Modeling, qualitative analysis, and performance evaluation of theetching area in an IC wafer fabrication system using Petri nets

Integrated circuit (IC) wafer fabrication systems can be characterized as discrete event systems. Petri nets are tools that have been successfully used to model and analyze such systems. This paper reports a project of applying Petri net methodologies to detailed modeling, qualitative analysis, and performance evaluation of the etching area in a real-world IC wafer fabrication system located in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, To tackle the problem of building a large and complex system model, a synthesis technique is used. The resultant extended net model is checked for important qualitative properties in manufacturing. A simple control policy for deadlock prevention is proposed. To obtain performance measures, simulation is used. The simulation result shows that except a small number of machines, the errors between the simulated and actual utilizations are less than 5%, The validated model can be used to answer many “what-if” questions, such as predicting the maximal throughput and bottleneck machines     

Multigrid algorithms for a vertex–centered covolume method for elliptic problems

Summary. We analyze V–cycle multigrid algorithms for a class of perturbed problems whose perturbation in the bilinear form preserves the convergence properties of the multigrid algorithm of the original problem. As an application, we study the convergence of multigrid algorithms for a covolume method or a vertex–centered finite volume element method for variable coefficient elliptic problems on polygonal domains. As in standard finite element methods, the V–cycle algorithm with one pre-smoothing converges with a rate independent of the number of levels. Various types of smoothers including point or line Jacobi, and Gauss-Seidel relaxation are considered. Received August 19, 1999 / Revised version received July 10, 2000 / Published online June 7, 2001     

Copper migration in cdte heterojunction solar cells

CdTe solar cells were fabricated by depositing a Au/Cu contact with Cu thickness in the range of 50 to 150Å on polycrystalline CdTe/CdS/SnO₂/glass structures. The increase in Cu thickness improves ohmic contact and reduces series resistance (R_s), but the excess Cu tends to diffuse into CdTe and lower shunt resistance (R_sh) and cell performance. Light I-V and secondary ion mass spectros-copy (SIMS) measurements were performed to understand the correlations between the Cu contact thickness, the extent of Cu incorporation in the CdTe cells, and its impact on the cell performance. The CdTe/CdS/SnO₂/glass, CdTe/ CdS/GaAs, and CdTe/GaAs structures were prepared in an attempt to achieve CdTe films with different degrees of crystallinity and grain size. A large grain polycrystalline CdTe thin film solar cell was obtained for the first time by selective etching the GaAs substrate coupled with the film transfer onto a glass substrate. SIMS measurement showed that poor crystallinity and smaller grain size of the CdTe film promotes Cu diffusion and decreases the cell performance. Therefore, grain boundaries are the main conduits for Cu migration and larger CdTe grain size or alternate method of contact formation can mitigate the adverse effect of Cu and improve the cell performance.     

Optimal design of digital IIR filters by using hybrid taguchi genetic algorithm

A hybrid Taguchi genetic algorithm (HTGA) is applied in this paper to solve the problem of designing optimal digital infinite-impulse response (IIR) filters. The HTGA approach is a method of combining the traditional GA (TGA), which has a powerful global exploration capability, with the Taguchi method, which can exploit the optimum offspring. The Taguchi method is inserted between crossover and mutation operations of a TGA. Based on minimizing the L/sub p/-norm approximation error and minimizing the ripple magnitudes of both passband and stopband, a multicriterion combination is employed as the design criterion to obtain the optimal IIR filter that can fit different performance requirements. The proposed HTGA approach is effectively applied to solve the multiparameter and multicriterion optimization problems of designing the digital low-pass (LP), high-pass (HP), bandpass (BP), and bandstop (BS) filters. In these studied problems, there are many parameters and numerous local optima so that these studied problems are challenging enough for evaluating the performances of any proposed GA-based approaches. The computational experiments show that the proposed HTGA approach can obtain better digital IIR filters than the existing GA-based method reported recently in the literature.     

