Metal-insulator-metal （MIM） capacitors with atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 dielectric and reactively sputtered TaN electrodes in application to radio frequency integrated circuits have been characterized electrically....Metal-insulator-metal （MIM） capacitors with atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 dielectric and reactively sputtered TaN electrodes in application to radio frequency integrated circuits have been characterized electrically. The capacitors exhibit a high density of about 6.05 fF/μm^2, a small leakage current of 4.8 × 10^-8 A/cm^2 at 3 V, a high breakdown electric field of 8.61 MV/cm as well as acceptable voltage coefficients of capacitance （VCCs） of 795 ppm/V2 and 268ppm/V at 1 MHz. The observed properties should be attributed to high-quality Al2O3 film and chemically stable TaN electrodes. Further, a logarithmically linear relationship between quadratic VCC and frequency is observed due to the change of relaxation time with carrier mobility in the dielectric. The conduction mechanism in the high field ranges is dominated by the Poole-Frenkel emission, and the leakage current in the low field ranges is likely to be associated with trap-assisted tunnelling. Meanwhile, the Al2O3 dielectric presents charge trapping under low voltage stresses, and defect generation under high voltage stresses, and it has a hard-breakdown performance.展开更多
Electrical ground looks simple on a schematic; unfortunately, the actual performance of a circuit is dictated by its layout （and by its printed-circuit-board）. When the ground node moves, system performance suffers ...Electrical ground looks simple on a schematic; unfortunately, the actual performance of a circuit is dictated by its layout （and by its printed-circuit-board）. When the ground node moves, system performance suffers and the system radiates electromagnetic interferences. But the understanding of the physics of ground noise can provide an intuitive sense for reducing the problem. Ground bounce can produce transients with amplitudes of volts; most often changing magnetic flux is the cause; in this work, the authors use a Finite-Difference Time-Domain to begin to understand such phenomena. Additionally, predicting substrate cross-talks in mixed-signal circuits has become a critical issue to preserve signal integrity in future integrated systems. Phenomena that involve parasitic signal propagation into the substrate are discussed. A simple methodology to predict the substrate cross-talk and some associated tools are presented. Finally, the authors indicate a stochastic method which could grasp both outer or inner RF （Radio-Frequency） radiations and substrate parasites.展开更多
Based on an avalanche photodiode（ APD） detecting array working in Geiger mode（ GM-APD）, a high-performance infrared sensor readout integrated circuit（ ROIC） used for infrared 3D（ three-dimensional） imaging is ...Based on an avalanche photodiode（ APD） detecting array working in Geiger mode（ GM-APD）, a high-performance infrared sensor readout integrated circuit（ ROIC） used for infrared 3D（ three-dimensional） imaging is proposed. The system mainly consists of three functional modules, including active quenching circuit（ AQC）, time-to-digital converter（ TDC） circuit and other timing controller circuit. Each AQC and TDC circuit together constitutes the pixel circuit. Under the cooperation with other modules, the current signal generated by the GM-APD sensor is detected by the AQC, and the photon time-of-flight（ TOF） is measured and converted to a digital signal output to achieve a better noise suppression and a higher detection sensitivity by the TDC. The ROIC circuit is fabricated by the CSMC 0. 5 μm standard CMOS technology. The array size is 8 × 8, and the center distance of two adjacent cells is 100μm. The measurement results of the chip showthat the performance of the circuit is good, and the chip can achieve 1 ns time resolution with a 250 MHz reference clock, and the circuit can be used in the array structure of the infrared detection system or focal plane array（ FPA）.展开更多
Semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) field effect transistor (FET) is attractive for constructing three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs) because of its low-temperature processes and low power dissipation. Ho...Semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) field effect transistor (FET) is attractive for constructing three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs) because of its low-temperature processes and low power dissipation. However, CNT based 3D ICs reported usually suffered from lower performance than that of monolayer CNT ICs. In this work, we develop a 3D IC technology through integrating multi-layer high performance CNT film FETs into one chip, and show that it promotes the operation speed of CNT based 3D ICs considerably. We also explore the advantage on ICs of 3D architecture, which brings 38% improvement on speed over two-dimensional (2D) one. Specially, we demonstrate the fabrication of 3D five-stage ring-oscillator circuits with an oscillation frequency of up to 680 MHz and stage delay of 0.15 ns, which represents the highest speed of 3D CNT-based ICs.展开更多
