Search

We demonstrated fully automated in-line atomic force microscopy (AFM) for local height variation monitoring solution. Two use cases, which are local variation of SADP Fin height and oxide recess height in Fin reveal process and that of Cu nail protrusion and Cu pad recess height in wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding process were evaluated in order to evaluate in-line AFM capability as a metrology solution for process development and in-line process monitoring. In-line AFM provides not only visual information of nanotopography, which could lead to quick decision making, but also to quantitative information of local height variation where other metrology solutions could not have provided. In-line AFM could provide many advantages, which are nondestructive measurement, sub-nanometer accuracy and long term reliability. Those advantages help learning cycle and process quality to enhance.

Flexible and lightweight amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) based thin-film solar cells on surface-textured glass-fabric reinforced inorganic-organic hybrid materials (hybrimer) composite films are developed in a superstrate configuration. The flexible and transparent film for the substrate was fabricated by impregnation and lamination of a woven glass-fabric with an epoxy-oligosiloxane based hybrimer on glass used as a temporary substrate. The epoxy hybrimer film showed high optical transparency of more than ∼90% for wavelengths above 500nm and light scattering property. In order to improve light trapping, the surface texture of the film was replicated from a master texture of Asahi U-type glass by nanoimprint lithography. The fabricated cell was a single junction structure of ZnO:Al/p-μc-Si:H/p-a-SiC:H/i-a-Si:H/n-μc-Si:H/Al on the flexible film, and the thickness of i layer is ∼300 nm. The flexible a-Si:H solar cell on surface-textured expoxy hybrimer film showed an conversion efficiency of 6.4%.

Amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cell fabricated on zinc oxide (ZnO) has poor fill factor (FF) resulting from a high resistive contact between ZnO and p-type amorphous silicon carbide (p-a-SiC:H) films. This is due to the existence of a wide depletion region in the p-a-SiC:H adjacent to the ZnO/p-a-SiC:H interface. To overcome this contact problem, an amorphous tungsten oxide (WO 3 ) layer was inserted between ZnO and p-a-SiC:H. It was found that the insertion of the WO 3 layer improves the cell performance by reducing series resistance. Since this layer has higher optical band-gap (3.35 eV) than a-SiC:H (2.1 eV), there was no change of current density in short wavelength regions. A radio-frequency magnetron sputtering apparatus was used to deposit ZnO:Al on glass. The structure of the cells was ZnO:Al (800 nm)/n-a-WO 3 (4 nm)/p-a-SiC:H (10 nm)/i-a-Si:H (270 nm)/n-a-Si:H (30 nm)/Al (100 nm). As a result of the WO 3 insertion, the efficiency of the solar cell enhanced from 6.89% to 7.45%.

Flexible and lightweight amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) based thin-film solar cells on glass-fabric reinforced inorganic-organic hybrid materials (hybrimer) composite films are newly proposed in the paper. They were developed in a superstrate configuration where light is absorbed in a-Si:H layers after passing through the transparent film. The flexible and transparent film for the substrate was fabricated using glass-fabric placement and a hybrimer coating on glass used as a temporary substrate. It was cured under a high pressure. The flexible film on the glass showed optical transmittances of more than ∼87% for wavelengths above 550nm and moderate light-scattering properties. Flexible p-i-n a-Si:H solar cells were developed on glass-fiber reinforced hybrimer composite film in the superstrate configuration using the glass as a temporary substrate during the deposition process. The flexible a-Si:H single junction solar cells show an efficiency of 5.3% with V oc =0.86 V, J sc =10.6 mA/cm2 and FF=58%.

With the advent of high-performance multi-processing demands for real-time multimedia and broadband networking in battery-based mobile systems, high-speed and low power mobile SDRAM/DDRs are becoming increasingly important. We present an on-the-fly power-cut scheme that can be applied to mobile DRAM without any special modes and a global data-line repeater scheme to reduce the data-line delay. In addition, 4b data prefetch and a ZQ calibrated output driver scheme are used to achieve 4.3GB/s/chip (1066Mb/s/pin) bandwidth with 110mW power dissipation.

A 10b driver IC for laser projection full HDTV applications uses a 7b resistor-string DAC and a unity-gain buffer with a 3b DAC. The driver has 546 output channels, output voltage deviation of less than 1mV, a 200MHz mini-LVDS interface, and a maximum settling time of 2.4 mus for a 1080pixel spatial optical modulator with 40pF capacitive loads. The IC is fabricated in a 0.35 mum CMOS process and the chip area is 21.7 times3.0 mm2

Self refresh current in modern DRAMs is becoming more difficult problem to handle because the decreasing cell transistor size has a negative effect on the uniformity of capacitor charge. In order to solve this issue, adaptive self refresh(ASR) scheme has been developed. A dual period based refresh is performed in the ASR scheme to reduce power dissipation using row register information. The row register information is adaptively modified according to the cell data retention characteristics. When DRAM enters self refresh mode, only the rows which were activated for write are tested using internal refresh test circuits. The test results are used to choose the appropriate period for the dual period base self refresh operation. This paper demonstrates 512M mobile SDRAM utilizing this adaptive self refresh(ASR) capability to minimize standby power to 150 uA @85degC while maintaining chip area of the conventional scheme using the same process technology.

The spatio-temporal continuous wavelet transform (CWT) has proven useful for motion estimation (Me) applications. We present tracking results that highlight the ability of the CWT approach to handle non-linear motion and time-varying object signatures (as those produced by 3D motion projected in the image plane). In addition, we present two low-complexity approaches that emulate the behavior of the CWT velocity selective filters. The first approach is based on infinity impulse response (IIR) approximations of the temporal response of the CWT filters. The second technique is based on directional decompositions and results in a novel 3D decomposition, the directional filter bank.

A new directional filter bank for image analysis and classification is proposed. This paper introduces an improved structure in order to visualize subband outputs of the directional filter banks, while retaining the attractive properties of the original directional filter banks such as 1-D separable filtering, perfect reconstruction, and maximal decimation. Using this structure, any arbitrary 2/sup n/ band directional filter bank can be implemented by cascading simple directional filter bank blocks, unlike the original structure that needs a parallel structure for visualizing subband outputs. Also, in order to have nondistorted phase information in the subbands for visualization, both FIR and IIR filter prototypes that can be implemented efficiently are provided for linear phase filtering. This paper shows the approach proposed here can be applied to image analysis and classification.