Tag Archives: letter-pulse-tech

Ease of use and design re-use across frequencies have not traditionally been associated with RF power solutions — until now. Today, NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ:NXPI), a developer of RF power, introduces two new power blocks that promise to become a new standard for years to come.

The simplicity of these new devices lies in the availability of laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) technology for RF transistors in ubiquitous TO-247 and TO-220 power packages, that come with well established assembly processes. This is augmented with the simultaneous availability of very compact reference circuits that can be reused from 1.8 Megahertz (MHz) to 250 MHz. This results in considerable savings, fast time to market and optimized supply chain for most High Frequency (HF) and Very High Frequency (VHF) power systems.

Removing Barrier to Entry for RF Power
NXP’s new RF solutions include the MRF101AN 100 watt (W) transistor that is housed in the TO-220 package, and the MRF300AN 300 W transistor that is housed in the TO-247 package. While current plastic packages for high power RF require a precise solder reflow process, these transistors can be assembled to a printed circuit board (PCB) using a standard through-hole technology, reducing costs. Heatsinking is also simplified since the transistors can be mounted vertically to a chassis, or in more creative and versatile ways such as under the PCB. This opens many options for the mechanical design, contributing to lower the Bill of Materials (BoM) and reduce time to market.

“RF Power is moving increasingly into new applications, where the requirements for ease of use, high performance and versatility are essential,” said Pierre Piel, senior director and general manager for multi-market RF power at NXP. “We continue our mission to ease the use of RF Power by delivering solutions that minimize design requirements, reduce time to market and simplify the supply chain for our customers.”

Flexibility Without Compromise on Performance
At 40.68 MHz, the MRF300AN outputs 330 W Continuous Wave (CW), with 28 decibels (dB) of gain and 79 percent efficiency. As part of NXP’s series of extremely rugged transistors, the family is designed for use in unforgiving industrial applications and can withstand 65:1 Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR).

This performance is supported by 2 x 3 inch (5.1 x 7.1 centimeters) power block reference designs that use cost-effective PCB material. With only a change of coils and discrete components, and no change to the PCB layout, the board can be adapted to support any other frequency from 1.8 to 250 MHz. This ensures quick design cycle for RF designers to develop power amplifiers that address new markets.

For even more flexibility, each transistor comes in two configurations. For example, the MRF101BN mirrors the pin-out of the MRF101AN, enabling a compact push-pull layout to address wideband applications without compromise on efficiency.

The MRF101AN and MRF300AN target Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) applications as well as HF and VHF communications. A new market is also expected with switch-mode power supply, since this technology enables switching at higher frequencies than existing solutions, reducing the size of other components of the BoM. The devices are part of NXP’s Product Longevity Program guaranteeing availability for 15 years.

Availability
The MRF300AN is available now. The MRF101AN is currently sampling, with production expected in September 2018. Reference circuits for the MRF300AN are available for 27 MHz, 40.68 MHz, 81.36 MHz and 230 MHz. For pricing or additional information, please contact your local NXP sales office or approved distributor.

Physicists developed a way to determine the electronic properties of thin gold films after they interact with light. Nature Communications published the new method, which adds to the understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the interaction of electrons and light.

“Surprisingly, up to now there have been very limited ways of determining what exactly happens with materials after we shine light on them,” says Hayk Harutyunyan, an assistant professor of physics at Emory University and lead author of the research. “Our finding may pave the way for improvements in devices such as optical sensors and photovoltaic cells.”

From solar panels to cameras and cell phones — to seeing with our eyes — the interaction of photons of light with atoms and electrons is ubiquitous. “Optical phenomenon is such a fundamental process that we take it for granted, and yet it’s not fully understood how light interacts with materials,” Harutyunyan says.

One obstacle to understanding the details of these interactions is their complexity. When the energy of a light photon is transferred to an electron in a light-absorbing material, the photon is destroyed and the electron is excited from one level to another. But so many photons, atoms and electrons are involved — and the process happens so quickly — that laboratory modeling of the process is computationally challenging.

For the Nature Communications paper, the physicists started with a relatively simple material system — ultra-thin gold layers — and conducted experiments on it.

