This book deals with basic aspects of polymer electronics and optoelectronics. There is an enormous world-wide effort both in basic scientific research as well as in industrial development in the area of organic electronics. It is becoming increasingly clear that, if devices based on organic materials are ever going to have a significant relevance beyond being a cheap replacement for inorganic semiconductors, there will be a need to understand interface formation, film growth and functionality. A control of these aspects will allow the realisation of totally new device concepts exploiting the enormous flexibility inherent in organic chemistry. In this book we focus on oligomeric/molecular films as we believe that the control of molecular structures and interfaces provides highly defined systems which allow, on the one hand the study of the basic physics and on the other hand to find the important parameters necessary to improve organic devices.

This volume describes the increasing role of "in situ" optical diagnostics in thin film processing for applications ranging from fundamental science studies to process development to control during manufacturing. The key advantage of optical diagnostics in these applications is that they are usually noninvasive and nonintrusive. Optical probes of the surface, film, wafer, and gas above the wafer are described for many processes, including plasma etching, MBE, MOCVD, and rapid thermal processing. For each optical technique, the underlying principles are presented, modes of experimental implementation are described, and applications of the diagnostic in thin film processing are analyzed, with examples drawn from microelectronics and optoelectronics. Special attention is paid to real-time probing of the surface, to the noninvasive measurement of temperature, and to the use of optical probes for process control.
Optical Diagnostics for Thin Film Processing is unique. No other volume explores the real-time application of optical techniques in all modes of thin film processing. The text can be used by students and those new to the topic as an introduction and review of the subject. It also serves as a comprehensive resource for engineers, technicians, researchers, and scientists already working in the field.
Key Features
* The only volume that comprehensively explores "in situ," real-time, optical probes for all types of thin film processing
* Useful as an introduction to the subject or as a resource handbook
* Covers a wide range of thin film processes including plasma etching, MBE, MOCVD, and rapid thermal processing
* Examples emphasize applications in microelectronics and optoelectronics
* Introductory chapter serves as a guide to all optical diagnostics and their applications
* Each chapter presents the underlying principles, experimental implementation, and applications for a specific optical diagnostic

The monograph will be dedicated to SRAM (memory) design and test issues in nano-scaled technologies by adapting the cell design and chip design considerations to the growing process variations with associated test issues. Purpose: provide process-aware solutions for SRAM design and test challenges.

This thesis presents results crucial to the emerging field of indirect excitons. These specially designed quasiparticles give the unique opportunity to study fundamental properties of quantum degenerate Bose gases in semiconductors. Furthermore, indirect excitons allow for the creation of novel optoelectronic devices where excitons are used in place of electrons. Excitonic devices are explored for the development of advanced signal processing seamlessly coupled with optical communication. The thesis presents and describes the author's imaging experiments that led to the discovery of spin transport of excitons. The many firsts presented herein include the first studies of an excitonic conveyer, leading to the discovery of the dynamical localization-delocalization transition for excitons, and the first excitonic ramp and excitonic diode with no energy-dissipating voltage gradient.

Diluted magnetic semiconductors, or semimagnetic semiconductors, seemed for a while to be one of those research topics whose glory (i. e. , the period of most ext- sive research) belongedalready to the past. This particularlyapplied to "traditional" diluted magnetic semiconductors, i. e. , substitutional alloys of either II-VI or IV-VI semiconductors with transition metal ions. Fortunately, a discovery, in the beg- ning of the nineties [1,2], of ferromagnetic ordering in III-V DMSs with critical temperatures reaching 170 K has renewed and greatly intensi ed an interest in those materials. This was, at least partially, related to expectations that their Curie temperatures can be relatively easily brought to room temperature range through a clearly delineatedpath and,partially,due to the great successes, also commercial,of metallic version of spintronics, which earned its founders the Nobel Prize in 2007. The semiconductor version of spintronics has attracted researchers also because of hopes to engage it in efforts to construct quantum information processing devices. While these hopes and expectations are not fully realized yet, the effort is going on. As a goodexampleof recentachievements,new resultson quantumdotsconta- ing a single magnetic ion should be mentioned. A great progress has been achieved in studies of excitonic states in such quantum dots, so far limited to InAs/GaAs [3,4] and CdTe/ZnTe [5,6] material systems and to Manganese as the magnetic ion. Furthermore, in the II-VI QDs, rst results on the optical control of the Mn spin states havebeenexperimentallydemonstrated[7-9]andtheoreticallyanalyzed[10]; the studies of Mn spin dynamics and control in III-V QDs will certainly follow.

