C-t analysis of MOS capacitors under constant current stress

The effect of high oxide field stress is studied using capacitance-time (C-t) measurements of MOS capacitors. The stress results in parallel shifts of the C-t curve along the time axis. The flatband voltage shift ΔV_FB obtained from the initial deep depletion capacitance C(t=0⁺) follows the same trend as that from the high-frequency C-V characteristics. However, the discrepancy between the two flatband voltages becomes larger as the stress increases due to the effect of interface charges on C-t characteristics. The flatband voltage difference is converted to interface trap density, showing a steady increase of interface trap density with stress, similar to that from low-frequency C-V measurements     

Efficient reconfigurable techniques for VLSI arrays with 6-port switches

This paper proposes an efficient techniques to reconfigure a two-dimensional degradable very large scale integration/wafer scale integration (VLSI/WSI) array under the row and column routing constraints, which has been shown to be NP-complete. The proposed VLSI/WSI array consists of identical processing elements such as processors or memory cells embedded in a 6-port switch lattice in the form of a rectangular grid. It has been shown that the proposed VLSI structure with 6-port switches eliminates the need to incorporate internal bypass within processing elements and leads to notable increase in the harvest when compared with the one using 4-port switches. A new greedy rerouting algorithm and compensation approaches are also proposed to maximize harvest through reconfiguration. Experimental results show that the proposed VLSI array with 6-port switches consistently outperforms the most efficient alternative proposed in literature, toward maximizing the harvest in the presence of fault processing elements.     

Evaluation of Qbd for electrons tunneling fromthe Si/SiO2 interface compared to electron tunneling from thepoly-Si/SiO2 interface

Electrical time-to-breakdown (TTB) measurements have shown the charge to breakdown Q_bd of gate oxide capacitors fabricated on n-type well (n-well) substrates always to be higher than that of capacitors on p-type well (p-well) substrates on the same wafer when both are biased into accumulation under normal test conditions. Here the authors correlate the higher n-well Q_bd to smooth capacitor oxide/substrate interfaces and minimized grain boundary cusps at the poly-Si gate/oxide interfaces, confirming that Fowler-Nordheim tunneling is the dominant current conduction mechanisms through the oxide. They correlate higher Q_bd to higher barrier height for a given substrate type and observe that the slope of the barrier height versus temperature plot is lower for both p-well and n-well cases with electrons tunneling from the silicon substrate. This is attributed to surface roughness at the poly-Si gate/SiO₂ interface. A poly-Si gate deposition and annealing process with clean, smooth oxide/substrate interfaces will improve the p-well breakdown characteristics and allow higher Q_bd to be achieved     

Sensor and actuator fault diagnosis of systems with discrete inputs and outputs

The paper describes a method for detecting and identifying faults that occur in the sensors or in the actuators of dynamical systems with discrete-valued inputs and outputs. The model used in the diagnosis is a stochastic automaton. The generalized observer scheme (GOS), which has been proposed for systems with continuous-variable inputs and outputs some years ago, are developed for discrete systems. This scheme solves the diagnostic problem as an observation problem, which is set up here for discrete-event systems. As the system under consideration is described by a stochastic automaton rather than a differential equation, the mathematical background and the diagnostic algorithms obtained are completely different from the well-known observers developed for continuous-variable systems. The GOS is extended here by a fault detection module to cope with plant faults that are different from actuator or sensor faults. The diagnostic algorithm consists of two steps, the first detecting the existence of a fault and the second isolating possible sensor or actuator faults or identifying plant faults. The results are applied to quantized systems whose discrete inputs and outputs result from a quantization of the continuous-variable input and output signals. Experimental results illustrate the proposed diagnostic method.     

Multigrid methods with space–time concurrency

Computing and Visualization in Science - We consider the comparison of multigrid methods for parabolic partial differential equations that allow space–time concurrency. With current trends in...     

轴流风机叶尖泄漏流动的大涡模拟（英文）

本文采用大涡模拟(LES)的方法研究了在基于外壳直径的雷诺数为9.36×105条件下5叶片的轴流式风扇的流动特性,并且着重分析了叶尖泄漏的流动现象。本文使用了基于有限体积法和分层笛卡尔网格的可压流求解器进行数值计算,并应用了体积守恒的切割网格方法处理风扇几何结构的浸入式边界。同时开发了用于笛卡尔网格的旋转周期性边界条件,这样只需分析由2.5亿网格构造的包含一片叶片的72°区域。该研究首先对网格质量进行了分析,之后讨论了瞬态和时均流场的特性,并与使用RANS的5叶片模拟结果进行了对比。RANS和LES模拟结果的主要不同之处体现在叶尖泄漏涡尾流中的湍流动能。本文进而研究了叶尖间隙对叶尖泄漏涡的影响。研究表明,间隙的大小会影响叶尖泄漏涡的大小形状。此外,间隙中更多的分离现象和反向旋转涡会导致较低的湍流动能。     

Composite gel-filled giant vesicles: Membrane homogeneity and mechanical properties

We further investigate the properties of composite Poly(NIPAM) (poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)) gel-filled giant vesicles, focusing here on i) the homogeneity of the membrane, ii) its coupling to the inner gel under strong suction pressures, and iii) the relation between the final elastic modulus of the vesicles and the amount of crosslinker in the pre-gel medium. We show that whereas the photo-polymerization process induces a decrease of the membrane homogeneity at the micrometer size range, the membrane still remains strongly coupled to the internal gel network. The vesicles studied here display average moduli in the range [0.5–25] kPa, confirming their potential as biomimetic mechanical systems.     

Frequency domain lifetime characterization

Time-based measurements are commonly used for lifetime characterization of semiconductors. We have developed the theory, verified by experiment, of frequency-based lifetime characterization as an alternative to time-based measurements for MOS devices biased in inversion. One consideration during lifetime/diffusion length measurements, is whether the near-surface space-charge region or the bulk or quasineutral region is characterized. To characterize the near-surface space-charge region of the device, one usually makes room temperature pulsed MOS capacitor or diode leakage current measurements. We show that room-temperature, frequency-domain capacitance, conductance, or resistance measurements characterize the quasineutral bulk, not the space charge region, in contrast to room-temperature pulsed MOS-C or diode leakage current measurements which characterize the space-charge region