Tag Archives: letter-pulse-tech

ANSYS (NASDAQ: ANSS) announced TSMC certified ANSYS solutions for the 7 nanometer FinFET Plus (N7+) process node with extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology and validated the reference flow for the latest Integrated Fan-Out with Memory on Substrate (InFO_MS) advanced packaging technology. The certifications and validations are vital for fabless semiconductor companies that require their simulation tools to pass rigorous testing and validation for new process nodes and packaging technologies.

ANSYS® RedHawk™ and ANSYS® Totem™ are certified for TSMC N7+ process technology that provides EUV-enabled features. Certification for N7+ includes extraction, power integrity and reliability, signal electromigration (EM) and thermal reliability analysis.

Industry-leading TSMC InFO advanced packaging technology is extended to integrate memory subsystem with logic die. TSMC and ANSYS enhanced the existing InFO design flow to support the new InFO_MS packaging technology, and validated the reference flow using ANSYS SIwave-CPA, ANSYS® RedHawk-CPA™, ANSYS® RedHawk-CTA™, ANSYS® CMA™ and ANSYS® CSM™ with the corresponding chip models. The InFO_MS reference flow includes die and package co-simulation and co-analysis for extraction, power and signal integrity analysis, power and signal electromigration analysis and thermal analysis.

“TSMC and ANSYS’ latest N7+ certification and InFO_MS enablement empowers customers to address growing performance, reliability and power demands for their next generation of chips and packages,” said Suk Lee, Senior Director of Design Infrastructure Marketing Division at TSMC.

“The number of smart, connected electronic devices continues to grow and manufacturers must keep pace to design power efficient, high-performing and reliable products at a lower cost and with a smaller footprint,” said John Lee, General Manager at ANSYS. “ANSYS semiconductor solutions address complex multi-physics challenges such as power, thermal, reliability and impact of process variation on product performance. ANSYS’ comprehensive Chip Package System solutions for chip aware system and system aware chip signoff help mutual customers accelerate design convergence with greater confidence.”

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) possess optical properties that could be used to make computers run a million times faster and store information a million times more energy-efficiently, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

This is Dr. Mark Stockman, director of the Center for Nano-Optics and a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. Credit: Georgia State University

Computers operate on the time scale of a fraction of a nanosecond, but the researchers suggest constructing computers on the basis of TMDCs, atomically thin semiconductors, could make them run on the femtosecond time scale, a million times faster. This would also increase computer memory speed by a millionfold.

“There is nothing faster, except light,” said Dr. Mark Stockman, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Nano-Optics and a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State. “The only way to build much faster computers is to use optics, not electronics. Electronics, which is used by current computers, can’t go any faster, which is why engineers have been increasing the number of processors. We propose the TMDCs to make computers a million times more efficient. This is a fundamentally different approach to information technology.”

The researchers propose a theory that TMDCs have the potential to process information within a couple of femtoseconds. A femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second. A TMDC has a hexagonal lattice structure that consists of a layer of transition metal atoms sandwiched between two layers of chalcogen atoms. This hexagonal structure aids in the computer processor speed and also enables more efficient information storage. The findings are published in the journal Physical Review B in the prestigious Rapid Communications section.

The TMDCs have a number of positive qualities, including being stable, non-toxic, thin, light and mechanically strong. Examples include molybdenum disulfide (MOS2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe2). TMDCs are part of a large family called 2D materials, which is named after their extraordinary thinness of one or a few atoms. In this study, the researchers also established the optical properties of the TMDCs, which allow them to be ultrafast.

In the hexagonal lattice structure of TMDCs, electrons rotate in circles in different states, with some electrons spinning to the left and others turning to the right depending on their position on the hexagon. This motion causes a new effect that is called topological resonance. Such an effect allows one to read, write or process a bit of information in only a few femtoseconds.

There are numerous examples of TMDCs, so in the future, the researchers would like to determine the best one to use for computer technology.

HEIDENHAIN announces a new series of angle encoders called the ERP 1000 with the design criteria of exceptionally high resolution, high speed, and high contamination resistance.  These new unique encoders are particularly useful for highly accurate measurement and positioning applications within semiconductor and metrology equipment.

Consisting of a glass disk bonded to a hub and a scanning unit that scans the fine graduation on the surface of the disk, these ERP 1000s are offered with four different size disks and segments.   The disks can have up to 63,000 lines with accuracy to +/- 0.9 arc seconds and up to 2600 RPM.  A reference mark is included, and multiple scanning units could be used to increase accuracy even further.

