A special purpose neural IC is described which will be utilised in a data-acquisition system in DESY (Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron). The analog CMOS VLSI chip implements a 70×4×1 fully interconnected feed-forward network and is capable of classifying 70 dimensional data-vectors within 50 ns. The high speed is essential for the real-time data processing and data-reduction. The classifier has to perform fixed function, therefore programming is not essential. The neural chip is under fabrication with 2.5 μm double metal CMOS process, occupies 65×4 mm2 silicon area, dissipates 2W at 5V power supply, performs 6 billion multiplications per second and has 1.5 GBytes/s equivalent input bandwidth.

| This paper describes the principle and the design of a 0.5m CMOS, low-power, low-voltage, chopped ampliier for noise and ooset reduction in mixed analogue digital applications. The operation is based on chopping and dynamic element matching to reduce noise and ooset, without excessive increase of the charge injection residual ooset. It consists of a chopped transconductance stage and a new class AB stage capable of working at 1.3V supply voltage. The main goal is to achieve low residual oosets by chopping at high frequencies reducing at the same time the 1/f noise of the am-pliier. Loaded with a heavy load 32jj 300pF it has a 91dB open loop gain and a GBW of 1.8MHz. Simulations show a THD of-90dB for a 1k load and-83dB for a 32 load and 1KHz input signal. The simulated static ooset is 1.67mV. The simulated residual ooset is 450V at 10MHz chopping. At 1KHz chopping, the ooset becomes lower than 1V.

This letter reports the diagnostic power of the low-frequency noise analysis (steady-state and periodic large-signal excitation) in MOSFETs subjected to hot-carrier degradation. The LF noise under periodic large-signal excitation is shown to increase more rapidly than the LF noise in steady-state. Moreover the improvement in the LF noise performance due to periodic large-signal excitation, observed for fresh devices, gradually diminishes as the devices are subjected to hot-carrier stress.

Silicon dioxide layers with stoichiometric composition and excellent electrical properties were deposited at a substrate temperature of 60 °C with an electron cyclotron resonance plasma source. This work is focused on determining the electrical conduction and trapping mechanisms of the deposited films. From the temperature dependence of current density–electric field characteristics, Fowler–Nordheim tunneling was found to be the dominant conduction mechanism in SiO2 films obtained with low silane flow and at low pressure. For layers deposited with higher silane flows and higher pressures, the current at low biases is highly dependent on temperature. Positive charge was measured at the Si/SiO2 interface during low electric stress, while electrons were trapped at the interface for electric fields higher than 7 MV/cm. Constant current stress measurements confirmed that low silane flow and low total pressure are suitable deposition conditions for obtaining a film comparable to thermally grown oxide from the reliability point of view.

The behavior of RTS noise in MOSFETs under large-signal excitation is experimentally studied. Our measurements show a significant transient effect, in line with earlier reports. We present a new physical model to describe this transient behavior and to predict RTS noise in MOSFETs under large-signal excitation. With only three model parameters the behavior is well described, contrary to existing models.

Light emitting diode antifuses have been integrated into a microfluidic device that is realized with extended standard IC-compatible technological steps. The device comprises a microchannel sandwiched between a photodiode detector and a nanometre-scale diode antifuse light emitter. In this paper, the device fabrication process, working principle and properties and possible applications will be discussed. Changes in the interference fringe of the antifuse spectra due to the filling of the channel have been measured. Potential applications are electro-osmotic flow speed measurement, detection of absorptivity of liquids in the channel, detection of changes of the refractive index of the medium in the channel, e.g. air bubbles, particles in the liquid.

The low-frequency noise power spectrum of small dimension MOSFETs is dominated by Lorentzians arising from random telegraph signals (RTS). The low-frequency noise is observed to decrease when the devices are periodically switched 'off'. The technique of determining the statistical lifetimes and amplitudes of the RTS by fitting the signal level histogram of the time-domain record to two-Gaussian histograms has been reported in the literature. This procedure is then used for analysing the 'noisy' RTS along with the device background noise, which turned out to be 1/f noise. The 1/f noise of the device can then be separated from the RTS using this procedure. In this work, RTS observed in MOSFETs, under both constant and switched biased conditions, have been investigated in the time domain, Further, the 1/f noise in both the constant and the switched biased conditions is investigated.