“We did not use brute computational power,” Harutyunyan says. “We started with experimental data and developed an analytical and theoretical model that allowed us to use pen and paper to decode the data.”

Harutyunyan and Manoj Manjare, a post-doctoral fellow in his lab, designed and conducted the experiments. Stephen Gray, Gary Wiederrecht and Tal Heipern — from the Argonne National Laboratory — came up with the mathematical tools needed. The Argonne physicists also worked on the theoretical model, along with Alexander Govorov from Ohio University.

For the experiments, the nanolayers of gold were positioned at particular angles. Light was then shined on the gold in two, sequential pulses. “These laser light pulses were very short in time — thousands of billions of times shorter than a second,” Harutyunyan says. “The first pulse was absorbed by the gold. The second pulse of light measured the results of that absorption, showing how the electrons changed from a ground to excited state.”

Typically, gold absorbs light at green frequencies, reflecting all the other colors of the spectrum, which makes the metal appear yellow. In the form of nanolayers, however, gold can absorb light at longer wave lengths, in the infrared part of the spectrum.

“At a certain excitation angle, we were able to induce electronic transitions that were not just a different frequency but a different physical process,” Harutyunyan says. “We were able to track the evolution of that process over time and demonstrate why and how those transitions happen.”

Using the method to better understand the interactions underlying light absorption by a material may lead to ways to tune and manage these interactions.

Photovoltaic solar energy cells, for instance, are currently only capable of absorbing a small percentage of the light that hits them. Optical sensors used in biomedicine and photo catalysts used in chemistry are other examples of devices that could potentially be improved by the new method.

While the Nature Communications paper offers proof of concept, the researchers plan to continue to refine the method’s use with gold while also experimenting with a range of other materials.

“Ultimately, we want to demonstrate that this is a broad method that could be applied to many useful materials,” Harutyunyan says.

Exagan, an innovator of gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology enabling smaller and more efficient electrical converters, is accelerating the transition to greater power efficiency by launching its safe, powerful G-FET™ power transistors and G-DRIVE™ intelligent fast-switching solution, featuring an integrated driver and transistor in a single package. These GaN-based devices are easy to design into electronic products, paving the way for fast chargers that comply with the USB power delivery (PD) 3.0 type C standard while providing exceptional power performance and integration.

At this week’s PCIM Europe conference in Nuremberg, Exagan is showcasing the use of its high-power-density GaN-on-silicon semiconductors to create ultra-fast, efficient and smaller 45- to 65-watt chargers. The company’s exhibit demonstrates its electrical-converter expertise and how both G-FET and G-DRIVE can benefit new converter product designs and their applications.

“The market potential for our products is enormous including all portable electronic devices as well as homes, restaurants, hotels, airports, automobiles and more,” said Frédéric Dupont, president and CEO of Exagan. “In the near future, users will be able to quickly charge their smart phones, tablets, laptops and other devices simply by plugging a standard USB cable into a small, generic mobile charger.”

The ability of USB type C ports to serve as universal connections for the simultaneous transfer of electrical power, data and video is leading to tremendous growth. The number of devices with at least one USB type C port is forecasted to multiply from 300 million units in 2016 to nearly five billion by 2021, according to market research firm IHS Markit.

Exagan is working to accelerate the adoption of cost-effective GaN-based solutions for the charger market. The company uses 200-mm GaN-on-silicon wafers in its fabrication process, achieving highly cost efficient high-volume manufacturing.  Exagan is now sampling its fast, energy-efficient devices to key customers while ramping up production to begin volume shipments of G-FET and G-DRIVE products.

A new way of enhancing the interactions between light and matter, developed by researchers at MIT and Israel’s Technion, could someday lead to more efficient solar cells that collect a wider range of light wavelengths, and new kinds of lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could have fully tunable color emissions.

The fundamental principle behind the new approach is a way to get the momentum of light particles, called photons, to more closely match that of electrons, which is normally many orders of magnitude greater. Because of the huge disparity in momentum, these particles usually interact very weakly; bringing their momenta closer together enables much greater control over their interactions, which could enable new kinds of basic research on these processes as well as a host of new applications, the researchers say.

