Lamp configuration design for rapid thermal processing systems

We have studied lamp configuration design for rapid thermal processing (RTP) systems. We considered a configuration consisting of four concentric circular lamp zones, three of them above the wafer and one circumventing the wafer. We propose a method to determine the geometric parameters, the width, height and radius, of the lamp zones so that the configuration designed has the capacity to achieve a uniform temperature on the wafer. The method is based on a necessary and sufficient condition for uniform temperature tracking and analytic expressions of the view factors. A design example is given in which a least square open-loop control law yields good temperature uniformity     

Novel technique for SiO2 formed by liquid-phasedeposition for low-temperature processed polysilicon TFT

A technique for SiO₂ formation by liquid-phase deposition (LPD) at nearly room temperature for low-temperature processed (LTP) polysilicon thin-film transistor (poly-Si TFT) was developed. LPD SiO₂ film with a lower P-etch rate shows a dense structure. LPD SiO₂ also exhibits good electrical characteristics. LTP poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFTs) with LPD SiO ₂ as the gate insulator have been fabricated and investigated. Their characteristics indicate performance adequate for their use as pixel transistors in liquid crystal displays (LCDs)     

Enhancement of power system data debugging using GSA-based data-mining technique

In this paper, a gap-statistic-algorithm (GSA)-based data-mining technique is applied to enhance the data debugging in power system operations. In the proposed approach, the GSA technique is embedded into a neural network frame in anticipation of improving the detection capability of bad data. Thanks to the clustering capability exhibited by GSA in which the number of clusters can be optimally determined, the proposed approach becomes highly effective to localize the group of abnormal data. This proposed approach has been tested through the data collected from different scenarios made on an IEEE 30-bus system and 118-bus systems. Test results reveal the feasibility of the method for the data diagnosis applications.     

Characterization of ultrashort optical pulses with third-harmonic-generation based triple autocorrelation

We present a method to obtain complete information of femtosecond pulses. By measuring triple-optical autocorrelation directly with third-harmonic generation, without spectral information, a temporal pulse shape can be obtained by analytical calculation without direction-of-time ambiguity. Combining the resulting optical pulse shape with its corresponding optical spectrum, the exact phase and color variations in time can all be recovered with a Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm through an iterative calculation with an O(n) complexity.     

Analysis of ATSC field test results in Taiwan

Field tests of the transmission performance of the ATSC DTV system have been conducted in Taiwan. The test results as well as comparisons against the NTSC system performance are reported and analyzed. From the measured results the reception characteristics of the DTV can be deduced and can provide guidelines for television stations to design the transmission system, schedule equipment deployment, plan service coverage areas, and improve the reception quality of the digital signal     

Modeling phosphorus in the upper Etowah River basin: identifying sources under uncertainty.

The Uniform Covering by Probabilistic Rejection (UCPR) algorithm was used, in conjunction with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, to identify P loads from point source and nonpoint source polluters in the upper Etowah River basin (UERB) in Georgia. The key findings of the research are as follows. The mean absolute error was preferred over the root mean square error as a search criterion for the UCPR algorithm when water quality observations are scarce. The undocumented P load from point sources in the UERB was consistently estimated as about 43 kg/d by the proposed method; but the method was not able to identify the broiler litter application rate to the poultry/beef operation pastures. Point sources (both documented and undocumented), poultry/beef operation pastures, and forests are the three major contributors of P. During 1992-1996, on average they accounted for 36.4, 31.7, and 17.2% of P load from the UERB, respectively.     

Enhancement of underfill capillary flow in flip-chip packaging by means of the inertia effect

This paper describes how the use of inertia forces induced by the rotation of a working disk may be adopted to increase the fill rate of the flip-chip packaging process and thereby reduce the process cycle time. It is shown how the driving forces resulting from the inertia effect are determined by the Weber number. The constant and varying contact angle models are compared under a specified set of process conditions. The calculated flow behavior results indicate that the relationship between the contact angle, the average fluid velocity, the liquid-air interface position, and the filling time depends upon the Weber number. The constant and varying contact angle models are utilized in the analysis of a new processing method referred to as rotation-enhanced underfill packaging (REUP). The inertia effect induced by the angular motion of the working disk is shown to enhance the flow of the underfill encapsulant and to reduce the time of the underfill process. The present results confirm that the rotation of the working disk leads to an increased underfill capillary flow rate, which is beneficial in reducing the production cycle time of the flip-chip packaging process.     

Programmable group-delay module using binary polarization switching

We demonstrate the first programmable group-delay module based on polarization switching. With a unique binary tuning mechanism, the device can generate any differential group delay value from -45 to +45 ps with a resolution of 1.40 ps, or any true-time-delay value from 0 to 45 ps with a resolution of 0.7 ps. The delay varying speeds for both applications are under 1 ms and can be as fast as 0.1 ms. We evaluate both the dynamic and static performances of the device while paying special attention to its dynamic figures of merit for polarization-mode dispersion emulation and compensation applications. Our experiment shows that the device exhibits a negligible transient-effect induced power penalty (<0.2 dB) in a 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero system.     

Stabilization of singularly perturbed fuzzy systems

This paper presents some novel results for stabilizing singularly perturbed (SP) nonlinear systems with guaranteed control performance. By using Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model, we construct the SP fuzzy (SPF) systems. The corresponding fuzzy slow and fast subsystems of the original SPF system are also obtained. Two fuzzy control designs are explored. In the first design method, we propose the composite fuzzy control to stabilize the SPF subsystem with H/sup /spl infin// control performance. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, the stability conditions are reduced to the linear matrix inequality (LMI) problem. The composite fuzzy control will stabilize the original SP nonlinear systems for all /spl epsiv//spl isin/(0,/spl epsiv//sup */) and the upper bound /spl epsiv//sup */ can be determined. For the second design method, we present a direct fuzzy control scheme to stabilize the SP nonlinear system with H/sup /spl infin// control performance. By utilizing the Lyapunov stability theorem, the direct fuzzy control can guarantee the stability of the original SP nonlinear systems for a given interval /spl epsiv//spl isin/[/spl epsiv/_,/spl epsiv/~]. The stability conditions are also expressed in the LMIs. Two SP nonlinear systems are adopted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control schemes.