Development of parametric material, energy, and emission inventories for wafer fabrication in the semiconductor industry

Currently available data suggest that most of the energy and material consumption related to the production of an integrated circuit is due to the wafer fabrication process. The complexity of wafer manufacturing, requiring hundreds of steps that vary from product to product and from facility to facility and which change every few years, has discouraged the development of material, energy, and emission inventory modules for the purpose of insertion into life cycle assessments. To address this difficulty, a flexible, process-based system for estimating material requirements, energy requirements, and emissions in wafer fabrication has been developed. The method accounts for mass and energy use atthe unit operation level. Parametric unit operation modules have been developed that can be used to predict changes in inventory as the result of changes in product design, equipment selection, or process flow. A case study of the application of the modules is given for energy consumption, but a similar methodology can be used for materials, individually or aggregated.     

Zuverlässigkeit und Sicherheit in der Energieversorgung

The terms reliability and security are often used imprecisely or in a wrong manner. In the following the meaning of the terms is described from the view of an utility and recommendations for reliability and security of energy supply are derived.     

Das deutsche Urheberrecht und die digitale Herausforderung

Zusammenfassung  Das Urheberrecht befindet sich heute angesichts digitaler und vernetzter Informationstechnologien und seiner zukünftigen Aufgaben in einer Informationsgesellschaft immensen Herausforderungen ausgesetzt, die zu einer "Krise" des Urheberrechts geführt haben. Auf nationaler wie internationaler Ebene ist der Gesetzgeber darum bemüht, das Urheberrecht an die Bedürfnisse der Informationsgesellschaft anzupassen. Die europäische Richtlinie zum Urheberrecht in der Informationsgesellschaft steht kurz vor ihrer Umsetzung ins deutsche Urhebergesetz. Viele wichtige Probleme bleiben jedoch noch unbeantwortet. Die angemessene Reichweite der urheberrechtlichen Schrankenbestimmungen der §§ 45 ff. UrhG, insbesondere die private Kopierfreiheit des § 53 UrhG, wird auch in den kommenden Jahren Gegenstand heftiger Diskussionen bleiben. Diese Fragen stehen in einem engen Zusammenhang mit der bevorstehenden Implementierung von technischen Schutzmaßnahmen und digitalen Rechtemanagement-Systemen. Vorerst hat der Gesetzgeber sich für einen weitreichenden rechtlichen Schutz technischer Schutzmaßnahmen entschieden, der jedoch langfristig die den Schrankenbestimmungen zugrunde liegenden Wertentscheidungen unterlaufen könnte. Ein Blick zurück zu den Grundlagen unseres Urheberrechtssystem mag helfen, den in einer analogen Welt erreichten Interessenausgleich auch im digitalen und vernetzten Kontext herzustellen.

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Today, due to the challenges brought forth by digital and networked information technologies, we see a "crisis" of the finely tuned copyright system as we know it. Internationally, we are in the midst of adjusting the copyright sytem to its future tasks. Within the next weeks the EU-Directive on Copyright in the Information Society will be implemented into the German Copyright Law. However, still many issues remain unresolved. The proper scope of the exception clauses as laid down in §§ 45 et seqs. of the German Copyright Act and, in particular, the private use exceptopn of § 53, is still subject to discussion. This question interrelates with the upcoming implementation of technological protection measures and digital rights management systems. For now, the legislature has granted strong legal protection for TPM that might eventually undermine the underlying values of the statutory exception clauses. A look back to the initial rationals of our copyright system might help to find a proper balance of interests for the future.

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Prof. Dr. iur. Thomas Dreier ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Bürgerliches Recht und Informationsrecht und Leiter des Instituts für Informationsrecht an der Universität Karlsruhe sowie Honorarprofessor der Universität Freiburg i. Br.Georg Nolte ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter und Doktorand am Institut für Informationsrecht der Universität Karlsruhe und Rechtsreferendar in Hamburg.