The new findings, based on a theoretical study, are being published today in the journal Nature Photonics in a paper by Yaniv Kurman of Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa); MIT graduate student Nicholas Rivera; MIT postdoc Thomas Christensen; John Joannopoulos, the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics at MIT; Marin Soljacic, professor of physics at MIT; Ido Kaminer, a professor of physics at Technion and former MIT postdoc; and Shai Tsesses and Meir Orenstein at Technion.

While silicon is a hugely important substance as the basis for most present-day electronics, it is not well-suited for applications that involve light, such as LEDs and solar cells — even though it is currently the principal material used for solar cells despite its low efficiency, Kaminer says. Improving the interactions of light with an important electronics material such as silicon could be an important milestone toward integrating photonics — devices based on manipulation of light waves — with electronic semiconductor chips.

Most people looking into this problem have focused on the silicon itself, Kaminer says, but “this approach is very different — we’re trying to change the light instead of changing the silicon.” Kurman adds that “people design the matter in light-matter interactions, but they don’t think about designing the light side.”

One way to do that is by slowing down, or shrinking, the light enough to drastically lower the momentum of its individual photons, to get them closer to that of the electrons. In their theoretical study, the researchers showed that light could be slowed by a factor of a thousand by passing it through a kind of multilayered thin-film material overlaid with a layer of graphene. The layered material, made of gallium arsenide and indium gallium arsenide layers, alters the behavior of photons passing through it in a highly controllable way. This enables the researchers to control the frequency of emissions from the material by as much as 20 to 30 percent, says Kurman, who is the paper’s lead author.

The interaction of a photon with a pair of oppositely charged particles — such as an electron and its corresponding “hole” — produces a quasiparticle called a plasmon, or a plasmon-polariton, which is a kind of oscillation that takes place in an exotic material such as the two-dimensional layered devices used in this research. Such materials “support elastic oscillations on its surface, really tightly confined” within the material, Rivera says. This process effectively shrinks the wavelengths of light by orders of magnitude, he says, bringing it down “almost to the atomic scale.”

Because of that shrinkage, the light can then be absorbed by the semiconductor, or emitted by it, he says. In the graphene-based material, these properties can actually be controlled directly by simply varying a voltage applied to the graphene layer. In that way, “we can totally control the properties of the light, not just measure it,” Kurman says.

Although the work is still at an early and theoretical stage, the researchers say that in principle this approach could lead to new kinds of solar cells capable of absorbing a wider range of light wavelengths, which would make the devices more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. It could also lead to light-producing devices, such as lasers and LEDs, that could be tuned electronically to produce a wide range of colors. “This has a measure of tunability that’s beyond what is currently available,” Kaminer says.

“The work is very general,” Kurman says, so the results should apply to many more cases than the specific ones used in this study. “We could use several other semiconductor materials, and some other light-matter polaritons.” While this work was not done with silicon, it should be possible to apply the same principles to silicon-based devices, the team says. “By closing the momentum gap, we could introduce silicon into this world” of plasmon-based devices, Kurman says.

Because the findings are so new, Rivera says, it “should enable a lot of functionality we don’t even know about yet.”

Dow Performance Silicones further enhanced design flexibilities and processing options for consumer device and display OEMs today with the addition of DOWSIL™ SE 9100 and DOWSIL™ SE 9160 Adhesives to its portfolio of one-part, room-temperature cure (RTV) silicone solutions. In addition to offering versatile processing options, the two new silicone adhesives bond well to most substrates, deliver excellent rework ability with no residue, exhibit high flow to fill narrow gaps, and enable cure-in-place-gaskets (CIPG) that offer effective seals compatible with IPX7-rated water resistance.

DOWSIL™ SE 9100 Adhesive is a one-part silicone formulation that achieves fast tack-free processing at room temperature with the option to accelerate cure with the application of heat. It demonstrates low (< 1 percent) shrinkage by volume after cure to minimize internal stress for optimal sealing, and offers cost-effective processing and repairability during the assembly of mobile and display modules and other consumer devices.