In order to solve the problem that the testing cost of the three-dimensional integrated circuit(3D IC)is too high,an optimal stacking order scheme is proposed to reduce the mid-bond test cost.A new testing model is bu...In order to solve the problem that the testing cost of the three-dimensional integrated circuit(3D IC)is too high,an optimal stacking order scheme is proposed to reduce the mid-bond test cost.A new testing model is built with the general consideration of both the test time for automatic test equipment(ATE)and manufacturing failure factors.An algorithm for testing cost and testing order optimization is proposed,and the minimum testing cost and optimized stacking order can be carried out by taking testing bandwidth and testing power as constraints.To prove the influence of the optimal stacking order on testing costs,two baselines stacked in sequential either in pyramid type or in inverted pyramid type are compared.Based on the benchmarks from ITC 02,experimental results show that for a 5-layer 3D IC,under different constraints,the optimal stacking order can reduce the test costs on average by 13%and 62%,respectively,compared to the pyramid type and inverted pyramid type.Furthermore,with the increase of the stack size,the test costs of the optimized stack order can be decreased.展开更多
The present work deals with 12-bit Nyquist current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converter (DAC) which is an essential part in baseband section of wireless transmitter circuits. Using oversampling ratio (OSR) for th...The present work deals with 12-bit Nyquist current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converter (DAC) which is an essential part in baseband section of wireless transmitter circuits. Using oversampling ratio (OSR) for the proposed DAC leads to avoid use of an active analog reconstruction filter. The optimum segmentation (75%) has been used to get the best DNL and reduce glitch energy. This segmentation ratio guarantees the monotonicity. Higher performance is achieved using a new 3-D thermometer decoding method which reduces the area, power consumption and the number of control signals of the digital section. Using two digital channels in parallel, helps reach 1-GSample/s frequency. Simulation results show that the spurious- free-dynamic-range (SFDR) in Nyquist rate is better than 64 dB for sampling frequency up to 1-GSample/s. The analog voltage supply is 3.3 V while the digital part of the chip operates with only 2.4 V. Total power consumption in Nyquist rate measurement is 144.9 mW. The chip has been processed in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology. Active area of chip is 1.37 mm2.展开更多
Three-dimensional integrated circuit technology with transistors stacked on top of one an-other in multi-layer silicon film has always been a vision in the future technology direction. While the idea is simple, the te...Three-dimensional integrated circuit technology with transistors stacked on top of one an-other in multi-layer silicon film has always been a vision in the future technology direction. While the idea is simple, the technique to obtain high performance multi-layer transistors is extraordinarily diffi-cult. Not until recently does such technology become feasible. In this paper, the background and vari-ous techniques to form three-dimensional circuits will be reviewed. Recent development of a simple and promising technology to achieve three-dimensional integration using Metal-Induced-Lateral-Crystalliza-tion will be described. Preliminary results of 3D inverters will also be provided to demonstrate the viabil-ity for 3D integration.展开更多
The state-of-the-art multi-core computer systems are based on Very Large Scale three Dimensional (3D) Integrated circuits (VLSI). In order to provide high-speed vertical data transmission in such 3D systems, efficient...The state-of-the-art multi-core computer systems are based on Very Large Scale three Dimensional (3D) Integrated circuits (VLSI). In order to provide high-speed vertical data transmission in such 3D systems, efficient Through-Silicon Via (TSV) technology is critically important. In this paper, various Radio Frequency (RF) TSV designs and models are proposed. Specifically, the Cu-plug TSV with surrounding ground TSVs is used as the baseline structure. For further improvement, the dielectric coaxial and novel air-gap coaxial TSVs are introduced. Using the empirical parameters of these coaxial TSVs, the simulation results are obtained demonstrating that these coaxial RF-TSVs can provide two-order higher of cut-off frequencies than the Cu-plug TSVs. Based on these new RF-TSV technologies, we propose a novel 3D multi-core computer system as well as new architectures for manipulating the interfaces between RF and baseband circuit. Taking into consideration the scaling down of IC manufacture technologies, predictions for the performance of future generations of circuits are made. With simulation results indicating energy per bit and area per bit being reduced by 7% and 11% respectively, we can conclude that the proposed method is a worthwhile guideline for the design of future multi-core computer ICs.展开更多
Hierarchical art was used to solve the mixed mode placement for three dimensional （3-D） integrated circuit design. The 3-D placement flow stream includes hierarchical clustering, hierarchical 3-D floorplanning, vert...Hierarchical art was used to solve the mixed mode placement for three dimensional （3-D） integrated circuit design. The 3-D placement flow stream includes hierarchical clustering, hierarchical 3-D floorplanning, vertical via mapping, and recursive two dimensional （2-D） global/detailed placement phases. With state-of-the-art clustering and de-clustering phases, the design complexity was reduced to enhance the placement algorithm efficiency and capacity. The 3-D floorplanning phase solved the layer assignment problem and controlled the number of vertical vias. The vertical via mapping transformed the 3-D placement problem to a set of 2-D placement sub-problems, which not only simplifies the original 3-D placement problem, but also generates the vertical via assignment solution for the routing phase. The design optimizes both the wire length and the thermal load in the floorplan and placement phases to improve the performance and reliability of 3-D integrate circuits. Experiments on IBM benchmarks show that the total wire length is reduced from 15% to 35% relative to 2-D placement with two to four stacked layers, with the number of vertical vias minimized to satisfy a pre-defined upper bound constraint. The maximum temperature is reduced by 16% with two-stage optimization on four stacked layers.展开更多
