Effects of rapid thermal annealing on ohmic contact of AIGaN/GaN HEMTs

Ohmic contacts with Ti/Al/Ti/Au source and drain electrodes on A1GaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors （HEMTs） were fabricated and subjected to rapid thermal annealing （RTA） in flowing N2. The wafer was divided into 5 parts and three of them were annealed for 30 s at 700, 750, and 800 ℃, respectively, the others were annealed at 750 ℃ for 25 and 40 s. Due to the RTA, a change from Schottky contact to Ohmic contact has been obtained between the electrode layer and the A1GaN/GaN heterojunction layer. We have achieved a low specific contact resistance of 7.41 × 10-6Ω cm2 and contact resistance of 0.54 Ω.mm measured by transmission line mode （TLM）, and good surface morphology and edge acuity are also desirable by annealing at 750 ℃ for 30 s. The experiments also indicate that the performance of ohmic contact is first improved, then it reaches a peak, finally degrading with annealing temperature or annealing time rising.     

采用Ni/Ti/Ni多层金属在N型4H-SiC衬底改善粘附性和界面的欧姆接触

The Ni/Ti/Ni multilayer ohmic contact properties on a 4H-SiC substrate and improved adhesion with the Ti/Au overlayer have been investigated. The best specific contact resistivity of 3.16 × 10^-5 Ω.cm^2 was obtained at 1050 ℃. Compared with Ni/SiC ohmic contact, the adhesion between Ni/Ti/Ni/SiC and the Ti/Au overlayer was greatly improved and the physical mechanism under this behavior was analyzed by using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy （EDS） measurement. It is shown that a Ti-carbide and Ni-silicide compound exist at the surface and there is no graphitic carbon at the surface of the Ni/Ti/Ni structure by Raman spectroscopy, while a large amount of graphitic carbon appears at the surface of the Ni/SiC structure, which results in its bad adhesion. Moreover, the interface of the Ni/Ti/Ni/SiC is improved compared to the interface of Ni/SiC.     

关于石墨烯上Ge/Au/Ni/Au欧姆接触的对比研究

Superior graphene-metal contacts can improve the performance of graphene devices. We report on an experimental demonstration of Ge/Au/Ni/Au-based ohmic contact on graphene. The transfer length method （TLM） is adopted to measure the resistivity of graphene-metal contacts. We designed a process flow, which can avoid residual photoresist at the interface of metal and graphene. Additionally, rapid thermal annealing （RTA） at different temperatures as a post-processing method is studied to improve graphene-metal contact. The results reveal that the contact resistivity of graphene and Ge/Au/Ni/Au can reach 10^-5 Ω· cm^2 after RTA, and that 350 ℃ is optimum annealing temperature for the contact of graphene-Ge/Au/Ni/Au. This paper provides guidance for fabrication and applications of graphene devices.     

一种应用于GNSS接收机的低噪声和低杂散频率综合器

A low phase noise and low spur phase locked loop （PLL） frequency synthesizer for use in global navigation satellite system （GNSS） receivers is proposed. To get a low spur, the symmetrical structure of the phase frequency detector （PFD） produces four control signals, which can reach the charge pump （CP） simultaneously, and an improved CP is realized to minimize the charge sharing and the charge injection and make the current matched. Additionally, the delay is controllable owing to the programmable PFD, so the dead zone of the CP can be eliminated. The output frequency of the VCO can be adjusted continuously and precisely by using a programmable LC-TANK. The phase noise of the VCO is lowered by using appropriate MOS sizes. The proposed PLL frequency synthesizer is fabricated in a 0.18 μm mixed-signal CMOS process. The measured phase noise at 1 MHz offset from the center frequency is -127.65 dBc/Hz and the reference spur is -73.58 dBc.     

Ranking Potential Reply-Providers in Community Question Answering System

Community Question Answering （CQA） websites have greatly facilitated users＇ lives, with an increasing number of people seeking help and exchanging ideas on the Internet. This newlymerged community features two characteristics： social relations and an ask-reply mechanism. As users＇ behaviours and social statuses play a more important role in CQA services than traditional answer retrieving websites, researchers＇ concerns have shifted from the need to passively find existing answers to actively seeking potential reply providers that may give answers in the near future. We analyse datasets derived from an online CQA system named ＂Quora＂, and observed that compared with traditional question answering services, users tend to contribute replies rather than questions for help in the CQA system. Inspired by the findings, we seek ways to evaluate the users＇ ability to offer prompt and reliable help, taking into account activity, authority and social reputation char- acteristics. We propose a hybrid method that is based on a Question-User network and social network using optimised PageRank algorithm. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed method for ranking potential answer-providers.     