Electro-optic mapping systems of electric-field using CW laser diodes

Two novel systems are proposed to perform the electro-optic (EO) mapping of the electric-field strength close to electrode structure using CW laser diodes. By these systems, mappings of both static (DC) and high-frequency electric-field can be obtained. For the static field, the field is chopped to increase the sensitivity performance. For the high-frequency field, an intensity modulation laser, instead of a pulse laser, is used to perform the mapping measurement in frequency domain, instead of in time domain. This approach greatly simplifies the system. An experiment set-up using a vertical cavity surface emitted laser diode (VCSEL) of a wavelength 850 nm and its mapping results for a coplanar waveguide (CPW) with the signal frequency around 1 GHz are reported.     

UPCF: a new point coordination function with QoS and power management for multimedia over wireless LANs

In this paper, we propose a new novel polling-based medium access control protocol, named UPCF (Unified Point Coordination Function), to provide power conservation and quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees for multimedia applications over wireless local area networks. Specifically, UPCF has the following attractive features. First, it supports multiple priority levels and guarantees that high-priority stations always join the polling list earlier than low-priority stations. Second, it provides fast reservation scheme such that associated stations with real-time traffic can get on the polling list in bounded time. Third, it employs dynamic channel time allocation scheme to support CBR/VBR transportation and provide per-flow probabilistic bandwidth assurance. Fourth, it employs the power management techniques to let mobile stations save as much energy as possible. Fifth, it adopts the mobile-assisted admission control technique such that the point coordinator can admit as many newly flows as possible while not violating QoS guarantees made to already-admitted flows. The performance of UPCF is evaluated through both analysis and simulations. Simulation results do confirm that, as compared with the PCF in IEEE 802.11, UPCF not only provides higher goodput and energy throughput, but also achieves lower power consumption and frame loss due to delay expiry. Last but not least, we expect that UPCF can pass the current Wi-Fi certification and may coexist with the upcoming IEEE 802.11e standard.     

Infinite products of relations, set-valued series and uniform openness of multifunctions

Using the notations of convergent series of sets and convergent products of relations, general open mapping theorems are presented which encompass classical results of Banach, Ptak, Khanh, and others.     

Theoretical investigations of the molecular conformation and reorganization energies in the organic diamines as hole‐transporting materials

Recently, organic diamine compounds have been widely used as hole‐transporting materials. In this work, DFT B3LYP method with the 6‐31G^* basis set was performed to investigate the influence of molecular conformation on the reorganization energy of a series of tetra(aryl)benzidine‐based hole‐transport materials. The results indicate that there are two types (i.e., ISB and BD/TPD) of geometric differences of the organic diamines with the relaxation processes. The reorganization energy of the ISB type is lower than that of the BD/TPD type. For the ISB type, the terminal phenyl moiety of the molecular framework plays an important role in determining the Marcus‐type reorganization energy and the central biphenyl moiety does not. A methyl group attached to a terminal phenyl can be used to tune the reorganization energy. According to the statistical analysis, four geometric parameters could affect the reorganization energy of the BD/TPD type. The conformation of either the central biphenyl or the terminal phenyl moiety of the BD/TPD type determines the Marcus‐type reorganization energy associated with the charge transport process at the molecular level. Presumably, this calculation can be employed to predict the electroluminescence (EL) character of the other organic diamines and to improve the design of new hole‐transporting materials in organic light‐emitting devices (OLEDs). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A study of high spin states in the transitional nucleus90Mo

The reaction⁵⁸Ni(³⁶Ar, 4p)⁹⁰Mo has been studied at a beam energy of 149 MeV. A detector array consisting of the OSIRIS spectrometer (12 Compton-suppressed Ge detectors), four charged-particleδE detectors and seven NE-213 neutron detectors at the VICKSI accelerator in Berlin has been used to measure the gamma radiation inγγ- and particle-γγ-coincidence mode. An additional Ge detector was placed at 162? to the beam direction to provide information on DCO ratios. The level scheme of⁹⁰Mo has been extended up to an excitation energy of about 12 MeV and probable spin 23?. Some 70 transitions and 40 levels have been newly identified. Spin assignments have been proposed on the basis of measured DCO ratios. Shell model calculations in a model space consisting of the proton 1f _5/2, 2p _3/2, 2p _1/2, and 1g _9/2 orbits and the neutron 2p _1/2, 1g _9/2, 1g _7/2, 2d _5/2, 2d _3/2, and 3s _1/2 orbits with some truncation were made for states above 9? and the predicted structure of these states is discussed.