We show measurement results and simulations of current–voltage characteristics of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor capacitors after hard breakdown. The devices exhibit either point contact or diode behaviour, depending on electrode and substrate characteristics and the bias regime. The charge transport characteristics were reproduced in device simulations, including the dependence on the gate dimensions and breakdown spot size.

A scroll compressor having a housing, a fixed scroll stationary on said housing, an orbiting scroll nested with the fixed scroll and being mounted on the eccentric of the compressor crankshaft for orbital motion about the longitudinal axis of the compressor, the base of the orbiting scroll having an annular groove formed in the outside or low pressure side thereof, a passage formed through the base of the orbiting scroll and placing the groove in fluid communication with an intermediate section of the pressure continuum for providing an axial compliance force against the base of the orbiting scroll and urging the wrap tips thereof into sealing engagement with the adjacent base of the fixed scroll, an annular seal positioned in the groove and having an annular web provided with a substantially planar contact side positioned in sliding, sealing contact with a sealing surface of housing and having annular elastomeric sealing components slidingly sealed against the walls of the groove to provide an axial compliance pressure chamber which is sealed from ambient pressures.

In this paper, we describe the fabrication, using standard silicon processing techniques, of silicon light-emitting diodes (LED) that efficiently emit photons with energy around the silicon bandgap. The improved efficiency had been explained by the spatial confinement of charge carriers due to a local strain field that is formed by dislocation loop arrays. The dependence of device electroluminescent properties on the annealing conditions is carefully examined as a high temperature process has profound influence on these dislocations. Increased luminescent intensity at higher device temperature, together with pure diffusion current conduction mechanism evidently shows the influence of the dislocation loops. The electrical properties of the diode are reasonable with low leakage reverse current.

Silicon diode-antifuses with sizes in the nanometer range and emitting light in the visible and near ultraviolet, are employed as actuators for a photochemical process, i.e. the structure transformation of photoresist. Collective experiments were done to collect data for a correlation among exposure current, time and the size of the reaction products. A CMOS compatible integrated device with light detection capability has been realized and examined.

We propose a simple, inexpensive technique with high resolution to identify the weak spots in integrated circuits by means of a non-destructive photochemical process in which photoresist is used as the photon detection tool. The experiment was done to localize the breakdown link of thin silicon dioxide capacitors of 5 X 5 and 10 X 10 micrometer2 in sizes. Both positive and quasi-negative photoresists were employed. The resultant products are holes in the developed positive photoresist layer and mushroom- shaped spots in the quasi-negative one. Based on the photoresist decomposition energy dose, we could approximately calculate the light emitting power in the near UV range. Due to the proximity between the layer and the light source, the power is interpreted on a more accurate basis, which was a difficult task in previous research. The product sizes, dependent on the light emitting currents and exposure time, establish the core for a rough model that can be used for further application of this technique as a reliability analysis tool. One potential application is to detect and characterize regions of hot carriers on a VLSI circuit under operation for design improvement purpose.

Though R. Newman reported the avalanche breakdown light emission in a conventional p-n junction diode half a century ago, there are almost no successful applications of this phenomenon in industry. We report the realization of a novel silicon electro-optic device, explicitly the integration of light emitting diode antifuse and photodetector on a single silicon wafer by CMOS technology, and the first important results. The diode antifuse (called antifuse to the rest of this contribution) resembles a conventional diode but has a small size of a few tens of nanometers, which permits easy collection of all emitted photons

A new measurement setup is presented that allows the observation of 1/f noise spectra in MOSFET's under switched bias conditions in a wide frequency band (10 Hz-100 kHz). When switching between inversion and accumulation, MOSFET's of different manufacturers invariably show reduced 1/f noise power density for frequencies below the switching frequency. At low frequencies (10 Hz), a 5-8 dB reduction in intrinsic 1/f noise power density is found for different devices, largely independent of the switching frequency (up to 1 MHz). The switched bias measurements render detailed wideband 1/f noise spectra of switched MOSFET's, which is useful for 1/f noise model validation and analog circuit design.

Breakdown events are studied in varying test set-ups with a high time resolution. Often a partial recovery from breakdown is observed within a few ms. Parameters such as device area, stress conditions and parasitic elements prohibit the recovery if they result in a high system impedance. The results suggest the existence of a highly conductive path that can be annihilated during breakdown.