一个全差分可编程的多通道神经信号记录芯片

A multi-channel,fully differential programmable chip for neural recording application is presented.The integrated circuit incorporates eight neural recording amplifiers with tunable bandwidth and gain,eight 4thorder Bessel switch capacitor filters,an 8-to-1 analog time-division multiplexer,a fully differential successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter(SAR ADC),and a serial peripheral interface for communication.The neural recording amplifier presents a programmable gain from 53 dB to 68 dB,a tunable low cut-off frequency from 0.1 Hz to 300 Hz,and 3.77 μVrms input-referred noise over a 5 kHz bandwidth.The SAR ADC digitizes signals at maximum sampling rate of 20 kS/s per channel and achieves an ENOB of 7.4.The integrated circuit is designed and fabricated in 0.18-μm CMOS mix-signal process.We successfully performed a multi-channel in-vivo recording experiment from a rat cortex using the neural recording chip.     

A power-efficient 12-bit analog-to-digital converter with a novel constant-resistance CMOS input sampling switch

Apower-efficient 12-bit40-MS/spipelineanalog-to-digitalconverter（ADC）implementedina0.13 μm CMOS technology is presented. A novel CMOS bootstrapping switch, which offers a constant on-resistance over the entire input signal range, is used at the sample-and-hold front-end to enhance the dynamic performance of the pipelined ADC. By implementing with 2.5-bit-per-stage and a simplified amplifier sharing architecture between two successive pipeline stages, a very competitive power consumption and small die area can be achieved. Meanwhile, the substrate-biasing-effect attenuated T-type switches are introduced to reduce the crosstalk between the two op- amp sharing successive stages. Moreover, a two-stage gain boosted recycling folded cascode （RFC） amplifier with hybrid frequency compensation is developed to further reduce the power consumption and maintain the ADC＇s performance simultaneously. The measured results imply that the ADC achieves a spurious-free dynamic range （SFDR） of 75.7 dB and a signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio （SNDR） of 62.74 dB with a 4.3 MHz input signal; the SNDR maintains over 58.25 dB for input signals up to 19.3MHz. The measured differential nonlinearity （DNL） and integral nonlinearity （INL） are -0.43 to ＋0.48 LSB and -1.62 to ＋ 1.89 LSB respectively. The prototype ADC consumes 28.4 mW under a 1.2-V nominal power supply and 40 MHz sampling rate, transferring to a figure- of-merit （FOM） of 0.63 pJ per conversion-step.     

一种基于低中频接收相位选择发射结构的工作在2.4GHz面向WPAN应用的超低功耗收发机

This paper presents a 2.4 GHz CMOS transceiver for the wireless personal area network （WPAN） inte- grated in 0.18/zm CMOS technology. This transceiver adopts a low-IF receiver, a MUX based transmitter and a fast-setting fractional-N frequency synthesizer. For achieving low cost and low power consumption, an inductor- less receiver front-end, an adaptive analog baseband, a low power MUX and a current-reused phase-locked loop （PLL） have been proposed in this work. Measured results show that the receiver achieves-8 dBrn of lIP3 and 31 dB of image rejection. The transmitter delivers 0 dBm output power at a data rate of 2 Mbps. The current consumption is 7.2 mA in the receiving mode and 6.9 mA in the transmitting mode, respectively.     

用于无采保流水线ADC的高速低功耗低失调动态比较器

A novel fully differential high speed high resolution low offset CMOS dynamic comparator has been implemented in the SMIC 0.18 μm process used for a sample-and-hold amplifier （SHA）-less pipelined analog-to-digital converters （ADC）. Based on the analysis and optimization between delay time and offset, an enhanced reset architecture with transmission gate was introduced to speed up the comparison and reset procedure. Four inputs with two cross coupled differential pairs, reconstituted bias circuit for tail current transistor and common centroid layouts make the comparator more robust against mismatch and process variations. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed design achieves 1 mV sensitivity at 2.2 GHz sampling rate with a power consumption of 510 μW, while the mean offset voltage is equal to 10.244 mV.     

