HV‐SoP Technology for Maskless Fine‐Pitch Bumping Process

Recently, we have witnessed the gradual miniaturization of electronic devices. In miniaturized devices, flip‐chip bonding has become a necessity over other bonding methods. For the electrical connections in miniaturized devices, fine‐pitch solder bumping has been widely studied. In this study, high‐volume solder‐on‐pad (HV‐SoP) technology was developed using a novel maskless printing method. For the new SoP process, we used a special material called a solder bump maker (SBM). Using an SBM, which consists of resin and solder powder, uniform bumps can easily be made without a mask. To optimize the height of solder bumps, various conditions such as the mask design, oxygen concentration, and processing method are controlled. In this study, a double printing method, which is a modification of a general single printing method, is suggested. The average, maximum, and minimum obtained heights of solder bumps are 28.3 μm, 31.7 μm, and 26.3 μm, respectively. It is expected that the HV‐SoP process will reduce the costs for solder bumping and will be used for electrical interconnections in fine‐pitch flip‐chip bonding.     

Conductive adhesive with transient liquid‐phase sintering technology for high‐power device applications

A highly reliable conductive adhesive obtained by transient liquid‐phase sintering (TLPS) technologies is studied for use in high‐power device packaging. TLPS involves the low‐temperature reaction of a low‐melting metal or alloy with a high‐melting metal or alloy to form a reacted metal matrix. For a TLPS material (consisting of Ag‐coated Cu, a Sn96.5‐Ag3.0‐Cu0.5 solder, and a volatile fluxing resin) used herein, the melting temperature of the metal matrix exceeds the bonding temperature. After bonding of the TLPS material, a unique melting peak of TLPS is observed at 356 °C, consistent with the transient behavior of Ag₃Sn + Cu₆Sn₅ → liquid + Cu₃Sn reported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The TLPS material shows superior thermal conductivity as compared with other commercially available Ag pastes under the same specimen preparation conditions. In conclusion, the TLPS material can be a promising candidate for a highly reliable conductive adhesive in power device packaging because remelting of the SAC305 solder, which is widely used in conventional power modules, is not observed.     

Complementary Absorbing Star‐Shaped Small Molecules for the Preparation of Ternary Cascade Energy Structures in Organic Photovoltaic Cells

Two anthracene‐based star‐shaped conjugated small molecules, 5′,5″‐(9,10‐bis((4‐hexylphenyl)ethynyl)anthracene‐2,6‐diyl)bis(5‐hexyl‐2,2′‐bithiophene), HBantHBT, and 5′,5″‐(9,10‐bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene‐2,6‐diyl)bis(5‐hexyl‐2,2′‐bithiophene), BantHBT, are used as electron‐cascade donor materials by incorporating them into organic photovoltaic cells prepared using a poly((5,5‐E‐alpha‐((2‐thienyl)methylene)‐2‐thiopheneacetonitrile)‐alt‐2,6‐[(1,5‐didecyloxy)naphthalene])) (PBTADN):[6,6]‐phenyl‐C71‐butyric acid methyl ester (PC₇₁BM) blend. The small molecules penetrate the PBTADN:PC₇₁BM blend layer to yield complementary absorption spectra through appropriate energy level alignment and optimal domain sizes for charge carrier transfer. A high short‐circuit current (J_SC) and fill factor (FF) are obtained using solar cells prepared with the ternary blend. The highest photovoltaic performance of the PBTADN: BantHBT :PC₇₁BM blend solar cells is characterized by a J_SC of 11.0 mA cm^?2, an open circuit voltage (V_OC) of 0.91 V, a FF of 56.4%, and a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.6% under AM1.5G illumination (with a high intensity of 100 mW^?2). The effects of the small molecules on the ternary blend are investigated by comparison with the traditional poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT):[6,6]‐phenyl‐C61‐butyric acid methyl ester (PC₆₁BM) system.     

Biomimetic Chitin–Silk Hybrids: An Optically Transparent Structural Platform for Wearable Devices and Advanced Electronics

The cuticles of insects and marine crustaceans are fascinating models for man‐made advanced functional composites. The excellent mechanical properties of these biological structures rest on the exquisite self‐assembly of natural ingredients, such as biominerals, polysaccharides, and proteins. Among them, the two commonly found building blocks in the model biocomposites are chitin nanofibers and silk‐like proteins with β‐sheet structure. Despite being wholly organic, the chitinous protein complex plays a key role for the biocomposites by contributing to the overall mechanical robustness and structural integrity. Moreover, the chitinous protein complex alone without biominerals is optically transparent (e.g., dragonfly wings), thereby making it a brilliant model material system for engineering applications where optical transparency is essentially required. Here, inspired by the chitinous protein complex of arthropods cuticles, an optically transparent biomimetic composite that hybridizes chitin nanofibers and silk fibroin (β‐sheet) is introduced, and its potential as a biocompatible structural platform for emerging wearable devices (e.g., smart contact lenses) and advanced displays (e.g., transparent plastic cover window) is demonstrated.     

