Lead-free soldering in the Japanese electronics industry

Japan has witnessed prosperous industrial growth since the 1960s, and this growth has given rise to increased awareness by the government and the people regarding environmental responsibility. This responsibility includes the use of "green" materials and the recycling of important resources. Legislation, including the appliances law, requires the Japanese electronics industry to comply with more stringent environmental stipulations. However, Japanese electronics companies have captured international attention by preempting legislation with the introduction of lead-free products in the market with an ambitious target of eliminating the use of lead in electronic products. In this paper, we investigate corporate strategies regarding lead-free product development in light of legislative and environmental issues in Japan.     

Laser‐Induced Direct Lithography for Patterning of Carbon with sp3 and sp2 Hybridization

A new method of laser‐induced lithography for direct writing of carbon on a glass surface is described, in which deposition occurs from a transparent precursor solution. At the glass–solution interface where the laser spot is focused, a micro‐explosion process takes place, leading to the deposition of pure carbon on the glass surface. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis shows two distinct co‐existing phases. The dominant one shows a mottled morphology with diffraction typical of cubic (sp³) diamond. The other region shows an ordered array of graphene sheets with diffraction pattern typical of sp²‐bonded carbon. The sp³ crystallites range in size from 9 to 30 Å and are scattered randomly throughout the sample. A UV Raman spectrum shows a broad band at the location of the expected diamond peak, together with a peak corresponding to the graphite region. We conclude that the patterned carbon is composed of a mixture of nanocrystalline sp³ and sp² carbon forms.     

Terahertz Semiconductor Quantum Well Devices

For eventually providing terahertz science with compact and convenient devices,terahertz (1～10THz) quantum-well photodetectors and quantum-cascade lasers are investigated. The design and projected detector performance are presented together with experimental results for several test devices,all working at photon energies below and around optical phonons. Background limited infrared performance (BLIP) operations are observed for all samples (three in total) ,designed for different wavelengths. BLIP temperatures of 17,13, and 12K are achieved for peak detection frequencies of 9.7THz(31μm) ,5.4THz(56μm) ,and 3.2THz(93μm) ,respectively. A set of THz quantum-cascade lasers with identical device parameters except for doping concentration is studied. The δ-doping density for each period varies from 3.2 × 1010 to 4. 8 × 1010cm-2. We observe that the lasing threshold current density increases monotonically with doping concentration. Moreover, the measurements for devices with different cavity lengths provide evidence that the free carrier absorption causes the waveguide loss also to increase monotonically. Interestingly the observed maximum lasing temperature is best at a doping density of 3.6 × 1010cm-2.     

Electrical and surface composition properties of phosphorus implantation in Mg-doped GaN

Changes in electrical as well as surface composition such as chemical and electronic properties of Mg-doped p-type GaN by phosphorus implanting are systematically investigated using Hall effect and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. It is shown that p-type conductivity of Mg-doped GaN can be improved by implanting P atoms after a proper post-implantation annealing treatment, probably due to the reduction of self-compensation by P atoms substitution on N vacancy sites. XPS analysis is further found that the decrease of surface oxides and the shift of the surface Fermi level toward the valence band edge through P atoms introduced. These experimental results indicate that the P implantation is an effective method to improve p-type conductivity of Mg-doped GaN and reducing the surface barrier height, which can lead to a lower metal contact resistivity to p-type GaN.     

Vehicle-Classification Algorithm for Single-Loop Detectors Using Neural Networks

Vehicle class is an important parameter in the process of road-traffic measurement. Currently, inductive-loop detectors (ILD) and image sensors are rarely used for vehicle classification because of their low accuracy. To improve the accuracy, the authors suggest a new algorithm for ILD using back-propagation neural networks. In the developed algorithm, the inputs to the neural networks are the variation rate of frequency and frequency waveform. The output is five classified vehicles. The developed algorithm was assessed at test sites, and the recognition rate was 91.5%. The results verified that the proposed algorithm improves the vehicle-classification accuracy compared to the conventional method based on ILD     

Network Topology Inference Based on End-to-End Measurements

We consider using traceroute-like end-to-end measurement to infer the underlay topology for a group of hosts. One major issue is the measurement cost. Given N hosts in an asymmetric network without anonymous routers, traditionally full N(N-1) traceroutes are needed to determine the underlay topology. We investigate how to efficiently infer an underlay topology with low measurement cost, and propose a heuristic called Max-Delta. In the heuristic, a server selects appropriate host-pairs to measure in each iteration so as to reveal the most undiscovered information on the underlay. We further observe that the presence of anonymous routers significantly distorts and inflates the inferred topology. Previous research has shown that obtaining both exact and approximate topology in the presence of anonymous routers under certain consistency constraints is intractable. We hence propose fast algorithms on how to practically construct an approximate topology by relaxing some constraints. We investigate and compare two algorithms to merge anonymous routers. The first one uses Isomap to map routers into a multidimensional space and merges anonymous routers according to their interdistances. The second algorithm is based on neighbor router information, which trades off some accuracy with speed. We evaluate our inference algorithms on Internet-like and real Internet topologies. Our results show that almost full measurement is needed to fully discover the underlay topology. However, substantial reduction in measurements can be achieved if a little accuracy, say 5%, can be compromised. Moreover, our merging algorithms in the presence of anonymous routers can efficiently infer an underlay topology with good accuracy     