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Three-dimensional encoding/two-dimensional decoding of medical data

We propose a fully three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet-based coding system featuring 3-D encoding/two-dimensional (2-D) decoding functionalities. A fully 3-D transform is combined with context adaptive arithmetic coding; 2-D decoding is enabled by encoding every 2-D subband image independently. The system allows a finely graded up to lossless quality scalability on any 2-D image of the dataset. Fast access to 2-D images is obtained by decoding only the corresponding information thus avoiding the reconstruction of the entire volume. The performance has been evaluated on a set of volumetric data and compared to that provided by other 3-D as well as 2-D coding systems. Results show a substantial improvement in coding efficiency (up to 33%) on volumes featuring good correlation properties along the z axis. Even though we did not address the complexity issue, we expect a decoding time of the order of one second/image after optimization. In summary, the proposed 3-D/2-D multidimensional layered zero coding system provides the improvement in compression efficiency attainable with 3-D systems without sacrificing the effectiveness in accessing the single images characteristic of 2-D ones.     

Hochreflektierende Beschichtungen auf Kunststoffoptiken

Metallized polymer substrates offering highest reflectance are not yet state of the art. Coating organic substrate materials is still a task that is connected with multiple problems. Insufficient adhesion of coatings on polymer substrates represents one of the main difficulties. We could show by experiment that aluminium and silver layers indicate good coating adhesion on many different polymers if they are deposited by vacuum evaporation considering certain process parameters. High reflectance values and a good climatic stability of the metal coated polymer parts are other important challenges to plastic mirrors. By performing roughness measurements on the different polymer samples and by comparing reflection values obtained after coating these samples the impact of the polymers surface quality on the reflectance after metal coating has been investigated. Particularly high reflectance above 97% was realized with a protected silver mirror as well as with dielectric enhanced aluminium. Applying these layer systems excellent reflection properties has been obtained on several plastic substrates comparable to those on glass mirrors. Furthermore the dielectric layers used for reflection enhancement showed the ability to protect the aluminium coating against climatic influences.     

Design of wear and corrosion resistant PVD‐coatings for magnesium alloys

Although magnesium alloys became popular in the first half of the 20^th century, the bad corrosion properties prevented their breakthrough in industrial mass production. Since the technology for the production of high purity alloys was introduced in the 1970s, magnesium alloys became more and more in the focus of industrial attention. Today magnesium alloys are state of the art in structural parts in automotive industry. Despite its outstanding properties like good castability, low density and nearly unlimited availability the negative aspects like weak corrosion and wear behaviour still limit the application of magnesium in industry [1]. So, the only economic solution is the deposition of a coating or a suitable surface treatment which provides both, wear and corrosion resistance. Today, plasma electrolytic anodisations are state of the art [2–5]. They provide acceptable corrosion resistance and protect the magnesium from mechanical damage due to their high hardness. On the other hand, their high porosity limits their use in combination with electrochemically noble materials, leading to galvanic corrosion [6]. In addition, the high surface roughness of the plasma electrolytic anodisations restricts their use in tribological applications, particularly under dry sliding conditions [7]. On the other hand, due to the high life time recommendations the application of magnesium in the automotive industries motion component field is a long term process. Nevertheless, there is a quite high industrial interest to apply magnesium in the motion component field in consumer applications like do‐it‐yourself or gardenig. Some examples are motor components of lawnmovers, motor saws or drills. Especially for these fields of application there are quite high demands on the corrosion properties due to undefined storage and the conditions during usage. In order to achieve smooth surfaces with high quality, the PVD technology moves into the centre of interest. Since the 1980s PVD coatings are well established and widely used for different industrial applications, mainly for steel and tool coatings. The authors were the first who carried out serious studies on the development of PVD coatings for magnesium alloys since 1999 [6, 7]. The extensive research activities lead to the recent development of a coating system, which provides both, good wear properties as well as good corrosion behaviour.