一种应用于无线局域网具有3.01-3.82 GHz频率范围和6.29%调谐增益变化的CMOS LC压控振荡器

A wideband low-phase-noise LC voltage-controlled oscillator （VCO） with low VCO gain （Kvco） vari- ation for WLAN fractional-N frequency synthesizer application is proposed and designed on a 0.13-μm CMOS process. In order to achieve a low Kvco variation, an extra switched varactor array was added to the LC tank with the conventional switched capacitor array. Based on the proposed switched varactor array compensation technique, the measured Kvco is 43 MHz/V with only 6.29% variation across the entire tuning range. The proposed VCO provides a tuning range of 23.7% from 3.01 to 3.82 GHz, while consuming 9 mA of quiescent current from a 2.3 V supply. The VCO shows a low phase noise of-121.94 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, from the 3.6 GHz carrier.     

Low power high gain gain-controlled LNA and mixer for GNSS receivers Wei Binbin(魏斌斌)1, Jiang Jinguang(江金光)1,2,3*

A low power high gain gain-controlled LNA ＋ mixer for GNSS receivers is reported. The high gain LNA is realized with a current source load. Its gain-controlled ability is achieved using a programmable bias circuit. Taking advantage of the high gain LNA, a high noise figure passive mixer is adopted. With the passive mixer, low power consumption and high voltage gain of the LNA ＋ mixer are achieved. To fully investigate the performance of this circuit, comparisons between a conventional LNA ＋ mixer, a previous low power LNA ＋ mixer, and the proposed LNA ＋ mixer are presented. The circuit is implemented in 0.18 #m mixed-signal CMOS technology. A 3.8 dB noise figure, an overall 45 dB converge gain and a 10 dB controlled gain range of the two stages are measured. The chip occupies 0.24 mm2 and consumes 2 mA current under 1.8 V supply.     

一种应用于GPS接收机的高线性度SiGe HBT低噪声放大器

A high linearity 1.575 GHz SiGe：HBT low noise amplifier （LNA） for global positioning system applications is described. The bipolar cascoded with an MOSFET LNA was fabricated in a commercial 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS process, A resistor bias feed circuit with a feedback resistor was designed for the LNA input transistor to improve its intermodulation and compression performance. The packaged chip tested on board has displayed a noise figure of 1. I 1 dB, a power gain of 18 dB, an output 1 dB compression point of ＋7.8 dBm and an input third-order intercept point of ＋1.8 dBm. The chip occupies a 500 × 560μm^2 area and consumes 3.6 mA from a 2.85 V power supply.     

A 130 nm CMOS low-power SAR ADC for wide-band communication systems

This paper presents a low power 9-bit 80 MS/s SAR ADC with comparator-sharing technique in 130 nm CMOS process. Compared to the conventional SAR ADC, the sampling phase is removed to reach the full efficiency of the comparator. Thus the conversion rate increases by about 20% and its sampling time is relaxed. The design does not use any static components to achieve a widely scalable conversion rate with a constant FOM. The floorplan of the capacitor network is custom-designed to suppress the gain mismatch between the two DACs. The ＇set-and- down＇ switching procedure and a novel binary-search error compensation scheme are utilized to further speed up the SA bit-cycling operation. A very fast logic controller is proposed with a delay time of only 90 ps. At 1.2 V supply and 80 MS/s the ADC achieves an SNDR of 51.4 dB and consumes 1.86 mW, resulting in an FOM of 76.6 fJ/conversion-step. The ADC core occupies an active area of only 0.089 mm2.     

纳米锥SiGe-SOI光波导与光纤的耦合分析

Based on a submicrometer-sized SiGe-SOI waveguide, the coupling loss mechanism is analyzed between the submicrometer-sized SiGe-SOI waveguide and the fiber. The main sources of coupling loss are analyzed, and the mismatch loss of the mode field is the mainly lost during connection between the submicrometer-sized waveguide and the fiber. In order to reduce the mismatch loss of the mode field, the structure ofa nanotaper SiGeSOI waveguide with a nanometer-sized tip is adopted. By reducing the waveguide dimensions to increase the mode field size, coupling loss could be reduced between the waveguide and the fiber. Different mode field dimensions ofnanotaper SiGe-SOI waveguides and fiber are quantitatively analyzed, and the quantitative relationship between nanotaper SiGe-SOI waveguide dimensions and mode field dimensions are obtained. Finally, nanotaper SiGe-SOI waveguides are made, and the test and analysis have been done. The final experimental results accord well with the theoretical analysis. When the waveguide width is 0.5 μm, the minimum coupling loss of the SiGe-SOI waveguide is 0.56 dB/facet, and also the correctness of the design method and theoretical analysis are verified.     