DOWSIL™ SE 9160 Adhesive exhibits many of these same properties, yet its dual-cure formulation offers the option of faster in-line processing through irradiation with ultraviolet (UV) energy at densities as low as 4,000mJ/cm2 to component assembly to continue within seconds. Higher densities (10,000mJ/cm2) enable the material to quickly achieve full, deep section cure. In addition, in designs where the silicone adhesive is partially “in shadow” from the UV lamp, Dow’s new innovative silicone adhesive will still secure rapid moisture cure.

DOWSIL™ SE 9160 Adhesive is suitable for sealing small- to medium-sized consumer devices such as smart phones, tablets and displays. It is particularly effective at sealing air gaps or holes between LCD or OLED display panels and their plastic cover frames.

“Consumer device manufactures are under constant pressure to make their products more reliable, more profitable and packed with ever more features,” said Jayden Cho, global marketing segment leader, Consumer Devices at Dow Performance Silicones. “These two highly innovative silicone adhesives aim to help our global customers successfully address all three of these challenges as they push the boundaries of their next-generation device designs.”

Dow’s two new adhesives are available globally under the new DOWSIL™ label, which builds on seven decades of innovation and proven performance from the heritage Dow Corning silicone technology platform.

At this week’s 2018 IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC 2018), imec will present 11 papers on advanced interconnects, ranging from extending Cu and Co damascene metallization, all the way to evaluating new alternatives such as Ru and graphene. After careful evaluation of the resistance and reliability behavior, imec takes first steps towards extending conventional metallization into to the 3nm technology node.

For almost two decades, Cu-based dual damascene has been the workhorse industrial process flow for building reliable interconnects. But when downscaling logic device technology towards the 5nm and 3nm technology nodes, meeting resistance and reliability requirements for the tightly pitched Cu lines has become increasingly challenging. The industry is however in favor of extending the current damascene technology as long as possible, and therefore, different solutions have emerged.

To set the limits of scaling, imec has benchmarked the resistance of Cu with respect to Co and Ru in a damascene vehicle with scaled dimensions, demonstrating that Cu still outperforms Co for wire cross sections down to 300nm2 (or linewidths of 12nm), which corresponds to the 3nm technology node. To meet reliability requirements, one option is to use Cu in combination with thin diffusion barriers such as tantalum nitride (TaN)) and liners such as Co or Ru. It was found that the TaN diffusion barrier can be scaled to below 2nm while maintaining excellent Cu diffusion barrier properties.

For Cu linewidths down to 15–12nm, imec also modeled the impact of the interconnect line-edge roughness on the system-level performance. Line-edge roughness is caused by the lithographic and patterning steps of interconnect wires, resulting in small variations in wire width and spacing. At small pitches, these can affect the Cu interconnect resistance and variability. Although there is a significant impact of line-edge roughness on the resistance distribution for short Cu wires, the effect largely averages out at the system level.

An alternative solution to extend the traditional damascene flow is replacing Cu by Co. Today Co requires a diffusion barrier – an option that recently gained industrial acceptance. A next possible step is to enable barrierless Co or at least sub-nm barrier thickness with careful interface engineering. Co has the clear advantage of having a lower resistance for smaller wire cross-secions and smaller vias. Based on electromigration and thermal storage experiments, imec presents a detailed study of the mechanisms that impact Co via reliability, showing the abscence of voids in barrierless Co vias, demonstrating a better scalability of Co towards smaller nodes.

The research is performed in cooperation with imec’s key nano interconnect program partners including GlobalFoundries, Huawei, Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Samsung, SK Hynix, SanDisk/Western Digital, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, TOSHIBA Memory and TSMC.

BISTel, a provider of intelligent, real-time data management, advanced analytics and predictive solutions for smart manufacturing announced today an innovative new Chamber Matching (CM) application that enables semiconductor manufacturers to better guard against events that negatively impact yield.

For semiconductor wafer manufacturers, optimizing wafer chamber performance is critical to ensuring high quality, high yield wafers. For customers to achieve this goal and maximize the performance of their fleet, analyzing variations in chamber performance and quickly recognizing which parameters are changing over time is critical to assuring the maximum possible yield from each chamber. BISTel’s new Chamber Matching (CM) application enables customers to quickly determine the best performing chamber – often referred to as the reference chamber or golden chamber. Customers can then compare the reference chamber to all other chambers to help maximize performance.

