Equipment simulation can provide valuable support in reactor design and process optimization. This article describes the physical and chemical models used in this technique and the current state of the art of the available software tools is reviewed. Moreover, the potential of equipment simulation will be highlighted by means of three recent examples from advanced quarter micron silicon process development. These include a vertical batch reactor for LPCVD of arsenic doped silicon oxide, a multi station tungsten CVD reactor, and a plasma reactor for silicon etching.

This paper presents a generating method of LSP parameter sequences for speech synthesis by rule. In our method, neural networks are schemed to generate LSP parameter sequences of Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (VCV) units. The quality of synthesized speech by concatenation way of VCV units through table-look-up technique can not be improved so much owing to the distortion appearing on VCV units junction. In our method, the neural networks concatenate VCV units step by step with less distortion on VCV units junction, which synthesizes good quality speech.

This paper reports on a high-speed silicon bipolar transistor with an fT and fMAX of over 40 GHz, we call it the Advanced Boro-silicated-glass Self-Aligned (A-BSA) transistor. In basic BSA technology, a CVD-BSG film is used not only as a diffusion source to form the intrinsic base and the link base regions but also as a sidewall spacer between the emitter and the base polysilicon electrodes. An A-BSA transistor offers three advancements to this technology: (1) a graded collector profile underneath the intrinsic base region to suppress the Kirk effect; (2) an optimized design of the link base region to prevent the frade-off effect between fT and base resistance; and (3) a newly developed buried emitter electrode structure, consisting of an N++-polysilicon layer, a platinum silicide layer, and a CVD tungsten plug, to prevent the emitter plug effect. Furthermore, our transistor uses a BPSG filled trench isolation to reduce parasitic capacitance and improve circuit performance. In this paper, we describe device design, process technology and characterization of the A-BSA transistor, with it we have performed several application ICs, operating at 10Gb/s and above. The A-BSA transistor achieved an fT of 41 GHz and an fMAX of 44 GHz under optimized conditions.

It has been revealed that ion bombardment energy and ion flux density play an essentially critical role in SiNx deposition process of PECVD in TFT-LCD production. Ion energy and ion flux density bombarding onto substrate surface are known to be extracted from waveform of RF applied to an electrode. Using this method, we investigated film quality of SiNx formed in the conventional parallel plate PECVD equipment. When N2 + H2 or N2 + Ar is employed as a carrier gas in source gas (SiH4 + NH3), we have defined normalized ion flux density as ion flux density divided by deposited SiNx molecule which must be increased to obtain high quality SiNx film while ion energy is suppressed at low level as not giving damages on the film surface. This technique has made it possible to securely form SiNx film (2500 ) featuring dielectric break-down field intensity of 8.5 MV/cm at 250 on a glass substrate with Cr gate interconnects of 1000 having vertical step struc-ture. One of the important factors to improve film quality of SiNx deposited in PECVD is to increase ion flux density while keeping ion bombardment energy low enough to protect growing surface against any damages. Using this technique inverse-staggered TFT-array featuring field effect mobility of 0.96 cm2/Vs has been demonstrated which gate insulator SiNx, non-doped a-Si: H and a-Si: H(n+) were formed continuously at the identical substrate temperature of 250.

This paper describes a 32-bit fully asynchronous microprocessor, with 4-stage pipeline based on a RISC-like architecture. Issues relevant to the processor such as design of self-timed datapath, asynchronous controller and interconnection circuits are discussed. Simulation results are included using parameters extracted from layout, which showed about the 300 MIPS processing speed and used 71,000 transistors with 0.5 µm CMOS technology.

