Two major programs aiming at supporting academic education and technology transfer to SMEs in the field of microelectronics have been launched in mid-95 by the Commission of the European Communities (EC). The EUROPRACTICE program provides basic services including silicon foundries, training ariNd access to MCMs, microsystems and CAD so&are, while the FUSE program encourages companies to use a m...

We present results for hydrodynamic simulations of pseudomorphic AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) obtained by the two-dimensional device simulator MINIMOS-NT. The concise analysis of industrially relevant HEMT power devices of two different foundries for gate-lengths between lg = 140 nm and lg = 300 nm is carried out. Several aspects, including thermal and breakdown...

A new method for fabricating analog light modulators on VLSI devices is described. The process is fully compatible with devices fabricated by commercial VLSI foundries, and the assembly of the modulator structures requires a small number of simple processing steps. The modulators are capable of analog amplitude or phase modulation and can operate at video rates and at low voltages (2.2 V). The ...

Introduction Fast, efficient batch melting using the modern induction furnace can improve operating flexibility and production yield, as well as reduce the cost of environmental protection. The compelling advantages of induction batch melting have encouraged foundries to change the way they handle their melting operations. Among the chief advantages is cost. The operational cost of a typical in...

With the advance of mature fabrication technologies, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) reach ever-higher levels of complexity. Integration of thousands of components has been shown [1], with each main technology showing an exponential growth in complexity [2]. This increase in complexity requires a convergence in technologies, and the roadmaps are currently being pushed by silicon nitride, (h...

Thermal discomfort is one the major challenges during work in hot and/or humid environments like mines, foundries and arid/desert regions. Heat and moisture management is the key to prevent the workers from heat stress. Personnel protective garments alone are not sufficient to provide thermal neutrality. Auxiliary cooling garments are required to aid the process of human body cooling. This revi...

Hardware Trojans inserted by malicious foundries during integrated circuit manufacturing have received substantial attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on a different type of hardware Trojan threats: attacks in the early steps of design process. We show that third-party intellectual property cores and CAD tools constitute realistic attack surfaces and that even system specificatio...

Published data suggest that particle charge could be related to its toxicity. Respirable particles containing silica were therefore collected in foundries and their charge measured. These particles carried high levels of positive charge that were related to low humidity. Incubating these particles with pulmonary macrophages from mice produced detectable activities of collagenase, a precursor of...

An ultra-low power CMOS image sensor is designed for endomicroscope applications. The chip will be fabricated through Global Foundries 0.18μm standard CMOS process with 1V power supply. The total power consumption is 6μW for 96×96 array with 5fps frame rate, where global amplifier consumes 3.3 μW, 10-bit SAR ADC consumes 900nW at 50kS/s, and on-chip digital processing further reduces IO power c...

Traditionally, the development of application-specific chip products such as ASSPs is based on foundry manufacturing, either in-house or via commercial foundries. FPGAs also are based on this manufacturing process, but due to their broader and more generic application, the production volume that FPGAs attain justifies investment in the latest manufacturing processes and technology. In turn, thi...