“CM is the second of four exciting new intelligent manufacturing solutions we have introduced to the market, and that will have an immediate impact on our customers wafer quality and yield,” noted W.K. Choi, Founder and CEO, BISTel. “With these advance new tools, we can perform real time monitoring and analysis to quickly identify the golden chamber and provide our customers the opportunity to maximize the performance of their equipment and processes.”

Key Features and Benefits

BISTel’s new Chamber Matching (CM) solution quickly identifies mis-matching and drifting sensors and it can analyze an unlimited number of chambers simultaneously. In addition, CM:

  • Provides real time monitoring to improve quality and yield.
  • Executes statistical analysis to quickly identify the best performing chamber or “Golden Chamber.”
  • Performs full trace analysis on all sensors and ranks chambers and parameters worse to best.
  • Enables customers to easily conduct time-based, chamber performance analysis.
  • Is completely FDC system independent

BISTel is a provider of real-time, intelligent manufacturing solutions that collect and manage big data, monitor the health of equipment, optimize process flows, analyze large data and quickly identify root cause failures to mitigate risk. BISTel solutions help customers reduce costs, improve quality, and increase yield. Founded in 2000, BISTel has more than 340 employees worldwide. The company is headquartered in South Korea, with offices in California, China, Singapore and Texas. BISTel has a deep customer following in semiconductor, FPD, and PCB/SMT manufacturing as well as automotive, Biotech and steel manufacturing. Its new A.I. based manufacturing intelligence platform will include new auto learning, predictive, self-healing, and continuous improvement features that accelerate smart manufacturing. For more information visit bistel.com

Researchers at Seoul National University and Stanford University developed artificial mechanosensory nerves using flexible organic devices to emulate biological sensory afferent nerves. They used the artificial mechanosensory nerves to control a disabled insect leg and distinguish braille characters.

Compared to conventional digital computers, biological nervous system is powerful for real-world problems, such as visual image processing, voice recognition, tactile sensing, and movement control. This inspired scientists and engineers to work on neuromorphic computing, bioinspired sensors, robot control, and prosthetics. The previous approaches involved implementations at the software level on conventional digital computers and circuit designs using classical silicon devices which have shown critical issues related to power consumption, cost, and multifunction.

The research describes artificial mechanosensory nerves based on flexible organic devices to emulate biological mechanosensory nerves. “The recently found mechanisms of information processing in biological mechanosensory nerves were adopted in our artificial system,” said Zhenan Bao at Stanford University.

The artificial mechanosensory nerves are composed of three essential components: mechanoreceptors (resistive pressure sensors), neurons (organic ring oscillators), and synapses (organic electrochemical transistors). The pressure information from artificial mechanoreceptors can be converted to action potentials through artificial neurons. Multiple action potentials can be integrated into an artificial synapse to actuate biological muscles and recognize braille characters.

Devices that mimic the signal processing and functionality of biological systems can simplify the design of bioinspired system or reduce power consumption. The researchers said organic devices are advantageous because their functional properties can be tuned, they can be printed on a large area at a low cost, and they are flexible like soft biological systems.

Wentao Xu, a researcher at Seoul National University, and Yeongin Kim and Alex Chortos, graduate students at Stanford University, used their artificial mechanosensory nerves to detect large-scale textures and object movements and distinguish braille characters. They also connected the artificial mechanosensory nerves to motor nerves in a detached insect leg and control muscles.

Professor Tae-Woo Lee, a Professor at Seoul National University said, “Our artificial mechanosensory nerves can be used for bioinspired robots and prosthetics compatible with and comfortable for humans.” Lee said, “The development of human-like robots and prosthetics that help people with neurological disabilities can benefit from our work.”

BISTel, a provider of intelligent, real-time data management, advanced analytics and predictive solutions for smart manufacturing announced today its first adaptive intelligence (A.I.) based applications to enable the smart connected factory or industry 4.0 as some call it. Called Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD), BISTel’s new fault detection and classification solution offers customers full sensor trace data analysis to detect and classify faults real-time, improving quality and yield significantly.

