an outer sheet made of Ti or a Ti alloy to a martensite stainless steel sheet directly or through an intermediate sheet made of Ni, Fe or a Ni&mdash;Cu alloy, heating the laminate at a temperature of 900&deg; C. to 1150&deg; C. for 30 seconds to 5 minutes, and then cooling the heated laminate at a cooling rate of 1&deg; C./sec or more.

Stainless steel coated with intermetallic compound and process for producing the same

A ferrous alloy is formed with a Fe--Cr stainless steel having a Vickers hardness of 400 or more as a substrate and a Fe--Al diffusion layer having a thickness of 2 to 50 .mu.m. The diffusion layer contains at least 90 vol % of an intermetallic compound of Al and Fe relative to a total volume of the diffusion layer. The Al content included within a depth of at least 2 .mu.m of the diffusion layer is 35 to 65% by weight based upon total weight of a region of the diffusion layer ranging up to the thickness of at least 2 .mu.m. It is preferred to use as the substrate a precipitation-hardening stainless steel comprising 66 to 81.9 wt % of Fe, 15 to 20 wt % of Cr, 3 to 13 wt % of Ni, and one element selected from 3 to 6 wt % of Cu, 0.5 to 2 wt % of Al, and 0.01 to 0.2 wt % of a total of C and N, or a high carbon stainless steel comprising 73 to 89.9 wt % of Fe, 10 to 19 wt % of Cr, 0.1 to 1.2 wt % of C, and less than 3 wt % of Ni. The ferrous alloy may be used for sliding parts such as gears or bearings, and blades of electric shavers or hair clippers.

Ferrous alloy with Fe-Al diffusion layer and method of making the same

A ferritic alloy with a wear resistive oxide scale is obtained through the steps of pressing a ferritic alloy powder containing aluminum into a powder compact of a desired configuration, sintering the powder compact in a non-oxidizing atmosphere to provide a resulting sintered product, and heat-treating the sintered product in an oxidizing gas atmosphere in order to precipitate in the surface thereof alumina in the form of an alumina scale as the wear resistive oxide scale which is responsible for improved surface hardness or wear resistance. Due to the inherent porous nature of the sintered product, the oxidizing gas can readily penetrate deep into the surface of sintered product to facilitate the oxidization of the product surface into the alumina scale, in addition to that the oxidization depth can be controlled such as by the density of the product, which makes it possible to readily control the thickness of the alumina scale. The resulting alumina scale has an improved scale adherence due to the ferritic structure of the alloy.

Process of preparing a ferritic alloy with a wear-resistive alumina scale

Growing community of inventors

Amagasaki, Japan

Junji Imai