Microstructure and thermal behavior of Sn-Zn-Ag solders

The microstructure and thermal behavior of the Sn-Zn-Ag solder were investigated for 8.73–9% Zn and 0–3.0% Ag. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis shows the Ag-Zn compound when the solder contains 0.1% Ag. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis results indicate that Ag₅Zn₈ and AgZn₃ become prominent when the Ag content is 0.3% and above. Meanwhile, the Zn-rich phase is refined, and the Zn orientations gradually diminish upon increase in Ag content. The morphology of the Ag-Zn compound varies from nodular to dendrite structure when the Ag content increases. The growth of the Ag-Zn compounds is accompanied by the diminishing of the eutectic structure of the Sn-9Zn solder. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) investigation reveals that the solidus temperature of these solders exists at around 198°C. A single, sharp exothermic peak was found for the solders with Ag content less than 0.5%. Liquidus temperatures were identified with the DSC analysis to vary from 206°C to 215°C when the Ag content ranges from 1.0% to 3.0%     

Optimization of black oxide coating thickness as an adhesion promoter for copper substrate in plastic integrated-circuit packages

Copper-oxide coating applied onto the copper substrate has emerged as an alternative to metallic coatings to improve adhesion with polymeric adhesives and molding compounds. The interfacial-bond strengths between the black oxide-coated Cu substrate and epoxy-based, glob-top resin were measured in button-shear tests, and the failure mechanisms were identified from the fracture-surface examination. The emphasis was to establish the correlation between the coating thickness, the surface roughness, and the interfacial adhesion with respect to treatment time. It was found that at the initial stage of treatment a thin layer of flat, cuprous oxide developed, above which fibrillar-cupric oxide was formed with further treatment until saturation with densified fibrils at about 150 sec. The interfacial-bond strength between the oxide-coated copper substrate and glob-top resin increased gradually with increasing treatment time, until the bond strength reached a plateau constant after a treatment for about 150 sec. There was a functional similarity between the oxide thickness, the surface roughness, and the interface-bond strength with respect to treatment time. A treatment time of 150 sec is considered an optimal condition that can impart the highest interface adhesion.     

The Content Driven Mobile Internet

The development of future mobile networks will be driven, in large part, by content and web based services. In this paper, we examine several performance, scalability and architectural challenges faced by future mobile web applications and how advanced mobile content delivery techniques can address these challenges. We review existing content delivery using a taxonomy that consists of three categories: network scaling, end system acceleration, and content and protocol optimization. While wireline content delivery focuses on network and server scalability, mobile content delivery will likely benefit most from optimizing radio link usage. We also present our ongoing work in this area, which extends the functionality of edge caching to the terminal, uses user interest correlation information to maintain low terminal power consumption and adds a new dimension to radio resource management. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Far-infrared detector based on HgTe/HgCdTe superlattices

HgTe/Hg_0.05Cd_0.95Te superlattices (SLs) were grown on (112)B oriented Cd_0.96Zn_0.04 Te substrates using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The SLs, consisting of 100 periods of 80-Å-thick HgTe wells alternating with 77-Å-thick Hg_0.05Cd_0.95Te barriers, were designed to operate as detectors in the far-infrared (FIR) region. Infrared absorption spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Hall effect measurements, and x-ray diffraction were used to characterize the superlattice layers. A series of annealing experiments were initiated to quantify the temperature-dependent interdiffusion of the HgTe wells and Hg_0.05Cd_0.95Te barriers and consequently their degradation, which shifts the absorption edges of the SLs to higher energies, since a high-temperature ex situ anneal is normally required in order to produce the p-type material required for a photovoltaic detector. Results from infrared absorption spectroscopy, TEM, and Hall effect measurements for the annealed samples are presented. A FIR SLs single-element photoconductive (PC) device was designed and fabricated. Both material characterization and device testing have established the applicability of the HgTe/Hg_0.05Cd_0.95Te SLs for the FIR region.     

Low-resistance polysilicon process in contact application for high density devices

For the lowest resistance, it is required to have the epitaxial silicon contact between the silicon plug and the substrate and good step coverage at the high aspect-ratio contact holes, simultaneously. In this work, a double polysilicon (DPS) deposition technique was proposed for the requirements. The first, thin silicon layer is deposited in a single-wafer process chamber with an in-situ H₂-RTP (rapid thermal process) treatment for the epitaxial contact, and the second silicon layer is formed in a batch-type furnace for good step coverage. From chain resistance, Kelvin R_c, and current-voltage (I–V) measurement, the DPS process meets both low resistance and good uniformity, so that it suggests a breakthrough in the small-sized, semiconductor device application.     

