Fabrication of a poly-Si thin-film transistor with storage capacitor

The fabrication process of a low-temperature poly-Si thin-film transistor (TFT) with a storage capacitor was studied. The atmospheric-pressure chemical-vapour deposited SiO₂ protected the buried indium tin oxide (ITO) from reduction by a pure H₂ plasma treatment that was essential for the effective improvement of the poly-Si TFT characteristics. Thus, a storage capacitor with an ITO (picture electrode)-SiO₂-ITO (buried common electrode) structure was successfully fabricated. The poly-Si TFT with a channel width/length W/L ratio of 5 drove a 3 pF storage capacitor in 2 μs, and it showed superior driverability for LCD use. The TFT also had good hold characteristics under illumination for the realization of grey-scale representation.     

Three-dimensional motion of the upper cervical spine in rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis frequently contributes to instability of the upper cervical spine. Rotational instability of the upper cervical spine was evaluated in rheumatoid arthritis patients using biplanar x-ray photogrammetry. Three-dimensional cervical motion and the instantaneous axis of rotation of the atlas relative to the axis were evaluated in normal and rheumatoid arthritis patients during axial rotation in the horizontal plane. Anterior atlantoaxial subluxation did not increase during axial head rotation in either the atlantoaxial subluxation or the vertical subluxation groups, while the instantaneous axes of rotation were distributed posteriorly in the dens in the RA-normal group, but were widely scattered in the atlantoaxial subluxation group.     

A 10-s doping technology for the application of low-temperaturepolysilicon TFTs to giant microelectronics

A bucket-type high-density (0.25-1.2-mA/cm²) low-energy (500-2000 V) ion source was utilized for high-speed phosphorus doping directly into a thin polysilicon layer without cap SiO₂. Doping gas with He dilution was selected to reduce etching of polysilicon film. Excimer laser (XeCl, 8 mm×8 mm) pulse annealing was introduced to activate effectively the doped impurity. The combination of these techniques provided a practically low sheet resistance for the TFT source, drain, and gate with a short time doping. The low-temperature polysilicon TFT fabricated with a doping time of 10 s had characteristics comparable to those of that fabricated by a longer time doping or conventional ion implantation, showing the practicality of this technology and its promise for giant microelectronics     

An entropy model for shear deformation of granular materials

A statistical mechanical analogy for characterization of granular materials is discussed by using such notions as the state of the material, the density of states, entropy, canonical distribution and the partition function. The transition law of states during shear deformations of the material is microscopically investigated in the case of two-dimensional model granular materials. The assumption of entropy growth is shown to characterize the dilatancy of the material. A rough proof is given by assuming the measure preserving property of the transition and showing its ergodicity.     

Cooperative behavior of various agents in dynamic environment

The multi-agent model is a model in which agents with limited ability cooperate each other to accomplish a goal. In this paper, we introduce a multi-agent model in which agents are created to imitate real ants. There are two different type of agents, each type of which has a particular task. We designed agents to communicate each other by using pheromone considering noise. On this model, we observed cooperative behavior of agents and evaluated conditions to make an order of behavior in the model.     

A new fabrication technology for AlGaAs/GaAs HEMT LSIs using InGaAsnonalloyed ohmic contacts

The authors studied the nonalloyed ohmic characteristics of HEMTs (high electron mobility transistors). At high integration levels, nonalloyed ohmic contacts were found to have two advantages: an extremely short ohmic length with low parasitic source series resistance and direct connection between the source/drain and gate with the same metal. The propagation delay in a ring oscillator with a single-metal source/drain and gate formed simultaneously was 37 ps/gate (L _g=0.9 μm). The very short ohmic metal contacts and just three contact holes made it possible to reduce the memory cell area greatly. The cell is 21.5×21.5 μm², one of the smallest ever reported for a GaAs-based static RAM. Using smaller load HEMTs or resistor loads in the memory cell, combined with nonalloyed ohmic technology with quarter- or subquarter-micrometer-gate HEMTs it is possible to fabricate a very-high-speed LSI such as a 64-kb static RAM with a reasonable chip size     

