Chromium Electroplating Solutions as Two-Phase Fluids: The Influence on Solution Conductivity

The contribution of N.T. Kudryavtsev (and later his son V.N. Kudryavtsev) to the development of electrodeposition science and technology, and especially to that of chromium, is inestimable. It is a privilege on this occasion to present some considerations of the two-phase nature of chromium electroplating solutions, caused by the generation of hydrogen gas and the use of vigorous air agitation, and to discuss its influence on fluid conductivity and consequent power consumption during electrodeposition.     

Improvement of FinFET electrical characteristics by hydrogen annealing

Hydrogen anneal is used during FinFET processing to round off the corners of the silicon fins prior to gate oxidation and to smooth the surface of the fin sidewalls. This procedure greatly improves gate leakage and, in addition, reduces the width of the fins, resulting in a lower threshold voltage and improved drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) characteristics. Reduction of the leakage current by up to four orders of magnitude is obtained after edge rounding by hydrogen annealing. In addition, a 50% decrease of DIBL is observed, due to fin width reduction.     

Mixing regular convex polytopes

The mixing operation for abstract polytopes gives a natural way to construct a minimal common cover of two polytopes. In this paper, we apply this construction to the regular convex polytopes, determining when the mix is again a polytope, and completely determining the structure of the mix in each case.     

Implementation of ISO 9001 in a medical testing laboratory

 The Department of Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Genetics, within the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research at Westmead Hospital, is a medical testing laboratory operating within the public sector health system of New South Wales, Australia. It provides acute-care pathology services to Westmead Hospital (a 900-bed tertiary referral university teaching hospital) as well as to three district hospitals and three rural hospitals. In addition to these core clinical chemistry services, it offers approximately 150 specialised biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, trace metal and molecular genetics assays as a reference laboratory service. In 1993, the Department became Australia's first medical testing laboratory to be registered to ISO 9001-1987/AS3901-1987. In 1995, this certification was extended to AS/NZS ISO 9001-1994. We are currently preparing for further accreditation to ISO/IEC Guide 25-1990, with additional supplementary requirements for medical testing. This paper describes the Quality System that the Department developed and which has been successfully maintained and extended since original certification. Important features of the Quality System are: 1. Primary design of the Quality System to meet medical and customer needs, with subsequent addition of required ISO elements. 2. Use of national Quality Award criteria to identify key business processes. 3. Development of integrated technical non-conformance, customer complaint, staff suggestion, and quality system corrective action procedures. 4. Implementation without external resources. Our conclusions are that ISO 9000 Quality Systems can be applied to medical testing laboratories, and can be implemented with minimum resource costs. Improvements in technical and service quality and business performance have resulted from this process. However, implementation of ISO 9000 at the level of individual Departments is not ideal. Greater improvements are possible when this process is undertaken at the level of the entire organisation. Received: 9 September 1996 Accepted: 5 October 1996     

如何选定电子设计自动化的目标

当电子产业仍然处在滑坡时,于6月2日至6日在阿纳海姆会议中心召开的第40届设计自动化年会(DAC)距离迪斯尼乐园仅仅数百码之遥.,这是非常合适的.业界希望下滑走势早日结束,随后出现一个更为平静、更加可以预测的时代.2002年电子设计自动化(EDA)产业的销售额,首次比上年度下降,2002年的总收入比2001年少7%,仅为37亿美元.令人宽慰的是,EDA产业的业绩比半导体产业要好.可惜的是,EDA的客户不是半导体行业的成员,就是半导体行业的客户.所以,在处于负增长期间,在整个经济前景不确定情况下,设计自动化年会面临的挑战是如何吸引更多的人员到会.