Silicon Motion (Taiwan)

Abstract Here, in comparison to indirect and nonvisualizable detections that usually convert strains from electrical signals, the strain sensors that show visible signals with operation simplicity and intuitive perception for practical applications in flexible, printed, and hybrid microelectronics are summarized. The sensors are categorized into four mechanisms of optical phenomena (diffraction, reflection, interference, and photonic crystal), fluorescent mapping (mechanochromism and mechanoluminescence), Moiré effect, and thermal imaging. In addition to their operating principles, three characteristics of sensitivity, dynamic window, and spatial resolution are examined. Furthermore, three types of strains (uniaxial, biaxial, and multiaxial) with subcategories in strain mode (tensile and compressive) and uniformity (isotropic and anisotropic) that are supported by corresponding sensors are also summarized here. With three potential applications and markets of healthcare and biomedical engineering, human motion detection (sports science), and roll‐to‐roll manufacturing listed at the end, a steppingstone is offered here for those who works or intends to work in this field by revisiting the outcomes from key literature published in recent years.

Transition from linear to circular economy to have a sustainable ecosystem is now prevailing in almost every sector including Flexible Hybrid Electronics. Researchers, scientists and stakeholders are putting continuous efforts in order to have sustainable solutions to support circular economy. In order to support Flexible Hybrid Electronics in a sustainable manner General Silicones with its decades of experience developed a sustainable industrial silicone-based substrate that not only possess excellent chemical and mechanical properties but also removing the drawback of low surface energy of silicone causing adhesion, bonding and printing issues, it can act as innovative sustainable platform to design printed and flexible electronics with unmet possibilities.

Digital refocusing has a tradeoff between complexity and quality when using sparsely sampled light fields for low-storage applications. In this paper, we propose a fast physically correct refocusing algorithm to address this issue in a twofold way. First, view interpolation is adopted to provide photorealistic quality at infocus-defocus hybrid boundaries. Regarding its conventional high complexity, we devised a fast line-scan method specifically for refocusing, and its 1D kernel can be 30× faster than the benchmark View Synthesis Reference Software (VSRS)-1D-Fast. Second, we propose a block-based multi-rate processing flow for accelerating purely infocused or defocused regions, and a further 3- 34× speedup can be achieved for high-resolution images. All candidate blocks of variable sizes can interpolate different numbers of rendered views and perform refocusing in different subsampled layers. To avoid visible aliasing and block artifacts, we determine these parameters and the simulated aperture filter through a localized filter response analysis using defocus blur statistics. The final quadtree block partitions are then optimized in terms of computation time. Extensive experimental results are provided to show superior refocusing quality and fast computation speed. In particular, the run time is comparable with the conventional single-image blurring, which causes serious boundary artifacts.

This paper presents a turbo decoder chip design supporting distinct convolutional turbo code schemes in WiMAX and LTE systems. A contention-free vectorizable dual-standard interleaver is proposed to enhance the hardware utilization. Moreover, a warm-up free parallel MAP decoding is proposed to improve the throughput rate. The overall VLSI architecture of the proposed CTC decoder is presented for supporting the WiMAX/LTE systems. This chip fabricated in a core area of 3.38 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> by 90nm CMOS process is measured at 152 MHz with a power consumption of 148.1 mW and a throughput rate of 186.1 Mbps. This chip achieves a high area efficiency of 0.36 bit/mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> and a low energy efficiency 0.16 nJ/bit/iteration.

This study examined from a social exchange perspective the influence of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the trust of subordinates in their supervisors as well as their perception of support received from their medical organization supervisors and the subsequent effect of such on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in subordinates. Two hundred valid supervisor-subordinate (head nurses-nurses) dyads from 3 medical centers and 3 regional hospitals took part in this study, which found that the quality of leader-member exchange affects nurse trust in their supervisors as well as their perception of supervisor support, which consequently promotes OCB on the part of nurses. Findings imply that a higher level of LMX can enhance nurses' commitment, significantly reduce turnover, and promote their OCB, resulting in greater organizational effectiveness.

Switching noise-induced voltage fluctuation might result in a serious timing skew or false triggering in a high-speed digital system. We propose a new approach called external coupled resistive termination (ECRT) for suppressing this noise. Analyzing the resonant field patterns reveals that the bulk noise is accumulated close to the plane edges because of the open-end boundary condition. Thus, adding extra loading at the field bulk effectively reduces the quality factors and consequently minimizes the noise accumulation. A Y-shaped power distribution network was studied with a frequency controllable input-output (I/O) buffer model. Simulation results indicate that the noise level is significantly suppressed. The optimal noise reduction rate is 80% at resonance with an overall reduction rate of 50%. Scattered placement of the ECRT was also investigated and the corresponding noise reduction rate was 50%. Reasons for that will be discussed.

An abnormal failure mechanism due to ESD pulse applied on the nonconnected (NC) solder balls of a high-pin-count (683 balls) BGA packaged chipset IC is presented. The ESD test results of the IC product were found below human-body-model (HBM) 2 kV when stressing all balls or only stressing NC balls, but above HBM 3 kV when stressing all balls excluding NC balls. Failure analyses, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) photographs and the measurement of current waveforms during ESD discharging event, have been performed. With a new proposed equivalent model, a clear explanation on this unusual phenomenon is found to have a high correlation to the small capacitor method (SCM). Several solutions to overcome this failure mechanism are also discussed.

Pittings are originated from crystal originate particles. It is difficult to avoid pittings by improving in-line processes. We have measured the amount of defects in both Czochralski (CZ) and epitaxial (EPI) wafers, which were processed by active area etching. For CZ wafers, 27% of total defects were found to be pittings, but only 5.9% for EPI wafers. These pittings may result from the crystal growth and could be further enhanced by dry etching and wet cleaning processes. Standard 0.25 μm standard random access memory (SRAM) fabrication processes were performed on both types of wafers, and electrical tests were carried out to verify the influence of pittings on the device performance. It was found that pittings induced greater leakage current between two adjacent p transistors, which may be due to local thinning at pitting location within the isolation region. However, the pitting induced leakage current was still in an acceptable level, and therefore these pittings with the size as large as 0.2 μm did not have a significant impact on device performance of 0.25 μm SRAM.