Ultrahigh-speed HEMT LSI technology for supercomputer

The current status of high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology at Fujitsu for high-performance VLSI is presented, focusing on device performance in the submicrometer dimensional range and the HEMT LSIs implemented in supercomputer systems. The HEMT is a very promising device for ultrahigh-speed LSI/VLSI applications because of the high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction structure. A 1.1 K-gate bus-driver logic LSI has been developed to demonstrate the high-speed data transfer in a high-speed parallel processing system at room temperature, operating at 10.92 GFLOPS. A cryogenic 3.3 K-gate random number generator logic LSI with maximum clock frequency of 1.6 GHz has also been developed to demonstrate the high-clock-rate system operations at liquid-nitrogen temperature. For VLSI level complexity, a HEMT 64-kb static RAM with 1.2-ns access operation and a 45 K-gate gate array with 35-ps logic delay have been developed operating at room temperature, demonstrating the high performance required for future high-speed computer systems     

Accelerator Analysis of Tributyltin Adsorbed onto the Surface of a Tributyltin Resistant Marine Pseudoalteromonas sp. Cell

Tributyltin (TBT) released into seawater from ship hulls is a stable marine pollutant and obviously remains in marine environments. We isolated a TBT resistant marine Pseudoalteromonas sp. TBT1 from sediment of a ship’s ballast water. The isolate (10^{9.3 ± 0.2} colony-forming units mL⁻¹) adsorbed TBT in proportion to the concentrations of TBTCl externally added up to 3 mM, where the number of TBT adsorbed by a single cell was estimated to be 10^8.2. The value was reduced to about one-fifth when the lysozyme-treated cells were used. The surface of ethanol treated cells became rough, but the capacity of TBT adsorption was the same as that for native cells. These results indicate that the function of the cell surface, rather than that structure, plays an important role to the adsorption of TBT. The adsorption state of TBT seems to be multi-layer when the number of more than 10^6.8 TBT molecules is adsorbed by a single cell.     

Effect of the addition of NH4F on anodic behaviors of DSA-type electrodes in H2SO4-(NH4)2SO4 solutions

The effect of NH₄F addition on the high-anodic behaviors of various DSA-type electrodes was investigated in a mixture of sulfuric acid and ammonium sulfate. The pronounced effect of NH₄ addition was observed on DSA-type Ti/RuO₂, Ti/IrO₂?TiO₂ electrodes, but not observed on the other electrodes studied. The close relationship was found between the increment of the electrode potential caused by the NH₄ addition and the quantity of F^? adsorbed on the electrode surface. The effect of NH₄F addition was considered to be resulted from the adsorption of F^? on the electrode surface, and the presence of adsorbed F^? was directly proved.     

Characteristics of epoxy resin cured with in situ polymerized curing agent

In order to improve the heat resistance of a cured epoxy resin together with reducing the viscosity of the resin composition, an epoxy resin was cured with a curing agent formed from the radical copolymerization of vinyl monomers during the cure process of the epoxy resin. N-phenylmaleimide and p-acetoxystyrene were used as vinyl monomers of the curing agent. The epoxy resin was cured by the insertion reaction of the ester group of the in situ polymerized curing agent and the epoxy group of the epoxy resin. In the cure system of the epoxy and the phenol resins, reduction of the viscosity of the resin composition was achieved by replacing some or all of the phenol resin with these monomers. When all phenol resins were replaced by these monomers, the viscosity of resin composition (0.01 Pa s at 70 °C) decreased by about 1/2000 compared with that of the system with only phenol resin (21 Pa s at 70 °C). The glass transition temperature (T_g) of the cured resin with no phenols was 174 °C, an improvement of 17 °C compared with that of the system cured with only phenol resin. The flexural strength of the new resins remained unchanged.