Anti-collusion fingerprinting for multimedia

Digital fingerprinting is a technique for identifying users who use multimedia content for unintended purposes, such as redistribution. These fingerprints are typically embedded into the content using watermarking techniques that are designed to be robust to a variety of attacks. A cost-effective attack against such digital fingerprints is collusion, where several differently marked copies of the same content are combined to disrupt the underlying fingerprints. We investigate the problem of designing fingerprints that can withstand collusion and allow for the identification of colluders. We begin by introducing the collusion problem for additive embedding. We then study the effect that averaging collusion has on orthogonal modulation. We introduce a tree-structured detection algorithm for identifying the fingerprints associated with K colluders that requires O(Klog(n/K)) correlations for a group of n users. We next develop a fingerprinting scheme based on code modulation that does not require as many basis signals as orthogonal modulation. We propose a new class of codes, called anti-collusion codes (ACCs), which have the property that the composition of any subset of K or fewer codevectors is unique. Using this property, we can therefore identify groups of K or fewer colluders. We present a construction of binary-valued ACC under the logical AND operation that uses the theory of combinatorial designs and is suitable for both the on-off keying and antipodal form of binary code modulation. In order to accommodate n users, our code construction requires only O(/spl radic/n) orthogonal signals for a given number of colluders. We introduce three different detection strategies that can be used with our ACC for identifying a suspect set of colluders. We demonstrate the performance of our ACC for fingerprinting multimedia and identifying colluders through experiments using Gaussian signals and real images.     

Wavelet-based Rayleigh background removal in MRI

Rayleigh distribution governs noise in 'no signal' regions of magnetic resonance magnitude images. Large areas of background noise in MRI images will seriously affect their effective utilisation. A new wavelet-based algorithm is presented that can work efficiently either as a standalone procedure or couple with existing denoising algorithms to significantly improve their effectiveness.     

SER performance evaluation and optimization of OFDM system with residual frequency and timing offsets from imperfect synchronization

This paper deals with the effects of residual timing and frequency offsets on the symbol error rate (SER) performance of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. The synchronization of an OFDM system generally consists of a coarse frequency and timing acquisition stage and a refine stage. Due to the presence of Gaussian noise, channel distortions and implementation losses of synchronization and equalization algorithms, residual frequency and timing offsets always exist for an OFDM receiver. The residual frequency and timing offsets are proven to be Gaussian distributed, with their corresponding variances determined. The reception process of an OFDM signal with frequency and timing offsets is analyzed. A closed-form analytical result on the SER of an OFDM system with residual synchronization errors is derived. Computer simulations and analyses show that the frequency and timing offsets affect the OFDM subcarriers differently. With this observation, a new technique is proposed to minimize the SER of the OFDM systems by adjusting the distribution of transmission power among the subcarriers.     

Performance utility-analysis of multi-state systems

This paper defines a new utility importance of a state of a component in multi-state systems. This utility importance overcomes some drawbacks of a well-known importance measure suggested by William S. Griffith (J. Applied Probability, 1980). The relationship between this new utility importance and the Griffith importance is studied and their difference is illustrated with examples. The contribution of an individual component to the performance utility of a multi-state system is discussed. Examples show that a meaningful index for measuring the performance of individual components in a multi-state system can hardly be defined in general, without considering the actual values of the utility levels and the distributions of the component-states in the system. An example illustrates how genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and tabu search can be used in selecting components and defining the position order of components so that the performance utility of a multi-state system is optimized.     

LiNbO3晶体中引入π位相差实现选择性擦除

在晶体中进行大容量多重体存储 ,需要对晶体中记录数据进行修改 ,这就使得选择性擦除必不可少。介绍了铌酸锂晶体中实现选择性擦除的原理 ,着重介绍了在物光和参考光中引入π位相差的几种方法 ,通过引入π位相差来记录互补全息图 ,利用全息图及其他的互补全息图的非相干叠加来消除原全息图对晶体折射率的调制 ,从而实现对未定影全息图的选择性擦除。实现了在晶体中某一数据页面内部分数据的擦除 ,并从理论上对实验结果进行了分析。并给出了在某一数据页面内进行部分擦除的实验结果