Gate oxide reliabilities in MOS (metal-oxide-semiconductor) structures with Ti-polycide gates

We have investigated the thermal degradation of gate oxide in metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structures with Ti-polycide gates. We found that the Ti-diffusion into the underlying polysilicon and consequently to the gate oxide occurs upon thermal cycling processes, which results in the dielectric breakdown of the gate oxide. We also found that the Ti-diffusion is suppressed by the employment of the thin (about 5 nm) titanium nitride (TiN) diffusion barrier layer, which consequently improved the reliability characterisitics of gate oxide significantly.     

Managing Complexity in Object-Oriented Analysis

The current approaches in Object-Oriented Analysis have limitations on modeling complex real world systems because they require priori knowledge about objects and their interactions before applying them. This may be practical in small systems and systems with clear domain knowledge, but not in large real world systems with unclear domain knowledge. Our approach uses a stepwise refinement technique in a top-down manner to the Object-Oriented Analysis stage with the application of use cases. This approach is especially good for new areas where we do not know all the information in advance. We present the approach with an example of its application to the B-ISDN service modeling and distributed systems.     

Efficient Content-Based Image Retrieval Methods Using Color and Texture

In this paper, we propose efficient content-based image retrieval methods using the automatic extraction of the low-level visual features as image content. Two new feature extraction methods are presented. The first one is an advanced color feature extraction derived from the modification of Stricker's method. The second one is a texture feature extraction using some DCT coefficients which represent some dominant directions and gray level variations of the image. In the experiment with an image database of 200 natural images, the proposed methods show higher performance than other methods. They can be combined into an efficient hierarchical retrieval method.     

Survey of traffic control schemes and protocols in ATM networks

The authors survey a number of important research topics in ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks. The topics covered include mathematical modeling of various types of traffic sources, congestion-control and error-control schemes for ATM networks, and priority schemes to support multiple classes of traffic. Standard activity for ATM networks and future research problems in ATM are also presented. It is shown that the cell-arrival process for data sources can be modeled by a simple Poisson process. However, voice sources or video sources require more complex processes because of the correlation among cell arrivals. Due to the effects of high-speed channels, preventive control is more effective in ATM networks than reactive control. Due to the use of optical fibers in ATM networks, the channel error rate is very small. The effects of propagation delay and processing time become significant in such high-speed networks. These fundamental changes trigger the necessity to reexamine the error-control schemes used in existing networks. Due to the diversity of service and performance requirements, the notion of multiple traffic classes is required, and separate control mechanisms should be used according to the traffic classes. The priority scheme is shown to be an effective method to support multiple classes of traffic     

Rotating ring-disc electrode (RRDE) investigation of borohydride electro-oxidation

Rotating ring-disc electrode (RRDE) voltammetry is applied for the in situ determination of hydroxy borohydride (BH₃(OH)⁻) formation during borohydride (BH₄⁻) electro-oxidation on a gold (Au) electrode in 6.0 M NaOH solution. The BH₃(OH)⁻ is detected at the ring electrode due to its further oxidation to BH₂(OH)₂⁻ by maintaining its potential in the range of −0.800 to −0.600 V vs. normal hydrogen electrode (NHE) while oxidizing BH₄⁻ on the disc electrode. The study reveals that the generation of BH₃(OH)⁻ increases if the anodic polarization of the disc electrode is increased. The RRDE ring-shielding experiments show that the electro-oxidation of BH₄⁻ occurs over a wide potential range of −0.500 to 0.400 V on the Au electrode under hydrodynamic conditions. Chronoamperometry is also used to study the BH₃(OH)⁻ oxidation in the potential range of −0.800 to −0.600 V with 0.33 M NaBH₄ in three different buffer solutions of pH 10.2, 11.0 and 11.70, respectively. The chronoamperometric studies indicate that the formation and stability of BH₃(OH)⁻ depends on the pH value.     

Effects of In-Band Crosstalk in Wavelength-Locked Fabry–PÉrot Laser-Diode-Based WDM PONs

We investigated the impact of in-band crosstalk on the system's performance in wavelength-locked Fabry-Perot laser-diode (FP-LD)-based wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical networks (WDM PONs). As expected, wavelength-locked FP-LD, which was injected by using an incoherent broadband light source, was more tolerant to in-band crosstalk than distributed-feedback (DFB) laser diode. A 1-dB power penalty in the wavelength-locked FP-LD-based PON system was observed when the crosstalk-to-signal ratio was ~-9 dB. We also compared the measured power penalties with the calculated power penalties. It has been shown that the in-band crosstalk-induced power penalty in wavelength-locked FP-LD-based WDM PON could be estimated properly by taking into account both effects of power addition and signal-crosstalk beat noise.