Dislocation multiplication inside contact holes

Ion implantation into contact holes has been widely used to dope the specific contact area and to reduce the contact resistance. In this study, mask edge defects were observed at the edge area of small contact holes with high aspect ratio, which resulted in multiplied dislocations penetrating into Si substrate for more than 0.3 μm after back-end processings. Those dislocations were identified to be Schockley partial dislocations and stair rod dislocations lying on 4 sets of inclined {111}Si planes.     

Synchronous transmission technique for the reverse link in DS-CDMAterrestrial mobile systems

In this letter, a timing control algorithm is described, which realizes timing synchronization on the direct sequence code-division multiple-access reverse link. In addition, the uncoded bit-error probability is analytically derived. Numerical results, confirmed by simulation, show that our synchronous transmission technique can offer better performance than conventional asynchronous transmission, especially for an exponentially decaying multipath intensity profile with a large decay factor     

A leakage current mechanism caused by the interaction of residualoxidation stress and high-energy ion implantation impact in advancedCMOS technology

In this paper, we report abnormal junction leakage current characteristics in sub-quarter micron CMOS formed by OSELO-II isolation method and high-energy ion implantation for well formation. The phenomena have not been found in other isolation schemes such as single Si₃N₄ spacer OSELO (SSS-OSELO), modified conventional LOCOS (MLOCOS) and shallow trench isolation (STI). From the defect analysis and process simulation based on the actual recipe, the abnormal leakage is found to be generated from the lattice defects at the edge of field oxide and caused by the combination of oxidation stress, and high-energy ion implantation. A process condition in the high-energy ion implantation and isolation process is proposed to reduce the leakage current     

Suppression of boron penetration for p+ stacked poly-Sigates by using inductively coupled N2 plasma treatment

Nitridation of stacked poly-Si gates by inductively coupled N₂ plasma (ICNP) treatment has been shown to suppress boron penetration and improve gate oxide integrity. The ICNP treatments on the stacked poly-Si layers create nitrogen-rich layers not only between the stacked poly-Si layers but also in the gate oxide after post implant anneal, thus resulting in effective retardation of boron diffusion. In addition, positioning of ICNP treatment closer to gate oxides leads to higher nitrogen peaks in the gate oxide region, resulting in further suppression of boron penetration and improvement of gate oxide reliability     

Mutations that extend the specificity of the endonuclease activity of lambda terminase

Fetal DNA has been detected in maternal plasma during pregnancy. We investigated the clearance of circulating fetal DNA after delivery, using quantitative PCR analysis of the sex-determining region Y gene as a marker for male fetuses. We analyzed plasma samples from 12 women 1-42 d after delivery of male babies and found that circulating fetal DNA was undetectable by day 1 after delivery. To obtain a higher time-resolution picture of fetal DNA clearance, we performed serial sampling of eight women, which indicated that most women (seven) had undetectable levels of circulating fetal DNA by 2 h postpartum. The mean half-life for circulating fetal DNA was 16.3 min (range 4-30 min). Plasma nucleases were found to account for only part of the clearance of plasma fetal DNA. The rapid turnover of circulating DNA suggests that plasma DNA analysis may be less susceptible to false-positive results, which result from carryover from previous pregnancies, than is the detection of fetal cells in maternal blood; also, rapid turnover may be useful for the monitoring of feto-maternal events with rapid dynamics. These results also may have implications for the study of other types of nonhost DNA in plasma, such as circulating tumor-derived and graft-derived DNA in oncology and transplant patients, respectively.     

Effective permittivities for second-order accurate FDTD equationsat dielectric interfaces

In Yee's finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) scheme, effective permittivities are often used to account for offsets of dielectric interfaces from grid nodes. The specific values of these effective permittivities must be chosen in such a way that the second-order accuracy of the scheme is preserved. It is shown in this work that, contrary to more elaborate techniques proposed recently for the development of these effective permittivities, a rigorous application of the integral forms of Maxwell's curl equations on the Yee's lattice leads to the desired values in a straightforward fashion. Numerical experiments in a two-dimensional (2-D) cavity are used to verify that the calculated effective permittivities preserve the second-order accuracy of the FDTD scheme     

An experimental evaluation of a residential-sized evaporatively cooled condenser

In this paper, the performance of an innovative evaporatively cooled condenser is compared with that of a conventional air-cooled condenser for a split heat pump system. The system was tested in an environmentally controlled test chamber that was able to simulate test conditions as specified by ASHRAE Standard 116. Tests to optimize refrigerant charge and short tube restrictor size were conducted using refrigerant HCFC-22. The wheel rotation speed of the evaporative condenser was also optimized experimentally to maximize the coefficient of performance. Using these optimum parameters, steady state and cyclic performance tests were conducted. The experimental results showed that the evaporative condenser has a higher capacity than the air-cooled condenser by 1.8 to 8.1%, a higher COP by 11.1 to 21.6%, and a higher SEER by 14.5%.     

Diversity codes for differential phase modulation in a correlatedRayleigh fading channel

This paper proposes a simple diversity scheme that makes use of nonlinear block coding, symbol interleaving, and differential phase modulation. The resultant signaling mechanism merits intrinsic time diversity within each codeword, which is resistant to correlated fading. The maximum-likelihood noncoherent receiver which operates over correlated Rayleigh fading is developed. Exact and approximate upper bounds are derived to assess the codeword-error probability characteristics of the proposed system     

Error concealment using affine transform for H.263 coded videotransmissions

A new error concealment method is proposed that uses motion estimation to consider actual motions, such as rotation, magnification, reduction, and parallel motion, in moving pictures. Since many videos include a variety of complex three-dimensional motions, the proposed method uses an affine transform to estimate the motion of lost data more accurately, thereby producing a higher peak signal-to-noise ratio value and better subjective video quality     

A Web-based TelePACS using an asymmetric satellite system

We have developed a WWW-based TelePACS that can access every permitted PACS server via the Internet. Java programming techniques were used to implement the system, which can access and retrieve medical information and images through Web browsers such as netscape without specific tools. We also have developed a consolidator that performs as a manager to connect a conventional PACS server to a Web-based TelePACS server. We have developed the asymmetric satellite data communication system (ASDCS) as a fast communication system. The ASDCS uses a receive-only satellite link for data delivery and a terrestrial network for control communication. In conclusion, we were able to develop a cost-effective and fast PACS using Web technology. Web technology expanded the scope of use for a dedicated PACS from intrahospital to public use