A Novel Pt/In0.52Al0.48As Schottky Diode-Type Hydrogen Sensor

On the basis of a Pt/In_0.52Al_0.48As metal-semiconductor structure, a novel hydrogen sensor is fabricated and demonstrated. The studied Pt/In_0.52Al_0.48As Schottky diode-type hydrogen sensor exhibits significant sensing performance including high relative sensitivity ratio of about 2600% (under the 1% H₂/air gas and V_R=-0.5 V at 30 degC), large current variation of 310 muA (under the 1% H₂/air gas and V_R=-5 V at 200 degC), widespread reverse-voltage regime (0~-5 V), stable hydrogen-sensing current-voltage (I-V) curves, and fast transient response time of 1.5 s. The calculated Schottky barrier-height change and series-resistance variation, from the thermionic-emission model and Norde method, are 87.0 meV and 288 Omega, respectively (under the 1% H₂/air gas at 30 degC). The hydrogen concentrations and operating temperatures tested in this letter are in the range of 15 ppm-1% H₂/air and 30 degC-250 degC, respectively. Based on the excellent integration compatibility with InP-based electronic devices, the studied device provides the potentiality in high-performance sensor-array applications     

Outage Capacity of Spatially Correlated Multipath Fading Channels

In this paper, we study the effect of the scattering environment on the capacity of a single carrier linear modulation used in a multipath, multiple antenna channel. The work incorporates detailed 3D geometric channel models to assess the effect of spatial correlation. The analysis techniques, based on the pioneering work of Hirt and Massey (1988), provide a method to evaluate outage capacity. Channels that are derivatives of the ETSI standard hilly terrain and typical urban are considered in detail. The results quantify the loss of capacity produced by higher spatial correlation. When comparing signals of different bandwidth, wideband systems produce more diversity due to better temporal resolution. Surprisingly, narrowband systems gain some diversity back by being less susceptible to loss of diversity from spatial correlation     

Low-Complexity Symbol Detector for MIMO-OFDM-Based Wireless LANs

In this brief, a low-complexity hardware architecture for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol detectors with two transmit and two receive antennas is proposed. The detectors support two MIMO-OFDM schemes of space-frequency block coded OFDM and space-division multiplexing OFDM in order to achieve higher performance and throughput. However, symbol detection processes for these two schemes have high computational complexity, which is a burden to hardware implementation of MIMO-OFDM symbol detectors. In order to reduce complexity, the proposed symbol detector is designed with shared architecture, where similar functional blocks are merged and share the hardware resources, and results in the reduction of logic gates by 34% over a conventional architecture employing two individual detectors     

Effects of underfill materials on the reliability of low-K flip-chip packaging

The reliability of low-K flip-chip packaging has become a critical issue owing to the low strength and poor adhesion qualities of the low-K dielectric material when compared with that of SiO₂ or fluorinated silicate glass (FSG). The underfill must protect the solder bumps and the low-K chip from cracking and delamination. However, the material properties of underfill are contrary to those required for preventing solder bumps and low-K chip from cracking and delamination. This study describes the systematic methodologies for how to specify the adequate underfill materials for low-K flip-chip packaging. The structure of the test vehicle is seven copper layers with a low-K dielectric constant value of 2.7-2.9, produced by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. Initially, the adhesion and the flow test of the underfill were evaluated, and then the low-K chip and the bumps stress were determined using the finite element method. The preliminary screened underfill candidates were acquired by means of the underfill adhesion and flow test, and balancing the low-K chip and the bumps stress simulation results. Next, the low-K chips were assembled with these preliminary screened underfills. All the flip-chip packaging specimens underwent the reliability test in order to evaluate the material properties of the underfill affecting the flip-chip packaging stress. In addition, the failed samples are subjected to failure analysis to verify the failure mechanism. The results of this study indicate that, of the underfill materials investigated, those with a glass transition temperature (T_g) and a Young’s modulus of approximately 70–80 °C and 8–10 GPa, respectively, are optimum for low-K flip-chip packaging with eutectic solder bumps.