应用于2.4GHz无线传感网的超低功耗射频接收前端设计

This paper presents the design of an ultralow power receiver front-end designed for a wireless sensor network （WSN） in a 0.18 μm CMOS process. The author designs two front-ends working in the saturation region and the subthreshold region respectively. The front-ends contain a two-stage cross-coupling cascaded common-gate （CG） LNA and a quadrature Gilbert IQ mixer. The measured conversion gain is variable with high gain at 24 dB and low gain at 7 dB for the saturation one, and high gain at 22 dB and low gain at 5 dB for the subthreshold one. The noise figure （NF） at high gain mode is 5.1 dB and 6.3 dB for each. The input 1 dB compression point （IPldB） at low gain mode is about -6 dBm and -3 dBm for each. The front-ends consume about 2.1 mA current from 1.8 V power supply for the saturation one and 1.3 mA current for the subthreshold one. The measured results show that, comparing with the power consumption saving, it is worth making sacrifices on the performance for using the subthreshold technology.     

90nm CMOS工艺低功耗20GHz比较器设计

A low power 20 GHz CMOS dynamic latched regeneration comparator for ultra-high-speed, low-power analog-to-digital converters （ADCs） is proposed. The time constant in both the tracking and regeneration phases of the latch are analyzed based on the small signal model. A dynamic source-common logic （SCL） topology is adopted in the master-slave latch to increase the tracking and regeneration speeds. Implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology, this comparator only occupies a die area of 65 × 150 μm^2 with a power dissipation of 14 mW from a 1.2 V power supply. The measurement results show that the comparator can work up to 20 GHz. Operating with an input frequency of 1 GHz, the circuit can oversample up to 20 Giga-sampling-per-second （GSps） with 5 bits resolution; while operating at Nyquist, the comparator can sample up to 20 GSps with 4 bits resolution. The comparator has been successfully used in a 20 GSps flash ADC and the circuit can be also used in other high speed applications.     

一种不带校正SFDR为85.2dB的14位100兆流水线模数转换器

This paper describes a 14-bit 100-MS/s calibration-free pipelined analog-to-digital converter （ADC）. Choices for stage resolution as well as circuit topology are carefully considered to obtain high linearity without any calibration algorithm. An adjusted timing diagram with an additional clock phase is proposed to give residue voltage more settling time and minimize its distortion. The ADC employs an LVDS clock input buffer with low-jitter consideration to ensure good performance at high sampling rate. Implemented in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology, the ADC prototype achieves a spurious free dynamic range （SFDR） of 85.2 dB and signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio （SNDR） of 63.4 dB with a 19.1-MHz input signal, while consuming 412-mW power at 2.0-V supply and occupying an area of 2.9 × 3.7 mm^2.     

四角状氧化锌纳米结构的发光特性研究

The tetrapod ZnO nanostructures are synthesized on the Si （100） substrates using the chemical va- por deposition （CVD） method at 1000 ℃. Each nanostructure has four arms which are about 3-10 μm in length and 0.2-1.5 μm in diameter. Further analyses on structure demonstrate that the tetrapod ZnO nanostructures have single crystalline wurtzite hexagonal structure preferentially oriented in c-axis. The photoluminescence （PL） mea- surements of the tetrapod ZnO nanostructures revealed a UV peak at 382 nm corresponding to the free exciton emission, and a green peak at 523 nm arising from deep level emission. For comparative analysis, cathodolumines- cence （CL） spectra obtained from different regions of an individual tetrapod are investigated. Moreover, a possible growth mechanism of the tetrapod ZnO nanostructures is also discussed based on the experimental results.     

一种低导通电阻低转折电压的双通道分段阳极横向IGBT

A dual conduction paths segmented anode lateral insulated-gate bipolar transistor （DSA-LIGBT） which uses triple reduced surface field （RESURF） technology is proposed. Due to the hybrid structures of triple RESURF LDMOS （T-LDMOS） and traditional LIGBT, firstly, a wide p-type anode is beneficial to the small shift voltage （VST） and low specific on-resistance （Ron,sp） when the anode voltage （VA） is larger than VST. Secondly, a wide n-type anode and triple RESURF technology are used to get a low Ron,sp when VA is less than VST. Meanwhile, it can accelerate the extraction of electrons, which brings a low turn-off time （Toff）. Experimental results show that： VST is only 0.9 V, Ron,sp （Ron × Area） are 11.7 and 3.6 Ω · mm^2 when anode voltage VA equals 0.9 and 3 V, respectively, the breakdown voltage reaches to 800 V and Toff is only 450 ns.