Water desorption from interlayer dielectric, spin-on-glass and SiO2 film deposited with tetraethylorthosilicate and O3, was controlled in order to reduce MOSFET hot-carrier degradation by using plasma SiO2 film as a water blocking layer. Two kinds of plasma SiO2 film were used in this study: SiH4 plasma SiO2 film deposited with SiH4 and N2O, and TEOS plasma SiO2 film deposited with TEOS and O2. Thermal desorption spectroscopy was used to study water desorption. Reduction of water desorption was obtained using plasma SiO2 film with water blocking ability; this reduction of water desorption resulted in suppression of the MOSFET hot-carrier degradation. The water blocking ability was obtained by low pressure deposition for SiH4 plasma SiO2 and low flow rate ratio of TEOS to O2 deposition for TEOS plasma SiO2. Water absorption studies of plasma SiO2 film using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy revealed that water blocking ability is associated with small amount of water absorption both in SiH4 plasma SiO2 film and in TEOS plasma SiO2 film. Consequently, it is considered that the water blocking ability, as well as water absorption, of plasma SiO2 film depends on porosity.

It has become more important to shorten development periods of high performance computer systems and their LSIs. During debugging of computer prototypes, logic designers request very frequent LSI refabrication to change logic circuits and to add some functions in spite of their extensive logic simulation by several GFLOPS supercomputers. To meet these demands, an automated on-chip direct wiring modification system has been developed, which enables wire-cut and via-digging by a precise focused ion beam machine, and via-filling and jumper-writing by a laser CVD machine, directly on pre-redesign (original) chips. This modification system was applied to LSI reworks during the development of Hitachi large scale computers M-880 and S-3800, and contributed to shorten system debugging period by four to six months.

A new redundancy technique especially suitable for ultra-high-speed static RAMs (SRAMs) has been developed. This technique is based on a decoding-method that uses two kinds of fuses without introducing any additional delay time. One fuse is initially ON and can be turned OFF afterwards, if necessary, by a cutting process using a focused ion beam (FIB). The other is initially OFF and can be turned ON afterwards by a connecting process using laser chemical vapor deposition (L-CVD). This technique is applied to a 64 kbit SRAM having a 1.5-ns access time. The experimental results obtained through an SRAM chip repaired using this redundancy technique show that this technique does not introduce any increase in the access time and does not reduce the operational margin of the SRAM.

We have demonstrated the successful fabrication of the monolithic integration of a GaAs metalsemiconductor field-effect transistor (MESFET), an AlGaAs/InGaAs laser and a p-n photodetector grown on a SiO2 backcoated p-Si substrate using selective regrowth by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The use of SiO2 backcoated Si substrate is effective in suppressing unintentional Si autodoping and obtaining a good pinch-off GaAs MESFET. The MESFET with 2.5400 µm2 gate exhibited a transconductance of 90 mS/mm and a threshold voltage of 2.2 V. The reliability of the laser on the Si substrate can be improved by the strain-relieved AlGaAs/InGaAs laser with the InGaAs intermediate layer. The longest lifetime of the laser is 8 h at 27. During the GaAs layer growth, the p-n photodetector is formed near the surface of the p-Si substrate by diffusing the As atoms.

The static characteristics of GaInAs(P)/GaInAsP quantum well laser diodes (QW LDs), with graded-index separate-confinement-heterostructure (GRIN-SCH) grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), have been investigated experimentally in terms of threshold current density, internal waveguide loss, differential quantum efficiency and light output power. Very low threshold current density of 410 A/cm2, high characteristic temperature of 113 K, low internal waveguide loss of 5 cm-1, high differential quantum efficiency of 82% and high light output power of 100 mW were obtained in 1.3 µm GRIN-SCH multiple quantum well (MQW) LDs by optimizing the quantum well structure including confinement layer and cavity design. Excellent uniformity for the threshold current, quantum efficiency and emission wavelength was obtained in all MOCVD grown buried heterostructure GRIN-SCH MQW LDs. Lasing characteristics of 1.5 µm GRIN-SCH MQW LDs are also described.

