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A dual-channel noise measurement system capable of detecting the thermal noise of a 1- Omega resistor at room temperature was designed and constructed. The system was based on amplifying the noise signal under detection through two separated channels and taking the cospectrum estimate of the output of two channels. The system was used to measure the thermal noise and compare effective noise temperatures in electromigration-damaged and undamaged thin aluminium films. >

Monochromated Guinier-deWolff and Guinier-Lenne x-ray powder cameras and a scanning microdensitometer have been combinedinto a data system for the study of solid state reaction kinetics. Application of the room-temperature and high temperature cameras to both interface-controlled and diffusion-controlled kinetics is discussed. A graphical analysis method is presented.

A technique to detect local hot spots in thin aluminum films is discussed. Electromigration-damaged aluminum films of different dimensions have higher effective noise temperatures than undamaged films (good conductors) when they have the same environmental temperature and carry the same current density. The differences in noise temperature are attributed to film local joule heating associated with voids or poor film adhesion to the substrate. >

A GaAs MESFET 16x16 crosspoint switch has been fabricated on a 3-mm x 4-mm chip using a 1-μm super buffer logic (SBL) design containing approximately 10000 FETs and operating at 800 mW of power. A 99% confidence bit error rate (BER) better than 1*10/sup -3/ was obtained at 1.7 Gb/s rate using a 2/sup 7/ -1 pseudorandom NRZ (nonreturn-to-zero) sequence. The BER test was done on one path using a probe card. The chip has 255 out of 256 good crosspoints. The bad crosspoint was a repeating error from a mask defect. An advanced refractory-gate MESFET process was used to fabricate the chip. A lightly doped drain structure was used to reduce parasitic gate capacitance while maintaining acceptable source resistance, to reduce short-channel effects, to increase breakdown voltage compared to devices where the heavy source/drain implant is directly self-aligned to the gate edge. >