Effects on VLSI Yield of Doubly-Stochastic Impurity Distributions

An expression is derived for the doubly-stochastic distribution of the number of impurities in the base region of a bipolar transistor; the distribution results from uncertainty in ion implantation parameters. Expressions are derived for device yield, and VLSI (very large scale integration) chip yield with an N-bit parity check. These derivations can be extended to other devices in a straightforward manner. As an example, calculations have been performed using specific parameters, which have led to the following observations: 1. The doubly stochastic effect is most sensitive to uncertainty in the straggle (standard deviation) of the emitter impurity distribution. 2. Uncertainty of the order of 5% in an implantation parameter causes substantial broadening of the distribution of impurities, for the case considered. 3. Device yield decreases rapidly for dimensions less than a well-defined threshold (? 0.75 ?m for the case considered). 4. Chip yield, without a parity check, exhibits a threshold effect at device yield = 1-1/Nchip.(Nchip ? number of devices per chip.) The device yield must exceed this threshold to produce large chip yields. 5. The use of a parity check reduces the device yield threshold to 1-10/NChip. Use of fewer bits per parity check reduces the threshold further. 6. For the example considered, the minimum device dimensions for large chip yields is of the order of 1 to 1.5 ?m, using a 16-bit parity check. The minimum device size for reliable system performance for other cases will depend upon specific device parameters.     

Phase Selection in Mn–Si Alloys by Fast Solid-State Reaction with Enhanced Skyrmion Stability

B20-type transition-metal silicides or germanides are noncentrosymmetric materials hosting magnetic skyrmions, which are promising information carriers in spintronic devices. The prerequisite is to prepare thin films on technology-relevant substrates with magnetic skyrmions stabilized at a broad temperature and magnetic-field working window. A canonical example is the B20-MnSi film grown on Si substrates. However, the as-yet unavoidable contamination with MnSi_1.7 occurs due to the lower nucleation temperature of this phase. In this work, a simple and efficient method to overcome this problem and prepare single-phase MnSi films on Si substrates is reported. It is based on the millisecond reaction between metallic Mn and Si using flash-lamp annealing (FLA). By controlling the FLA energy density, single-phase MnSi or MnSi_1.7 or their mixture can be grown at will. Compared with bulk MnSi, the prepared MnSi films show an increased Curie temperature of up to 41 K. In particular, the magnetic skyrmions are stable over a much wider temperature and magnetic-field range than reported previously. The results constitute a novel phase selection approach for alloys and can help to enhance specific functional properties, such as the stability of magnetic skyrmions.     

All-optical switching in an asymmetric silicon Fabry-Perot étalon based on the free-carrier plasma effect

We demonstrate all-optical switching at 1.3 and 1.5 μm in the reflection mode of an asymmetric silicon Fabry-Perot étalon by a control beam at 0.85 μm. Both switch-on and switch-off operations are demonstrated at different locations of the etalon. Based on the free-carrier plasma effect, a modulation depth as large as 10% is obtained and a frequency response as high as 0.5 GHz is achieved.     

Monolithic integration of an all-optical Mach-Zehnder demultiplexerusing an asymmetric twin-waveguide structure

We demonstrate monolithic integration of a twin-waveguide Mach-Zehnder terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (MZ-TOAD). The InGaAsP-InP device operates at 1.55 μm wavelength and has two semiconductor optical amplifiers in the asymmetric MZ interferometer configuration with a single control input and a built-in switching delay. A 28-ps full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) switching window with high contrast ratio for a range of control powers is obtained using a counter-propagating optical signal and control pulses     

Defect engineering in the MOSLED structure by ion implantation

When amorphous SiO₂ films are bombarded with energetic ions, various types of defects are created as a consequence of ion-solid interaction (peroxy radicals POR, oxygen deficient centres (ODC), non-bridging oxygen hole centres (NBOHC), E′ centres, etc.). The intensity of the electroluminescence (EL) from oxygen deficiency centres at 2.7 eV, non-bridging oxygen hole centres at 1.9 eV and defect centres with emission at 2.07 eV can be easily modified by the ion implantation of the different elements (H, N, O) into the completely processed MOSLED structure. Nitrogen implanted into the SiO₂:Gd layer reduces the concentration of the ODC and NBOHC while the doping of the oxygen increases the EL intensity observed from POR defect and NBOHC. Moreover, after oxygen or hydrogen implantation into the SiO₂:Ge structure fourfold or fifth fold increase of the germanium related EL intensity was observed.     