Silicon nitride (SiNx) films have been deposited at lower substrate temperatures (500) by direct (without mercury-sensitization) photo-chemical vapor deposition (photo-CVD) using SiH4 and NH3 with a low-pressure mercury lamp. Films deposited at around 350 have a polymeric structure such as (Si(NH)2)n. Films deposited at 500 were close to stoichiometric Si3N4 with a slight amount of hydrogen. The refractive index and the dielectric constant of films deposited at 500 became almost equal to the values of thermally synthesized Si3N4. The resistivity was as high as 51016 Ωcm. The minimum density of interface states in Al/SiNx/Si MIS (metal-insulator-semiconductor) diodes was estimated to be 91010 cm-2eV-1 by a quasi-static capacitance-voltage measurement. For SiNx films deposited at 300, the density of interface states, which was in the order of 1011 cm-2eV-1 as deposited, decreased by a rapid thermal anneal after the deposition. For Al/SiNx/InP MIS diodes, it was 31011 cm-2eV-1 by high-frequency capacitance-voltage measurements. Direct photo-CVD for SiNx films is promising for low-temperature formation of a gate insulator.

Reaction mechanisms in remote plasma CVD (in which plasma excitation of source meterials and film deposition are spatially separated) of SiO2 using activated oxygen species and pure silane (SiH4) were discussed in two destinct cases in a viewpoint of vapor phase reactions. Under high pressures of 50500 mTorr, activated oxygen species and SiH4 could collide with each other many times in the vapor phase. SiH4 was decomposed by chemical reactions due to the collisions generating chemically active precursors such as SiHn (0n3) for film deposition. Nearly stoichiometric films with low hydrogen content were obtained at low temperatures of around 300. Under a pressure of 5 mTorr, the oxygen species and SiH4 could scarcely collide with each other due to a long mean free path resulting no decomposition of SiH4. Insufficient surface reactions between relatively stable SiH4 and activated oxygen species yielded many O-H bonds in deposited films. Electrical properties of the films and the interfaces of SiO2/Si were characterized.

The heterointerfaces of Al0.3Ga0.7As/GaAs single quantum wells (SQWs) and the characteristics of SQW lasers grown on Si substrates with Al0.5Ga0.5As/Al0.55Ga0.45P intermediate layers (AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs) entirely by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) are reported. The effects of thermal cycle annealing on the crystallinity and the lasing characteristics of GaAs/Si are also reported. By using the AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs, SQWs with a specular surface morphology and a smoother heterointerface can be grown on a Si substrate. Thermal cycle annealing is found to improve the crystallinity of GaAs/Si and to contribute to room-temperature continuous-wave operation of lasers on Si substrates. The combinations of the techniques of AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs and thermal cycle annealing improve the lasing characteristics: an average threshold current density of 1.83 kA/cm2, an average differential quantum efficiency of 52%, an internal quantum efficiency of 83%, an intrinsic mode loss coefficient of 23cm-1, a differential gain coefficient of 1.9cm/A, and a transparency current density of 266 A/cm2, which are superior to those of the two-step-grown laser on a Si substrate. The improvements of the lasing characteristics result from the smooth heterointerfaces of the AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs.

The heterointerfaces of Al0.3Ga0.7As/GaAs single quantum wells (SQWs) and the characteristics of SQW lasers grown on Si substrates with Al0.5Ga0.5As/Al0.55Ga0.45P intermediate layers (AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs) entirely by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) are reported. The effects of thermal cycle annealing on the crystallinity and the lasing characteristics of GaAs/Si are also reported. By using the AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs, SQWs with a specular surface morphology and a smoother heterointerface can be grown on a Si substrate. Thermal cycle annealing is found to improve the crystallinity of GaAs/Si and to contribute to room-temperature continuous-wave operation of lasers on Si substrates. The combinations of the techniques of AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs and thermal cycle annealing improve the lasing characteristics: an average threshold current density of 1.83 kA/cm2, an average differential quantum efficiency of 52%, an internal quantum efficiency of 83%, an intrinsic mode loss coefficient of 23 cm-1, a differential gain coefficient of 1.9 cm/A, and a transparency current density of 266 A/cm2, which are superior to those of the two-step-grown laser on a Si substrate. The improvements of the lasing characteristics result from the smooth heterointerfaces of the AlGaAs/AlGaP ILs.