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China （Grant No 90607023）, Shanghai Pujiang Program （Grant No 05PJ14017）, SRF for R0CS, SEM, and the Micro/Nano-electronics Science and Technology Innovation Platform （985） and the Ministry of Education of China in the International Research Training Group ＂Materials and Concepts for Advanced Interconnects
文摘Metal-insulator-metal （MIM） capacitors with atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 dielectric and reactively sputtered TaN electrodes in application to radio frequency integrated circuits have been characterized electrically. The capacitors exhibit a high density of about 6.05 fF/μm^2, a small leakage current of 4.8 × 10^-8 A/cm^2 at 3 V, a high breakdown electric field of 8.61 MV/cm as well as acceptable voltage coefficients of capacitance （VCCs） of 795 ppm/V2 and 268ppm/V at 1 MHz. The observed properties should be attributed to high-quality Al2O3 film and chemically stable TaN electrodes. Further, a logarithmically linear relationship between quadratic VCC and frequency is observed due to the change of relaxation time with carrier mobility in the dielectric. The conduction mechanism in the high field ranges is dominated by the Poole-Frenkel emission, and the leakage current in the low field ranges is likely to be associated with trap-assisted tunnelling. Meanwhile, the Al2O3 dielectric presents charge trapping under low voltage stresses, and defect generation under high voltage stresses, and it has a hard-breakdown performance.
文摘Electrical ground looks simple on a schematic; unfortunately, the actual performance of a circuit is dictated by its layout （and by its printed-circuit-board）. When the ground node moves, system performance suffers and the system radiates electromagnetic interferences. But the understanding of the physics of ground noise can provide an intuitive sense for reducing the problem. Ground bounce can produce transients with amplitudes of volts; most often changing magnetic flux is the cause; in this work, the authors use a Finite-Difference Time-Domain to begin to understand such phenomena. Additionally, predicting substrate cross-talks in mixed-signal circuits has become a critical issue to preserve signal integrity in future integrated systems. Phenomena that involve parasitic signal propagation into the substrate are discussed. A simple methodology to predict the substrate cross-talk and some associated tools are presented. Finally, the authors indicate a stochastic method which could grasp both outer or inner RF （Radio-Frequency） radiations and substrate parasites.
基金The Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province(No.BK2012559)Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province
文摘Based on an avalanche photodiode（ APD） detecting array working in Geiger mode（ GM-APD）, a high-performance infrared sensor readout integrated circuit（ ROIC） used for infrared 3D（ three-dimensional） imaging is proposed. The system mainly consists of three functional modules, including active quenching circuit（ AQC）, time-to-digital converter（ TDC） circuit and other timing controller circuit. Each AQC and TDC circuit together constitutes the pixel circuit. Under the cooperation with other modules, the current signal generated by the GM-APD sensor is detected by the AQC, and the photon time-of-flight（ TOF） is measured and converted to a digital signal output to achieve a better noise suppression and a higher detection sensitivity by the TDC. The ROIC circuit is fabricated by the CSMC 0. 5 μm standard CMOS technology. The array size is 8 × 8, and the center distance of two adjacent cells is 100μm. The measurement results of the chip showthat the performance of the circuit is good, and the chip can achieve 1 ns time resolution with a 250 MHz reference clock, and the circuit can be used in the array structure of the infrared detection system or focal plane array（ FPA）.
基金supported by the National Key Research & Development Program (No.2016YFA0201901)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.61621061,61427901 and 61888102)the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission (No.D171100006617002 1-2).
文摘Semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) field effect transistor (FET) is attractive for constructing three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs) because of its low-temperature processes and low power dissipation. However, CNT based 3D ICs reported usually suffered from lower performance than that of monolayer CNT ICs. In this work, we develop a 3D IC technology through integrating multi-layer high performance CNT film FETs into one chip, and show that it promotes the operation speed of CNT based 3D ICs considerably. We also explore the advantage on ICs of 3D architecture, which brings 38% improvement on speed over two-dimensional (2D) one. Specially, we demonstrate the fabrication of 3D five-stage ring-oscillator circuits with an oscillation frequency of up to 680 MHz and stage delay of 0.15 ns, which represents the highest speed of 3D CNT-based ICs.
