Ultra-Short Pulsed Laser Annealing Effects on MoS2 Transistors with Asymmetric and Symmetric Contacts

The ultra-short pulsed laser annealing process enhances the performance of MoS 2 thin film transistors (TFTs) without thermal damage on plastic substrates. However, there has been insufficient investigation into how much improvement can be brought about by the laser process. In this paper, we observed how the parameters of TFTs, i.e., mobility, subthreshold swing, I on /I off ratio, and V th , changed as the TFTs’ contacts were (1) not annealed, (2) annealed on one side, or (3) annealed on both sides. The results showed that the linear effective mobility (µeff_lin) increased from 13.14 [cm 2 /Vs] (not annealed) to 18.84 (one side annealed) to 24.91 (both sides annealed). Also, I on /I off ratio increased from 2.27 x 10 5 (not annealed) to 3.14 x 10 5 (one side annealed) to 4.81 x 10 5 (both sides annealed), with V th shifting to negative direction. Analyzing the main reason for the improvement through the Y function method (YFM), we found that both the contact resistance (R c ) and the channel interface resistance (R ch ) improves after the pulsed laser annealings under different conditions. Moreover, the Rc enhances more dramatically than the R ch does. In conclusion, our picosecond laser annealing improves the performance of TFTs (especially, the R c ) in direct proportion to the number of annealings applied. The results will contribute to the investigation about correlations between the laser annealing process and the performance of devices. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.1

Increased viral load in patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 Omicron variant in the Republic of Korea

Objectives Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared a global pandemic owing to the rapid spread of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Its Delta and Omicron variants are more transmissible and pathogenic than other variants. Some debates have emerged on the mechanism of variants of concern. In the COVID-19 wave that began in December 2021, the Omicron variant, first reported in South Africa, became identifiable in most cases globally. The aim of this study was to provide data to inform effective responses to the transmission of the Omicron variant. Methods The Delta variant and the spike protein D614G mutant were compared with the Omicron variant. Viral loads from 5 days after symptom onset were compared using epidemiological data collected at the time of diagnosis. Results The Omicron variant exhibited a higher viral load than other variants, resulting in greater transmissibility within 5 days of symptom onset. Conclusion Future research should focus on vaccine efficacy against the Omicron variant and compare trends in disease severity associated with its high viral load

Characterization of fast relaxation by oxide-trapped charges under BTI stress on 64 nm HfSiON/SiO2 MOSFETs

For HfSiON/SiO2 n-type and p-type MOSFETs with a channel length L = 64 nm, the fast relaxation effect of oxide-trapped charges Q(ox) during interrupt for bias temperature instability (BTI) degradation measurement were investigated, and a model that compensated for this effect to predict lifetime t(L) was proposed. Experimental results show that the fast relaxation of Qox during threshold-voltage V-th measurement rapidly saturates within 1 s and is exponentially increasing for gate stress voltage V-g,V-str and exponentially decreasing for measurement duration t(m) but does not affect the BTI degradation mechanism. Using the V-g,V-str and t(m) dependence of Q(ox's) fast relaxation under BTI stress, t(L) prediction model was proposed to compensate the recovery effect by V-th measurement from BTI degradation measured in slow measurement (SM) condition with t(m) > 1 mu s. The proposed model increases the precision of the estimate of t(L) by considering the recovery effect of Qox even in SM. (C) 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics11Nsciescopu

Systematic analysis of electron traps of HfSiON/SiO2 nMOSFETs using TSCIS

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Characterization of fast relaxation by oxide-trapped charges under BTI stress on 64-nm HfSiON/SiO2 MOFSETs

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Channel-length dependence of the generation of interface states and oxide-trapped charges on drain avalanche hot carrier degradation of HfSiON/SiO2 p-channel MOSFETs with strained Si/SiGe channel

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Optimizing Write Fidelity of MRAMs by Alternating Water-filling Algorithm

Magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) is a promising memory technology due to its high density, non-volatility, and high endurance. However, achieving high memory fidelity incurs high write-energy costs, which should be reduced for large-scale deployment of MRAMs. In this paper, we formulate a biconvex optimization problem to optimize write fidelity given energy and latency constraints. The basic idea is to allocate non-uniform write pulses depending on the importance of each bit position. The fidelity measure we consider is mean squared error (MSE), for which we optimize write pulses via alternating convex search (ACS). We derive analytic solutions and propose an alternating water-filling algorithm by casting the MRAM’s write operation as communication over parallel channels. Hence, the proposed alternating water-filling algorithm is computationally more efficient than the original ACS while their solutions are identical. Since the formulated biconvex problem is non-convex, both the original ACS and the proposed algorithm do not guarantee global optimality. However, the MSEs obtained by the proposed algorithm are comparable to the MSEs by complicated global nonlinear programming solvers. Furthermore, we prove that our algorithm can reduce the MSE exponentially with the number of bits per word. For an 8-bit accessed word, the proposed algorithm reduces the MSE by a factor of 21. We also evaluate MNIST dataset classification supposing that the model parameters of deep neural networks are stored in MRAMs. The numerical results show that the optimized write pulses can achieve 40% write-energy reduction for the same classification accuracy. IEEEFALS

Channel-length dependence of mechanical stress effect by hybrid shallow trench isolation on NBTI degradation of HfSiON/SiO2 p-channel MOSFETs with strained Si/SiGe channel

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