219 8. 2 Sensors 221 8. 3 Physical Sensors 222 8. 3. 1 Electrical Sensing Means 223 8. 3. 2 Magnetic Field Methods 231 8. 3. 3 Optical Methods 232 8. 4 Chemical Sensors 241 8. 4. 1 Electrical Gas and Chemical Sensors 243 8. 4. 2 Guided-Optics Intrinsic Chemical Sensors 246 8. 4. 3 Extrinsic Chemical Sensors 250 8. 4. 4 Polymer Waveguide Chemical Sensors 251 8. 4. 5 Surface Plasmon Chemical Sensors 252 8. 4. 6 Indicator-Mediated Extrinsic Sensing 253 8. 4. 7 Optical Biosensors 256 8. 4. 8 Ultrasonic Gas and Chemical Sensors 257 8. 4. 9 Intelligent Sensors 258 8. 5 Connections/Links and Wiring 258 8. 5. 1 Optical Links 260 8. 5. 2 Requirement on the Processing Unit/Intelligence 262 8. 6 Actuators 263 8. 7 Signal Processing/Computing 264 8. 7. 1 Implicit Computation 266 8. 7. 2 Explicit Computation 267 8. 8 References 274 Subject Index 279 Micro-Actuators (Electrical, Magnetic, Thermal, Optical, Mechanical, and Chemical) It has become quite apparent that sensors and actuators are the main bottleneck of the modem information processing and control systems. Microprocessors and computers used to be the main limiting element in most information processing systems. But thanks to the enonnous progress in the microelectronics industry, most information analysis tasks can be processed in real time. The data has to be acquired by the processor in some form and processed and used to produce some useful function in the real world.

It is expected that the use of soft computing will increase greatly in industrial applications, because the conceptual structure of hard computing is much too precise in relation to the great imprecision of the world around us. This book aims at attracting researchers and engineers both in the fields of industrial electronics (IE) and computational intelligence (CI). By approaching the different viewpoints of IE and CI people, it is hoped to provide practicing engineers with new solutions to the demanding real-world problems. The applications are divided into two categories, Electric Power Applications and Emerging Applications.

The discovery by J. G. Bednorz and K. A. Mtllier in 1986 that the superconducting state can exist in oxides at temperatures above 30 K stimulated research in the field of superconductivity and opened up a new field of research. Within a few years a large number of cuprate superconductors with transition temperatures well above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen have been found. The possibility of using liquid nitrogen as coolant re-stimulated interest in power applications of supercon ductivity. In this book an overview of the known high-Te superconductors and their physical properties is presented. Aspects related to conductor fabrication and high-current applications are emphasised. The material should be suitable for use in graduate level courses on superconductivity. Researchers in the field may profit from the large number of tables and references describing its status at the end of 1997. An introduction to high-To superconductivity must be based on the fundamental physical principles of normal-state electrical conductivity and the well-known characteristics of conventional superconductors. In Chapter 2 this background is provided. Crystal structures, anisotropic properties and general trends of the critical temperatures of the cuprate superconductors are described in Chapters 3 and 4. The processing of superconductor powders addressed in Chapter 5 affects considerably the current-carrying capacity of high-T. wires. In Chapter 6 several fabrication techniques for superconducting wires are described. In addition, the factors limiting the transport critical currents ofhigh-Te wires are discussed."