Performance Analysis of Variable-Weight Multilength Optical Codes for Wavelength–Time O-CDMA Multimedia Systems

To support multimedia services with different discrete bit-rate requirements, families of multilength optical codes, such as the carrier-hopping prime code (CHPC), extended CHPC, and multiwavelength optical orthogonal code, were recently constructed for wavelength-time optical code-division multiple-access (O-CDMA). In this paper, the performances of these multilength optical codes in a multimedia O-CDMA system with a variable-weight operation are analyzed. Our study shows that short-length codes generate stronger interference than long-length codes. This supports services prioritization in O-CDMA. Our study also shows that code weight is a more important factor than code length in determining code performance.     

All-Optical Asynchronous Detection for a Compact Integrable Incoherent Optical CDMA System

In this paper, we investigate all-optical truly asynchronous detection without global clocking in an incoherent optical code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system. The implemented system is designed with an integrable optical source consisting of an electro-absorption modulator for pulse carving, compact coders consisting of fiber Bragg grating arrays for encoding and decoding, and receiver consisting of an all-optical thresholder for data and clock recovery. We compare three detection schemes: (1) synchronous detection with data from a photodetector and clock from an external source; (2) asynchronous detection with data and clock from the all-optically thresholded signal received by a clock and data recovery (CDR) unit; and (3) asynchronous detection with data from a photodetector and clock extracted from the all-optically thresholded signal using CDR. Error-free transmission is obtained for detection schemes (1) and (3). A combination of all-optical thresholding and CDR technology is demonstrated in an optical CDMA system for the first time.     

Packet-switched optical networks

We describe a testbed to study both the theoretical aspects and physical implementation issues associated with high-bit-rate, multihop, packet-switched OTDM networks. We have found that using optical time-division-multiplexed (OTDM) techniques can greatly increase the bandwidth of a single-wavelength channel. Ultrafast OTDM networks are excellent candidates for meeting the system requirements for massively parallel processor interconnects, which include low latency, high bandwidth, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. High-bit-rate transparent optical networks (or TONs) for multiprocessor interconnects will be best realized with an OTDM network architecture. To fully use the bandwidth of optical fiber, we spaced the picosecond pulses closely together (about 10 ps) and typically applied a return-to-zero modulation format. While the total capacity of TDM and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks may essentially be the same, TDM systems have better throughput delay performance. They also have faster, single-channel access times for high-data-rate end users such as HDTV video servers, terabyte-media data banks, and supercomputers     

Code-Empowered Lightwave Networks

In this paper, an architecture for code-empowered optical CDMA (OCDMA) lightwave networks is presented. The architecture is based on reconfigurable optically transparent paths among users of the network to provide high-bandwidth optical connections on demand over small areas such as local area networks or access networks. The network operates on the transmission of incoherent OCDMA codes, each network station being equipped with an OCDMA encoder and decoder. The routing at a network node is based on the OCDMA code itself. The destination address, as well as the next node on the path, is given by the code as in a code-empowered network. A node consists of an OCDMA router built from parallel code converter routers that perform switching, routing, and code conversion. The latter enables a virtual code path for increased scalability. Commonly available delay lines enable the tunability of the encoder, decoder, and router for a reconfigurable and flexible network. Flexibility and granularity are also accentuated by OCDMA encoding. An OCDMA lightwave network can therefore respond to changes in traffic load, traffic conditions, failure, and other network impairments. We describe the possible architectures and the routing constraints of such OCDMA lightwave networks. We present a power analysis and focus on the performance issues of dynamic routing. The effect of coding, topology, load condition, and traffic demand is analyzed using simulations. The obtained results show that the flexibility of OCDMA and the large offered cardinality can be a solution to the needs of local area and access networks.