Today, customers rely on legacy FDC systems for accurate fault detection. These systems offer only summary data analysis from sensors for fault detection. Consequently, small changes in sensor behavior can go undetected, resulting in a negative impact on yield. BISTel’s new Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD®) system overcomes these challenges by offering full trace analysis. Because BISTel’s new DFD® system establishes trace references dynamically and does not rely on the traditional control limiting methods used by FDC, it eliminates modeling completely. DFD also uses smarter algorithms to better distinguish between real alarms and false alarms resulting in 10 times fewer alarms than FDC systems.

“DFD is the first of several intelligent manufacturing applications with new machine learning that will help our customers to start to realize the full potential of A.I. for smart manufacturing,” commented W.K. Choi, Founder and CEO, BISTel. “DFD enables customers to quickly and accurately identify and classify faults. DFD helps our customers create early identification of yield related issues so that they can quickly execute the fastest possible response to solving these issues.” added Choi.

Sensor trace data contains a wealth of information that helps manufacturers identify potential yield issues, including ramp rate changes, spikes, glitches, shift and drift. BISTel’s first of its kind, online Dynamic Fault Detection (DFD®) system lowers these risks by offering manufacturers real-time monitoring and detection of full sensor trace data. Customers can now quickly detect, and analyze yield impacting events and quickly resolving yield issues. DFD® also integrates seamlessly to legacy FDC systems.

Key Features and Benefits

  • Real time monitoring Improves quality and yield.
  • Reduces risk by protecting against yield impacting events.
  • Real-time fault detection with dynamic references instead of static control limits.
  • DFD’s sensor behavior analysis enables best system drift detection
  • Intelligent alarming reduces alarms by more than 10X

Developing new medicines to treat pulmonary fibrosis, one of the most common and serious forms of lung disease, is not easy.

One reason: it’s difficult to mimic how the disease damages and scars lung tissue over time, often forcing scientists to employ a hodgepodge of time-consuming and costly techniques to assess the effectiveness of potential treatments.

Now, new biotechnology reported in the journal Nature Communications could streamline the drug-testing process.

The innovation relies on the same technology used to print electronic chips, photolithography. Only instead of semiconducting materials, researchers placed upon the chip arrays of thin, pliable lab-grown lung tissues — in other words, its lung-on-a-chip technology.

“Obviously it’s not an entire lung, but the technology can mimic the damaging effects of lung fibrosis. Ultimately, it could change how we test new drugs, making the process quicker and less expensive,” says lead author Ruogang Zhao, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University at Buffalo.

The department is a multidisciplinary unit formed by UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

With limited tools for fibrosis study, scientists have struggled to develop medicine to treat the disease. To date, there are only two drugs — pirfenidone and nintedanib — approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations that help slow its progress.

However, both drugs treat only one type of lung fibrosis: idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. There are more than 200 types of lung fibrosis, according to the American Lung Association, and fibrosis also can affect other vital organs, such as the heart, liver and kidney.

Furthermore, the existing tools do not simulate the progression of lung fibrosis over time — a drawback that has made the development of medicine challenging and relatively expensive. Zhao’s research team, which included past and present students, as well as a University of

Toronto collaborator, created the lung-on-a-chip technology to help address these issues.

Using microlithography, the researchers printed tiny, flexible pillars made of a silicon-based organic polymer. They then placed the tissue, which acts like alveoli (the tiny air sacs in the lungs that allow us to consume oxygen), on top of the pillars.

Researchers induced fibrosis by introducing a protein that causes healthy lung cells to become diseased, leading to the contraction and stiffening of the engineered lung tissue. This mimics the scarring of the lung alveolar tissue in people who suffer from the disease.

The tissue contraction causes the flexible pillars to bend, allowing researchers to calculate the tissue contraction force based on simple mechanical principles.

Researchers tested the system’s effectiveness with pirfenidone and nintedanib. While each drug works differently, the system showed the positive results for both, suggesting the lung-on-a-chip technology could be used to test a variety of potential treatments for lung fibrosis.