Furnace grown gate oxynitride using nitric oxide (NO)

Gate oxynitride was grown in NO for the first time. This approach can provide a tight N accumulation near the Si/SiO₂ interface. Much lower thermal budget is required for an NO process than for an N₂O process to produce an oxynitride with useful properties. Submicron MOSFET's with NO oxynitride showed superior current drive characteristics and comparable hot carrier immunity to those with N₂O oxynitride     

A semi-static complementary gain cell technology for sub-1 V supplyDRAM's

A new semi-static complementary gain cell for future low power DRAM's has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This gain cell consists of a write-transistor and its opposite conduction type read-transistor with a heating gate as a storage node which causes a shift in the threshold voltage. This gain cell provides a two orders of magnitude larger cell signal output and higher immunity to noise on the bitlines when compared with a conventional one-transistor DRAM cell without increasing the storage capacitance even at a supply voltage of 0.8 V. The 0.87 μm² cell size is achieved by using a 0.25 μm design rule with a polysilicon thin-film transistor built in the trench and phase shifted i-line lithography     

Dependence of thin film transistor characteristics on thedeposition conditions of silicon nitride and amorphous silicon

The systematic relation between thin film transistors' (TFT's) characteristics and the deposition conditions of amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiN) films and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films is investigated. It is observed that field effect mobility μ_FE and threshold voltage V_th of the TFT's strongly depend on the deposition conditions of these films. The maximum μ_FE of 0.88 cm²/V·s is obtained for the TFT of which a-SiN film is deposited at a pressure of 85 Pa. This phenomenon is due to the variation of the interface states density between a-Si:H film and a-SiN film     

Measuring efficiency of power plants in Israel by data envelopmentanalysis

An application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for measuring and evaluating the operating efficiency of power plants in the Israeli Electric Corporation (IEC) is presented. Emphasis is placed on the process of screening the list of potential input and output factors and determining the most relevant ones. Special attention is given to the qualitative factor concerning air pollution, which is treated as a categorical variable. The incorporation of `standard data' is examined and the results are analyzed     

Sequential amplitude estimation in multiuser communications

Considers the problem of multiuser amplitude estimation, i.e., the problem of estimating the amplitudes of several digital communications signals superimposed in the same channel. This problem is of importance in communications environments such as spread-spectrum radio networks, in which nonorthogonal multiplexing is used. Multiuser amplitude estimation is a critical prerequisite to the optimum demodulation of such signals using, for example, Verdu's algorithm. In the present paper, a sequential detection-estimation approach is applied to this problem, and several estimation paradigms, including the method of moments and likelihood-based estimators, are considered. The consistency, asymptotic variance, and complexity of these estimators are examined. A new method of constructing a recursive consistent and asymptotically efficient estimation algorithm out of a consistent estimator sequence is also suggested and is applied to the current setup. It is seen that detector-estimators that use these estimators in Verdu's algorithm result, asymptotically, in (known-amplitude) optimum error probabilities with little relative increase in complexity per demodulated bit     

Maximum and minimum return losses from a passive two-port networkterminated with a mismatched load

An analytical expression is derived for determining load-reflection coefficient phase-angle values that will lead to maximum and minimum return losses from a terminated two-port network. The expression is derived in terms of two-port network S-parameters and a load whose reflection-coefficient magnitude is a constant but can be any value greater than zero and less than or equal to unity. The equation is useful for cases where it is desirable to know how to position a load (1) to obtain maximum return loss for network-matching purposes or (2) to obtain minimum return loss for some types of reflector antenna applications. Two examples are given: One shows that for some types of reflector antennas with a mesh-type surface that is backed by another reflecting surface, a resonance phenomenon can occur and cause unexpectedly large dissipative losses (>30 dB) to occur. The other example shows that when a particular type of reflector antenna with a dielectric layer becomes wet from rain or condensation, large (>10 dB) signal losses can occur. For both examples, equations presented in this article were used to calculate the exact load-reflection coefficient phase values that led to worst-case return loss values. In practical situations, once the phenomenon is understood and predictable, steps can be taken to avoid these resonance regions     

Damage and strain in pseudomorphic vs relaxed GexSi1−x layers on Si(100) generated by Si ion irradiation

We compare both the strain and damage that 100 keV Si irradiation at room temperature introduces in pseudomorphic and relaxed Ge_xSi_1−x films grown on Si(100) substrates. The ion range is such that the Si/Ge_xSi_1−x interface is not significantly damaged. The amount of damage produced in pseudomorphic and relaxed Ge_xSi_1−x layers of similar x for irradiation doses up to 2.5 × 10¹⁴ Si/cm² is the same, which proves that a pre-existing uniform strain does not noticeably affect the irradiation-induced damage. However, the irradiation-induced strain does depend on the pre-existing strain of the samples. Possible interpretations are discussed. On leave from Inst. voor Kern en Stralingsfysika, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.     

Atmospheric and low pressure shadow masked MOVPE growth of InGaAs(P)/InP and (In)GaAs/(Al)GaAs heterostructures and quantum wells

The shadow masked growth technique is presented as a tool to achieve thickness and bandgap variations laterally over the substrate during metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. Lateral thickness and bandgap variations are very important for the fabrication of photonic integrated circuits, where several passive and active optical components need to be integrated on the same substrate. Several aspects of the shadow masked growth are characterized for InP based materials as well as for GaAs based materials. Thickness reductions are studied as a function of the mask dimensions, the reactor pressure, the orientation of the masked channels and the undercutting of the mask. The thickness reduction is strongly influenced by the mask dimensions and the reactor pressure, while the influence of the orientation of the channels and the amount of undercutting is only significant for narrow mask windows. During shadow masked growth, there are not only thickness variations but also compositional variations. Therefore, we studied the changes in In/Ga and As/P ratios for InGaAs and InGaAsP layers. It appears that mainly the In/Ga-ratio is responsible for compositional changes and that the As/P-ratio remains unchanged during shadow masked growth.     

Ultrahigh and controllable drain current peak-to-valley ratio innegative resistance field-effect transistors with a strained InGaAschannel

Negative resistance field-effect transistor (NERFET) devices using either strained InGaAs or unstrained GaAs channel layers have been fabricated. The strained InGaAs channel NERFET's show strong negative differential resistance and large drain current peak-to-valley ratio. The peak-to-valley ratio of the InGaAs channel NERFET is more than 3000 at room temperature and larger than one million (10⁶) at 77 K. The peak-to-valley ratio is controllable by adjusting the collector voltage     

P-N double quantum well resonant interband tunneling diode withpeak-to-valley current ratio of 144 at room temperature

The current-voltage characteristics of the P-N double quantum well resonant interband tunneling (RIT) diodes in InAlAs-InGaAs system have been improved in this letter. The peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR) is as high as 144 at room temperature. As we know, this is the highest room temperature PVCR ever reported in any tunneling devices. Moreover, the influence of the central barrier thickness varying from 10 Å to 30 Å on the device characteristics is also studied