This book presents selected papers from the fourth edition of the GraphX conference series, GraphITA 2015. Its content range from fundamentals to applications of graphene and other 2D material such as silicene, BN and MoS2. The newest technological challenges in the field are described in this book, written by worldwide known scientists working with 2D materials.The chapter 'Morphing Graphene-Based Systems for Applications: Perspectives from Simulations' is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Device and Circuit Cryogenic Operation for Low Temperature Electronics is a first in reviewing the performance and physical mechanisms of advanced devices and circuits at cryogenic temperatures that can be used for many applications. The first two chapters cover bulk silicon and SOI MOSFETs. The electronic transport in the inversion layer, the influence of impurity freeze-out, the special electrical properties of SOI structures, the device reliability and the interest of a low temperature operation for the ultimate integration of silicon down to nanometer dimensions are described. The next two chapters deal with Silicon-Germanium and III-V Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors, as well as III-V High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMT). The basic physics of the SiGe HBT and its unique cryogenic capabilities, the optimization of such bipolar devices, and the performance of SiGe HBT BiCMOS technology at liquid nitrogen temperature are examined. The physical effects in III-V semiconductors at low temperature, the HEMT and HBT static, high frequency and noise properties, and the comparison of various cooled III-V devices are also addressed. The next chapter treats quantum effect devices made of silicon materials. The major quantum effects at low temperature, quantum wires, quantum dots as well as single electron devices and applications are investigated. The last chapter overviews the performances of cryogenic circuits and their applications. The low temperature properties and performance of inverters, multipliers, adders, operational amplifiers, memories, microprocessors, imaging devices, circuits and systems, sensors and read-out circuits are analyzed. Device and Circuit Cryogenic Operation for Low Temperature Electronics is useful for researchers, engineers, Ph.D. and M.S. students working in the field of advanced electron devices and circuits, new semiconductor materials, and low temperature electronics and physics.

This book systematically discusses the modeling and application of transfer manipulation for flexible electronics packaging, presenting multiple processes according to the geometric sizes of the chips and devices as well as the detailed modeling and computation steps for each process. It also illustrates the experimental design of the equipment to help readers easily learn how to use it. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students in the research field of microelectronics.

Epitaxial growth lies at the heart of a wide range of industrial and technological applications. Recent breakthroughs, experimental and theoretical, allow actual atom-by-atom manipulation and an understanding of such processes, opening up a totally new area of unprecedented nanostructuring.

The contributions to Atomistic Aspects of Epitaxial Growth are divided into five main sections, taking the reader from the atomistic details of surface diffusion to the macroscopic description of epitaxial systems. many of the papers contain substantial background material on theoretical and experimental methods, making the book suitable for both graduate students as a supplementary text in a course on epitaxial phenomena, and for professionals in the field.

The 2008 Spring Meeting of the Arbeitskreis Festkorperphysik was held in Berlin, Germany, between February 24 and February 29, 2008 in conjunction with the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The 2008 meeting was the largest physics meeting in Europe and among the largest physics meetings in the world in 2008."

Thanks to the advance of semiconductor and communication technology, the wireless communication market has been booming in the last two decades. It evolved from simple pagers to emerging third-generation (3G) cellular phones. In the meanwhile, broadband communication market has also gained a rapid growth. As the market always demands hi- performance and low-cost products, circuit designers are seeking hi- integration communication devices in cheap CMOS technology. The phase-locked loop frequency synthesizer is a critical component in communication devices. It works as a local oscillator for frequency translation and channel selection in wireless transceivers and broadband cable tuners. It also plays an important role as the clock synthesizer for data converters in the analog-and-digital signal interface. This book covers the design and analysis of PLL synthesizers. It includes both fundamentals and a review of the state-of-the-art techniques. The transient analysis of the third-order charge-pump PLL reveals its locking behavior accurately. The behavioral-level simulation of PLL further clarifies its stability limit. Design examples are given to clearly illustrate the design procedure of PLL synthesizers. A complete derivation of reference spurs in the charge-pump PLL is also presented in this book. The in-depth investigation of the digital CA modulator for fractional-N synthesizers provides insightful design guidelines for this important block.