The scanning units also have the new custom ASIC HSP 1.0 which is HEIDENHAIN Signal Processing and forces the stabilization of the signals through an advanced LED brightness control. When the scanning unit detects contamination, the LED intensity is increased to help increase the reflectivity and therefore reducing amplified noise. The end result is a super stable encoder output that ensures high reliability. The scanning unit cable exit can also be ordered with either a straight-out configuration, or a 90-degree exit, both having left or right options as well, so squeezing into tight spaces is possible.

The scanning units come with either an analog 1Volt peak to peak or TTL electrical interface. The TTL versions can have up to 1000x interpolation, yielding an unprecedented 252 million counts of resolution per 360 degrees on the largest disk.

Silicon carbide (SiC), a material known for its toughness with applications from abrasives to car brakes, to high-temperature power electronics, has enjoyed renewed interest for its potential in quantum technology. Its ability to house optically excitable defects, called color centers, has made it a strong candidate material to become the building block of quantum computing.

Now, a group of researchers has created a list of “recipes” physicists can use to create specific types of defects with desired optical properties in SiC. In one of the first attempts to systematically explore color centers, the group used proton irradiation techniques to create the color centers in silicon carbide. They adjusted proton dose and temperature to find the right conditions that reliably produce the desired type of color center. The team reports their findings in Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

Atomic defects in the lattice of SiC crystals create color centers that can emit photons with unique spectral signatures. While some materials considered for quantum computing require cryogenically low temperatures, color centers in SiC can emit at room temperature. As the push to create increasingly smaller devices continues into atom-scale sensors and single-photon emitters, the ability to take advantage of existing SiC integrated circuit technology makes the material a standout candidate.

To create the defects, Michael Krieger and his colleagues bombarded SiC samples with protons. The team then let the SiC go through a heating phase called annealing. “We’re doing a lot of damage to these crystals,” Krieger said. “However, during annealing, the crystal structure recovers, but defects are also formed — some of them are the desired color centers.”

To ensure that their recipes are compatible with usual semiconductor technology, the group opted to use proton irradiation. Moreover, this approach doesn’t require electron accelerators or nuclear reactors like other techniques used to create color centers.

The data from using different doses and annealing temperatures showed that producing defects in SiC follows a pattern. Initially protons generate predominantly silicon vacancies in the crystal, then those vacancies sequentially transform into other defect complexes.

Studying the defects’ low-temperature photoluminescence spectra led the team to discover three previously unreported signatures. The three temperature-stable (TS) lines were shown to correlate with proton dose and annealing temperature.

Krieger said these TS lines have exciting properties and further research is already going on as the group hopes to utilize and control those defects for use in SiC-based quantum technology devices.

The world is edging closer to a reality where smart devices are able to use their owners as an energy resource, say experts from the University of Surrey.

In a study published by the Advanced Energy Materials journal, scientists from Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) detail an innovative solution for powering the next generation of electronic devices by using Triboelectric Nanogenerators (TENGs). Along with human movements, TENGs can capture energy from common energy sources such as wind, wave, and machine vibration.

A TENG is an energy harvesting device that uses the contact between two or more (hybrid, organic or inorganic) materials to produce an electric current.

Researchers from the ATI have provided a step-by-step guide on how to construct the most efficient energy harvesters. The study introduces a “TENG power transfer equation” and “TENG impedance plots”, tools which can help improve the design for power output of TENGs.

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the ATI, said: “A world where energy is free and renewable is a cause that we are extremely passionate about here at the ATI (and the University of Surrey) – TENGs could play a major role in making this dream a reality. TENGs are ideal for powering wearables, internet of things devices and self-powered electronic applications. This research puts the ATI in a world leading position for designing optimized energy harvesters.”

Ishara Dharmasena, PhD student and lead scientist on the project, said: “I am extremely excited with this new study which redefines the way we understand energy harvesting. The new tools developed here will help researchers all over the world to exploit the true potential of triboelectric nanogenerators, and to design optimised energy harvesting units for custom applications.”

Nanostructures can increase the sensitivity of optical sensors enormously – provided that the geometry meets certain conditions and matches the wavelength of the incident light. This is because the electromagnetic field of light can be greatly amplified or reduced by the local nanostructure. The HZB Young Investigator Group “Nano-SIPPE” headed by Prof. Christiane Becker is working to develop these kinds of nanostructures. Computer simulations are an important tool for this. Dr. Carlo Barth from the Nano-SIPPE team has now identified the most important patterns of field distribution in a nanostructure using machine learning, and has thereby explained the experimental findings very well for the first time.

The computer simulation shows how the electromagnetic field is distributed in the silicon layer with hole pattern after excitation with a laser. Here, stripes with local field maxima are formed, so that quantum dots shine particularly strongly. Credit: Carlo Barth/HZB

Quantum dots on nanostructures

The photonic nanostructures examined in this paper consist of a silicon layer with a regular hole pattern coated with what are referred to as quantum dots made of lead sulphide. Excited with a laser, the quantum dots close to local field amplifications emit much more light than on an unordered surface. This makes it possible to empirically demonstrate how the laser light interacts with the nanostructure.

