Laser remote sensing and optical communication are two important technology areas with great potential to improve human lives and impact the global economy. Although laser remote sensing and optical communication are distinct in their application areas and marketplace, they share many common technology elements such as lasers, detectors, modulators and other photonic and semiconductor devices. The goal of this book is to elevate the laser remote sensing field to a technological level that can allow low-cost and reliable instruments for a wide range of scientific, commercial, military and...

Nonvolatile memories are becoming an increasingly important electronic component, due to the ever-increasing need for data storage in multimedia and other mobile applications where electronic components are replacing magnetic hard drives. Today, Flash is the main nonvolatile memory technology, but further scaling of this technology will likely be restricted by important physical and material limitations. This explains recent increased research on new concepts for nonvolatile memories, for which new developments in materials science and technology, the focus of this book, are key. Chapters...

To meet increasingly challenging and complex system requirements, as well as to stay cost effective, it is not enough to use one single semiconductor materials system. Major efforts have, therefore, been made to combine the low cost and well established Si-based CMOS processing attributes with the superior performance attributes of compound semiconductors (CS). Such a combination will enable performance superior to that achievable with either CS and CMOS alone, with CMOS affordability. The strong and increasing interest in GaN, GaAs, SiC and related alloys on silicon substrates indicates the...

In 2004, the microelectronics industry quietly ushered in the Nanoelectronics Era with the mass production of sub-100nm node devices. The current leading-edge semiconductor chips in mass production - the so-called 90nm node devices - have a transistor gate length of less than 50nm. This rapid technological advancement in the semiconductor industry has been made possible by innovations in materials employed in both transistor fabrication (front-end-of-the-line, FEOL) and interconnect fabrication (back-end-of-the-line, BEOL). The 90nm node BEOL features copper (Cu) interconnects and dielectric...

Increasing research and development efforts have been dedicated to the field of electroresponsive polymers (ERPs), including the development of materials and devices. In addition to their exceptional physical properties and low manufacturing costs, these materials also show remarkable charge storage and electrical properties. One particular class of these materials is the electroactive polymer (EAP), or artificial muscle - a new type of smart material with a broad range of potential applications such as electromechanical devices, energy storage devices, artificial muscles, air filtration,...

The field of integrated circuits is now on the cusp of a new level of integration that can enable an entirely new class of products - monolithic instruments. These are miniaturized systems which interact with their physical environment in ways traditional integrated circuits cannot, in particular, by combining conventional integrated circuits with novel solid-state components. These systems are enabled by utilizing the extremely precise manufacturing platform that is the integrated circuit wafer fabrication facility. The monolithic instrument concept is quite powerful in that it enables vast...

The overarching theme of this book is the critical importance of microstructure and defects on the physical and mechanical properties of ordered intermetallics. These compounds have great promise for a variety of diverse and important applications such as high-temperature structural materials, 'smart' shape memory alloys, hydrogen storage media, thermoelectric power sources, and magnetic applications. The integrative aspects of this topic are highlighted to encourage a common platform for the presentation of intermetallics research that may have very different technological backgrounds and...

The current rapid development of photonics matches the progress of silicon-integrated circuits. However, the ultimate success of photonics requires integration of both active and passive functions into one compact form. For such integration, it is crucial to develop and integrate a large diversity of new materials and material structures that enable generation, manipulation and detection of optical signals at short-length scales. In many cases, the final performance will be fabrication-process-dependent, and controlling microstructure and materials interactions in the device synthesis will be...

The scaling of device dimensions with a simultaneous increase in functional density has imposed tremendous challenges for materials, technology, integration and reliability of interconnects. To meet requirements of the ITRS roadmap, new materials are being introduced at a faster pace in all functions of multilevel interconnects. The issues addressed in this book cannot be dispelled as simply selecting a low-k material and integrating it into a copper damascene process. The intricacies of the back end for sub-100nm technology include novel processing of low-k materials, employing pore-sealing...

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