Ambient intelligence is the vision of a technology that will become invisibly embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context-sensitive, and autonomous. High-quality information access and personalized content must be available to everybody, anywhere, and at any time. This book addresses ambient intelligence used to support human contacts and accompany an individual's path through the complicated modern world. From the technical standpoint, distributed electronic intelligence is addressed as hardware vanishing into the background. Devices used for ambient intelligence are small, low-power, low weight, and (very importantly) low-cost; they collaborate or interact with each other; and they are redundant and error-tolerant. This means that the failure of one device will not cause failure of the whole system. Since wired connections often do not exist, radio methods will play an important role for data transfer. This book addresses various aspects of ambient intelligence, from applications that are imminent since they use essentially existing technologies, to ambitious ideas whose realization is still far away, due to major unsolved technical challenges.

Defects in semiconductors have been studied for many years, in many cases with a view toward controlling their behaviour through various forms of "defect engineering." For example, in the bulk, charging significantly affects the total concentration of defects that are available to mediate phenomena such as solid-state diffusion. Surface defects play an important role in mediating surface mass transport during high temperature processing steps such as epitaxial film deposition, diffusional smoothing in reflow, and nanostructure formation in memory device fabrication. "Charged Defects in Semiconductors" details the current state of knowledge regarding the properties of the ionized defects that can affect the behaviour of advanced transistors, photo-active devices, catalysts, and sensors. Features: group IV, III-V, and oxide semiconductors; intrinsic and extrinsic defects; and, point defects, as well as defect pairs, complexes and clusters.

This book contains the selected papers of the Sixth International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots (MESROB 2018), held in Cassino, Italy, in 2018. The main topics of the workshop include: design of medical devices, kinematics and dynamics for medical robotics, exoskeletons and prostheses, anthropomorphic hands , therapeutic robots and rehabilitation, cognitive robots, humanoid and service robots, assistive robots and elderly assistance, surgical robots, human-robot interfaces, haptic devices, and medical treatments.

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the Josephson effect, a topic of never-ending interest in both fundamental and applied physics. In this volume, world-renowned experts present the unique aspects of the physics of the Josephson effect, resulting from the use of new materials, of hybrid architectures and from the possibility of realizing nanoscale junctions. These new experimental capabilities lead to systems where novel coherent phenomena and transport processes emerge. All this is of great relevance and impact, especially when combined with the didactic approach of the book. The reader will benefit from a general and modern view of coherent phenomena in weakly-coupled superconductors on a macroscopic scale. Topics that have been only recently discussed in specialized papers and in short reviews are described here for the first time and organized in a general framework. An important section of the book is also devoted to applications, with focus on long-term, future applications. In addition to a significant number of illustrations, the book includes numerous tables for comparative studies on technical aspects.

The first comprehensive text on microhotplate-based chemical sensor systems in CMOS-technology covers all aspects of successful sensor prototyping: theoretical considerations for modelling, controller- and system design, simulation of circuits and microsensors, design considerations, microfabrication, packaging and testing. A whole family of metal-oxide based microsensor systems with increasing complexity is presented, including fully integrated sensor arrays. This represents one of the first examples of integrated nanomaterials, microtechnology and embedded circuitry.

This book illustrates original pathways to manipulate light at the nanoscale by means of surface electromagnetic waves (here, Bloch surface waves, BSWs) on planar dielectric multilayers, also known as one-dimensional photonic crystals. This approach is particularly valuable as it represents an effective alternative to the widely exploited surface plasmon paradigm. After a brief overview on the fundamentals of BSWs, several significant applications of BSW-sustaining structures are described. Particular consideration is given to the propagation, guiding, and diffraction of BSW-coupled radiation. Further, the interaction of organic emitters with BSWs on planar and corrugated multilayers is investigated, including fluorescence beaming in free space. To provide greater insight into sensing applications, an illustrative example of fluorescent microarray-based detection is presented. The book is intended for scientists and researchers working on photon management opportunities in fields such as biosensing, optical circuitry, and lighting.

