Direct measurement of doping density and barrier lowering effect with bias in quantum wells

An experimental method for determining the doping density in thin-sheet semiconductor material such as quantum wells (QWs) is demonstrated in GaAs/AlGaAs multiquantum-well infra-red photodetectors. The results agree very well with the conventional Hall measurement method. Barrier lowering effect with bias in QWs is determined experimentally

Study of Phonon Modes in Germanium Nanowires

The observation of pure phonon confinement effect in germanium nanowires is limited due to the illumination sensitivity of Raman spectra. In this paper we measured Raman spectra for different size germanium nanowires with different excitation laser powers and wavelengths. By eliminating the local heating effect, the phonon confinement effect for small size nanowires was clearly identified. We have also fitted the Raman feature changes to estimate the size distribution of nanowires for the first time.Comment: 11 pages,15 figure

1D Phonon BTE Solver (Small Scale Heat Transport Simulation)

In current technology, electronic devices shrink to the size of nanometers. The ability to accurately model heat transport to understand the thermal behavior of these small electronic devices becomes increasingly important. Since heat transport is very difficult to measure directly in small electronic devices, simulation becomes an effective means to model heat transport. A user-interactive simulation tool is created to model heat transport in small electronic devices of different lengths. Heat transport is modeled by solving one-dimensional Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) to obtain the transient temperature profile of a multi-length and multi-timescale thin film under constant temperature boundary condition or under hotspot cooling process. Unlike Fourier Heat equation, BTE can capture the effect of ballistic phonon transport expected at short lengh/time scale. Rapid Application Infrastructure (Rappture), a toolkit used to create user-interactive graphical user interface, is used to create the user interface for this simulation. The inputs to the simulation tool are thin film length and simulation time specified by user. BTE is then solved by using Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) in MATLAB to obtain the temperature profile plot. The temperature profile plot explains how the temperature changes throughout the entire length of the material. This simulation tool allows users to accurately simulate heat transport in small electronic devices of different lengths that will help them in the thermal design and thermal management of small electronic devices

Ultrafast Temperature Profile Calculation in Ic Chips

One of the crucial steps in the design of an integrated circuit is the minimization of heating and temperature non-uniformity. Current temperature calculation methods, such as finite element analysis and resistor networks have considerable computation times, making them incompatible for use in routing and placement optimization algorithms. In an effort to reduce the computation time, we have developed a new method, deemed power blurring, for calculating temperature distributions using a matrix convolution technique in analogy with image blurring. For steady state analysis, power blurring was able to predict hot spot temperatures within 1 degree C with computation times 3 orders of magnitude faster than FEA. For transient analysis the computation times where enhanced by a factor of 1000 for a single pulse and around 100 for multiple frequency application, while predicting hot spot temperature within about 1 degree C. The main strength of the power blurring technique is that it exploits the dominant heat spreading in the silicon substrate and it uses superposition principle. With one or two finite element simulations, the temperature point spread function for a sophisticated package can be calculated. Additional simulations could be used to improve the accuracy of the point spread function in different locations on the chip. In this calculation, we considered the dominant heat transfer path through the back of the IC chip and the heat sink. Heat transfer from the top of the chip through metallization layers and the board is usually a small fraction of the total heat dissipation and it is neglected in this analysis.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions

Method of Images for the Fast Calculation of Temperature Distributions in Packaged VLSI Chips

Thermal aware routing and placement algorithms are important in industry. Currently, there are reasonably fast Green's function based algorithms that calculate the temperature distribution in a chip made from a stack of different materials. However, the layers are all assumed to have the same size, thus neglecting the important fact that the thermal mounts which are placed underneath the chip can be significantly larger than the chip itself. In an earlier publication, we showed that the image blurring technique can be used to calculate quickly temperature distribution in realistic packages. For this method to be effective, temperature distribution for several point heat sources at the center and at the corner and edges of the chip should be calculated using finite element analysis (FEA) or measured. In addition, more accurate results require correction by a weighting function that will need several FEA simulations. In this paper, we introduce the method of images that take the symmetry of the thermal boundary conditions into account. Thus with only "two" finite element simulations, the steady-state temperature distribution for an arbitrary complex power dissipation profile in a packaged chip can be calculated. Several simulation results are presented. It is shown that the power blurring technique together with the method of images can reproduce the temperature profile with an error less than 0.5%.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions

Effect of enhanced external counterpulsation and cardiac rehabilitation on quality of life, plasma nitric oxide, endothelin 1 and high sensitive CRP in patients with coronary artery disease: A pilot study

Objective To investigate the effect of enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) on plasma nitric oxide (NO), Endothelin 1 (ET1), high sensitive C-reactive protein (HSCRP) and quality of life (QoL) in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).Methods We conducted a pilot randomized clinical trial in order to evaluate plasma NO, ET1, HSCRP and QoL before and after twenty sessions of EECP (group A) and cardiac rehabilitation (CR, group B) in 42 patients with CAD (21 in each group).Results Forty-two patients (33 male and 9 female) were included in the study. The mean age was 58.2±10 years. The mean HSCRP was 1.52±0.7 in the EECP group and it was reduced to 1.27±0.4 after intervention. The reduction in HSCRP was not statistically significant in EECP and CR groups with p=0.33 and p=0.27, respectively. There was not significant improvement of NO, ET1, and QoL in the EECP and CR groups shortly after therapy (p>0.05).Conclusion Although the short-term EECP treatment in CAD patients improved HSCRP, NO, ET1, and QoL compared with the baseline those improvements are not statistically significant. Further studies are necessary with large study groups and more sessions. © 2015 by Korean Academy of Rehabilitation Medicine

Efficiency in nanostructured thermionic and thermoelectric devices

Advances in solid-state device design now allow the spectrum of transmitted electrons in thermionic and thermoelectric devices to be engineered in ways that were not previously possible. Here we show that the shape of the electron energy spectrum in these devices has a significant impact on their performance. We distinguish between traditional thermionic devices where electron momentum is filtered in the direction of transport only and a second type, in which the electron filtering occurs according to total electron momentum. Such 'total momentum filtered' kr thermionic devices could potentially be implemented in, for example, quantum dot superlattices. It is shown that whilst total momentum filtered thermionic devices may achieve efficiency equal to the Carnot value, traditional thermionic devices are limited to efficiency below this. Our second main result is that the electronic efficiency of a device is not only improved by reducing the width of the transmission filter as has previously been shown, but also strongly depends on whether the transmission probability rises sharply from zero to full transmission. The benefit of increasing efficiency through a sharply rising transmission probability is that it can be achieved without sacrificing device power, in contrast to the use of a narrow transmission filter which can greatly reduce power. We show that devices which have a sharply-rising transmission probability significantly outperform those which do not and it is shown such transmission probabilities may be achieved with practical single and multibarrier devices. Finally, we comment on the implications of the effect the shape of the electron energy spectrum on the efficiency of thermoelectric devices.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figure