Ten different patterns discovered by machine learning

In order to systematically record what happens when individual parameters of the nanostructure change, Barth calculates the three-dimensional electric field distribution for each parameter set using software developed at the Zuse Institute Berlin. Barth then had these enormous amounts of data analyzed by other computer programs based on machine learning. “The computer has searched through the approximately 45,000 data records and grouped them into about ten different patterns”, he explains. Finally, Barth and Becker succeeded in identifying three basic patterns among them in which the fields are amplified in various specific areas of the nanoholes.

Outlook: Detection of single molecules, e.g. cancer markers

This allows photonic crystal membranes based on excitation amplification to be optimised for virtually any application. This is because some biomolecules accumulate preferentially along the hole edges, for example, while others prefer the plateaus between the holes, depending on the application. With the correct geometry and the right excitation by light, the maximum electric field amplification can be generated exactly at the attachment sites of the desired molecules. This would increase the sensitivity of optical sensors for cancer markers to the level of individual molecules, for example.

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Limited (AOS) (Nasdaq: AOSL), a designer, developer and global supplier of a broad range of power semiconductors and power ICs, today introduced the TO-Leadless (TOLL) package in combination with 40V Shield-Gate Technology (SGT) to provide the highest current capability in its voltage class. The TOLL package has the highest current capacity because of AOS’ innovative technology which utilizes a clip to achieve the 400A DC at 25°C capability. The TOLL packaging technology offers very low package resistance and inductance due to the clip technology in comparison to other TO-Leadless packages using standard wire-bonding technology which enables improved EMI performance.

The AOTL66401 (40V) has a 30% smaller footprint compared to a TO-263 (D2PAK) package, including having higher current carry capability that enables the designer to reduce the number of devices in parallel. This new device offers a higher power density in comparison to existing solutions, and is ideally suited for industrial BLDC motor applications and battery management to reduce the number of MOSFETs. The AOTL66401 has a 0.7mOhm max rating at 10Vgs with a maximum drain current of 400A at 25°C and 350A at 100°C case temperature. The pulsed current is rated at 1600A, which is limited by the maximum junction temperature of 175°C.

“With the significant performance improvement, the TOLL with clip technology is a robust package which enables low package parasitics reducing EMI. The AOTL66401 simplifies new designs with the higher current density to enable savings in overall system cost due to a reduced number of devices in parallel. AOS’ TOLL package is best suited for high power applications,” said Peter H. Wilson.

It used to be known as the information superhighway – the fibre-optic infrastructure on which our gigabytes and petabytes of data whizz around the world at (nearly) the speed of light.

And like any highway system, increased traffic has created slowdowns, especially at the junctions where data jumps on or off the system.

Local and access networks especially, such as financial trading systems, city-wide mobile phone networks and cloud computing warehouses, are therefore not as fast as they could be.

This is because increasingly complex digital signal processing and laser-based ‘local oscillator’ systems are needed to unpack the photonic, or optical, information and transfer it into the electronic information that computers can process.

Now, scientists at the University of Sydney have for the first time developed a chip-based information recovery technique that eliminates the need for a separate laser-based local oscillator and complex digital signal processing system.

Dr Amol Choudhary (left) and Professor Ben Eggleton, Director of Sydney Nano, in one of the photonic laboratories at the Sydney Nanoscience Hub. Credit: Louise Cooper/University of Sydney

“Our technique uses the interaction of photons and acoustic waves to enable an increase in signal capacity and therefore speed,” said Dr Elias Giacoumidis, joint lead author of a new study. “This allows for the successful extraction and regeneration of the signal for electronic processing at very-high speed.”

The incoming photonic signal is processed in a filter on a chip made from a glass known as chalcogenide. This material has acoustic properties that allows a photonic pulse to ‘capture’ the incoming information and transport it on the chip to be processed into electronic information.

This removes the need for complicated laser oscillators and complex digital signal processing.

“This will increase processing speed by microseconds, reducing latency or what is referred to as ‘lag’ in the gaming community,” said Dr Amol Choudhary from the University of Sydney Nano Institute and School of Physics. “While this doesn’t sound a lot, it will make a huge difference in high-speed services, such as the financial sector and emerging e-health applications.”

The photonic-acoustic interaction harnesses what is known as stimulated Brillouin scattering, a effect used by the Sydney team to develop photonic chips for information processing.

“Our demonstration device using stimulated Brillouin scattering has produced a record-breaking narrowband of about 265 megahertz bandwidth for carrier signal extraction and regeneration. This narrow bandwidth increases the overall spectral efficiency and therefore overall capacity of the system,” Dr Choudhary said.