A review of the electrical properties, performance and physical mechanisms of the main silicon-on-insulator (SOI) materials and devices. Particular attention is paid to the reliability of SOI structures operating in harsh conditions. The first part of the book deals with material technology and describes the SIMOX and ELTRAN technologies, the smart-cut technique, SiCOI structures and MBE growth. The second part covers reliability of devices operating under extreme conditions, with an examination of low and high temperature operation of deep submicron MOSFETs and novel SOI technologies and circuits, SOI in harsh environments and the properties of the buried oxide. The third part deals with the characterization of advanced SOI materials and devices, covering laser-recrystallized SOI layers, ultrashort SOI MOSFETs and nanostructures, gated diodes and SOI devices produced by a variety of techniques. The last part reviews future prospects for SOI structures, analyzing wafer bonding techniques, applications of oxidized porous silicon, semi-insulating silicon materials, self-organization of silicon dots and wires on SOI and some new physical phenomena.

A discussion of recently developed experimental methods for noise research in nanoscale electronic devices, conducted by specialists in transport and stochastic phenomena in nanoscale physics. The approach described is to create methods for experimental observations of noise sources, their localization and their frequency spectrum, voltage-current and thermal dependences. Our current knowledge of measurement methods for mesoscopic devices is summarized to identify directions for future research, related to downscaling effects.

The directions for future research into fluctuation phenomena in quantum dot and quantum wire devices are specified. Nanoscale electronic devices will be the basic components for electronics of the 21st century. From this point of view the signal-to-noise ratio is a very important parameter for the device application. Since the noise is also a quality and reliability indicator, experimental methods will have a wide application in the future.

This book is devoted to nonmetal-to-metal transitions. The original ideas of Mott for such a transition in solids have been adapted to describe a broad variety of phenomena in condensed matter physics (solids, liquids, and fluids), in plasma and cluster physics, as well as in nuclear physics (nuclear matter and quark-gluon systems). The book gives a comprehensive overview of theoretical methods and experimental results of the current research on the Mott effect for this wide spectrum of topics. The fundamental problem is the transition from localized to delocalized states which describes the nonmetal-to-metal transition in these diverse systems. Based on the ideas of Mott, Hubbard, Anderson as well as Landau and Zeldovich, internationally respected scientists present the scientific challenges and highlight the enormous progress which has been achieved over the last years. The level of description is aimed to specialists in these fields as well as to young scientists who will get an overview for their own work. A common feature of all contribution is the extensive discussion of bound states," i.e. their formation and dissolution due to medium effects. This applies to atoms and molecules in plasmas, fluids, and small clusters, excitons in semiconductors, or nucleons, deuterons, and alpha-particles in nuclear matter. In this way, the transition from delocalized to localized states and vice versa can be described on a common level."

This book describes the design of a receiver front-end circuit for operation in the 60GHz range in 90nm CMOS. Physical layout of the test circuit and post-layout simulations for the implementation of a test chip including the QVCO and the first stage divider are also presented. The content of this book is particularly of interest to those working on mm-wave frequency generation and signal reception.

Regular Nanofabrics in Emerging Technologies gives a deep insight into both fabrication and design aspects of emerging semiconductor technologies, that represent potential candidates for the post-CMOS era. Its approach is unique, across different fields, and it offers a synergetic view for a public of different communities ranging from technologists, to circuit designers, and computer scientists. The book presents two technologies as potential candidates for future semiconductor devices and systems and it shows how fabrication issues can be addressed at the design level and vice versa. The reader either for academic or research purposes will find novel material that is explained carefully for both experts and non-initiated readers. Regular Nanofabrics in Emerging Technologies is a survey of post-CMOS technologies. It explains processing, circuit and system level design for people with various backgrounds.