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61674048,61574052,61474036,61371025)the Project of Anhui Institute of Economics and Management(No.YJKT1417T01)
文摘In order to solve the problem that the testing cost of the three-dimensional integrated circuit(3D IC)is too high,an optimal stacking order scheme is proposed to reduce the mid-bond test cost.A new testing model is built with the general consideration of both the test time for automatic test equipment(ATE)and manufacturing failure factors.An algorithm for testing cost and testing order optimization is proposed,and the minimum testing cost and optimized stacking order can be carried out by taking testing bandwidth and testing power as constraints.To prove the influence of the optimal stacking order on testing costs,two baselines stacked in sequential either in pyramid type or in inverted pyramid type are compared.Based on the benchmarks from ITC 02,experimental results show that for a 5-layer 3D IC,under different constraints,the optimal stacking order can reduce the test costs on average by 13%and 62%,respectively,compared to the pyramid type and inverted pyramid type.Furthermore,with the increase of the stack size,the test costs of the optimized stack order can be decreased.
文摘The present work deals with 12-bit Nyquist current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converter (DAC) which is an essential part in baseband section of wireless transmitter circuits. Using oversampling ratio (OSR) for the proposed DAC leads to avoid use of an active analog reconstruction filter. The optimum segmentation (75%) has been used to get the best DNL and reduce glitch energy. This segmentation ratio guarantees the monotonicity. Higher performance is achieved using a new 3-D thermometer decoding method which reduces the area, power consumption and the number of control signals of the digital section. Using two digital channels in parallel, helps reach 1-GSample/s frequency. Simulation results show that the spurious- free-dynamic-range (SFDR) in Nyquist rate is better than 64 dB for sampling frequency up to 1-GSample/s. The analog voltage supply is 3.3 V while the digital part of the chip operates with only 2.4 V. Total power consumption in Nyquist rate measurement is 144.9 mW. The chip has been processed in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology. Active area of chip is 1.37 mm2.
文摘Three-dimensional integrated circuit technology with transistors stacked on top of one an-other in multi-layer silicon film has always been a vision in the future technology direction. While the idea is simple, the technique to obtain high performance multi-layer transistors is extraordinarily diffi-cult. Not until recently does such technology become feasible. In this paper, the background and vari-ous techniques to form three-dimensional circuits will be reviewed. Recent development of a simple and promising technology to achieve three-dimensional integration using Metal-Induced-Lateral-Crystalliza-tion will be described. Preliminary results of 3D inverters will also be provided to demonstrate the viabil-ity for 3D integration.
文摘The state-of-the-art multi-core computer systems are based on Very Large Scale three Dimensional (3D) Integrated circuits (VLSI). In order to provide high-speed vertical data transmission in such 3D systems, efficient Through-Silicon Via (TSV) technology is critically important. In this paper, various Radio Frequency (RF) TSV designs and models are proposed. Specifically, the Cu-plug TSV with surrounding ground TSVs is used as the baseline structure. For further improvement, the dielectric coaxial and novel air-gap coaxial TSVs are introduced. Using the empirical parameters of these coaxial TSVs, the simulation results are obtained demonstrating that these coaxial RF-TSVs can provide two-order higher of cut-off frequencies than the Cu-plug TSVs. Based on these new RF-TSV technologies, we propose a novel 3D multi-core computer system as well as new architectures for manipulating the interfaces between RF and baseband circuit. Taking into consideration the scaling down of IC manufacture technologies, predictions for the performance of future generations of circuits are made. With simulation results indicating energy per bit and area per bit being reduced by 7% and 11% respectively, we can conclude that the proposed method is a worthwhile guideline for the design of future multi-core computer ICs.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.60833004 and 60876026)the 3-D Floorplanning and Placement Project of the Intel Corporation
文摘Hierarchical art was used to solve the mixed mode placement for three dimensional （3-D） integrated circuit design. The 3-D placement flow stream includes hierarchical clustering, hierarchical 3-D floorplanning, vertical via mapping, and recursive two dimensional （2-D） global/detailed placement phases. With state-of-the-art clustering and de-clustering phases, the design complexity was reduced to enhance the placement algorithm efficiency and capacity. The 3-D floorplanning phase solved the layer assignment problem and controlled the number of vertical vias. The vertical via mapping transformed the 3-D placement problem to a set of 2-D placement sub-problems, which not only simplifies the original 3-D placement problem, but also generates the vertical via assignment solution for the routing phase. The design optimizes both the wire length and the thermal load in the floorplan and placement phases to improve the performance and reliability of 3-D integrate circuits. Experiments on IBM benchmarks show that the total wire length is reduced from 15% to 35% relative to 2-D placement with two to four stacked layers, with the number of vertical vias minimized to satisfy a pre-defined upper bound constraint. The maximum temperature is reduced by 16% with two-stage optimization on four stacked layers.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province,China(B2007000613)Scientific Research Key Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars,Ministry of Personnel of China~~