Group research leader and Director of Sydney Nano, Professor Ben Eggleton, said: “The fact that this system is lower in complexity and includes extraction speedup means it has huge potential benefit in a wide range of local and access systems such as metropolitan 5G networks, financial trading, cloud computing and the Internet-of-Things.”

The study is published today in Optica.

Dr Choudhary said the research team’s next steps will be to construct prototype receiver chips for further testing.

The study was a collaboration with Monash University and the Australian National University.

STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) revealed its highly integrated mobile-security solution, the ST54J, a system-on-chip (SoC) containing an NFC (Near-Field Communication) controller, Secure Element, and eSIM. The SoC delivers performance-boosting integration for mobile and IoT devices, with the added benefit of ST’s software-partner ecosystem for smoother user experiences in mobile payments and e-ticketing transactions, as well as more convenient, remote, mobile provisioning to support multiple operator subscriptions.

“As mobile devices require more security and connectivity in an ever-shrinking PCB footprint, the ST54J will help designers simplify assembly and reduce bill-of-material costs,” said Laurent Degauque, Marketing Director, Secure Microcontroller Division, STMicroelectronics. “ST’s established ecosystem of third-party software partners provides access to eSIM and eSE solutions that are not only EMVCo and GSMA-SAS certifiable, but also tested for interoperability and validated with numerous Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), custom profiles and application providers worldwide.”

Spearheading the fourth generation of ST’s proven embedded Secure Element family, the single-chip ST54J ensures faster contactless interaction than a discrete chipset by eliminating performance-limiting off-chip data exchanges between the Secure Element and NFC controller. In addition, a faster, state-of-the-art core for each function further accelerates contactless transactions with mobile terminals and enhances roaming by supporting secure-element cryptographic protocols used worldwide, including FeliCa® and MIFARE®.

Packaging and design flexibility comes from the space savings of integrating three key functions onto a single chip. In addition, ST used its NFC booster technology to enhance the performance of the NFC controller, allowing it to establish robust contactless connections with a small-size antenna, allowing designers even more generous freedom to manage space inside the device and minimize the thickness of new smartphone generations.

ST delivers the ST54J to customers with NFC firmware and the GlobalPlatform V2.3 secure element Operating System, which provides best-in-class cryptographic performance and optimum eSIM interoperability. The OS also allows flexible configurations to support eSE-only or combined functionality. In addition, as the first chip maker accredited by the GSMA to personalize eSIMs for mobiles and connected IoT devices onto WLCSP packages, ST can shrink the supply chain and accelerate delivery to manufacturers.

The prevalence of electronic devices has transformed life in the 21st century. At the heart of these devices is the movement of electrons across materials. Scientists today continue to discover new ways to manipulate and move electrons in a quest for making faster and better functioning devices.

Scientists from the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit led by Prof. Keshav Dani at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have demonstrated a new mechanism that can potentially allow the control of electrons on the nanometer (10-9 of a meter) spatial scale and femtosecond (10-15 of a second) temporal scales using light. The study has been published in the journal Science Advances.

When a voltage is applied across semiconducting materials, an electric field is generated that directs the flow of electrons through the materials. Dr. E Laine Wong, a recent PhD graduate at OIST, and her colleagues have used a physical phenomenon called surface photovoltage effect, to induce electric fields on the material surface allowing them to. Surface photovoltage effect is an effect where the surface potential of the materials can be varied by changing the light intensity. “By making use of the nonuniform intensity profile of a laser beam, we manipulate the local surface potentials to create a spatially varying electric field within the photoexcitation spot. This allows us to control electron flow within the optical spot,” says E Laine.

Using a combination of femtosecond spectroscopy with electron microscopy techniques, E Laine and her colleagues made a movie of the flow of electrons on femtosecond timescales. Typically, in femtosecond spectroscopy, an ultrafast laser beam known as the ‘pump’ is first used to excite the electrons in the sample. A second ultrafast laser beam known as the ‘probe’ is then shone upon the sample to track the evolution of the excited electrons. This technique, also known as pump-probe spectroscopy, has allowed the scientists to study the dynamics of the excited electrons at a very short time scale. The combination of an electron microscope then further provides the scientists with the spatial resolution required to directly image the movement of the excited electrons even within the small area of the laser beam spot. “The combination of these two methods with both high spatial and temporal resolutions has allowed us to record a movie of the electrons being directed to flow in opposite directions,” says E Laine.

The findings of the study are also promising to control the movement of electrons beyond the resolution limit of light by utilizing the spatial intensity variations of the laser beam within the focal spot. The mechanism could therefore be potentially used to operate nanoscale electronic circuits. Prof. Dani and his team are now working towards building a functional nanoscale ultrafast device based on this newfound mechanism.