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Wafer alignment with AFM metrology
Background
One of the major challenges in nanoscale manufacturing is defect control. Optical inspection is not an option at the nanoscale level due to the diffraction limit of light, and without inspection high scrap rates can occur. One solution to this problem is inline metrology using atomic force microscopes (AFM). Single chip MEMS based AFMs have...
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Bidirectional DC/AC topologies
BackgroundRecently, more and more power conversion applications, such as PV micro-inverters, battery storage systems, on-board EV chargers, etc., require isolated DC/AC power converters. The markets for these applications are rapidly growing. The conventional two-stage topology solutions have simple control, higher efficiency, and lower cost. However,...
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Fabrication of metal-insulator-semiconductor photoelectrodes
Background Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is a promising technology for converting solar energy into clean and storable chemical energy. In PEC cells, semiconductors play a key role in absorbing photons from the light source to create mobile charge carriers. Various semiconductor materials have been studied for the high-performance PEC cells,...
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Thin plasmonic mid-IR detectors for enhanced functionality
Technology background
The mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength range is vital for a range of sensing, security and defense, and fundamental science applications. While some of these applications, such as infrared imaging, can function with a single value readout, the majority of them, such as chemical spectroscopy, thermography, or ranging, require spectral...
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Monolithic, unetched BTO strip waveguides
Background
Electro-optic technology relies on the operation of systems/devices through the propagation and interaction of light with various tailored/optically active materials. Typical electro-optical devices are designed to modulate the properties of a light wave (e.g., phase, polarization, amplitude, frequency, direction of propagation) and include...
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Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technologies
Background
Dr. Nan Sun and his research group have developed a portfolio of analog to digital converter (ADC) technologies that are available for licensing. Overall, Dr. Sun’s lab develops high-performance analog/mixed-signal circuits and architectures, with research efforts focusing primarily on designing low-power, high-speed, and high-resolution...
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Low-power SAR ADC design
Background A successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is used to digitize the physical analog signals to logic digital signals. It often requires low noise to achieve high accuracy. Traditionally the low noise is realized by utilizing a large comparator or averaging. Those methods are not desirable, since a large comparator is power-hungry...
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Optical terahertz frequency comb generation using nonlinear frequency mixing in quantum cascade lasers
Background Optical frequency combs (FCs) find numerous applications in time metrology, absolute distance measurements at long range, and spectroscopy. FC spectroscopy is particularly appealing in the terahertz (THz) spectral range where THz detectors based on direct power detection have low sensitivity, slow response time, and may require cryogenic...
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Variable gain amplifier utilizing positive feedback and time-domain calibration
BackgroundIn discrete-time systems, including ADCs, a voltage amplifier is necessary to increase the signal swing for further processing. Traditional precision amplification techniques, including closed-loop amplifiers, become less viable in nanometer-scale processes due to reduced transistor intrinsic gain. Additionally, these devices generally consume...
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Simple printing process for quantum dot LEDs
Technology descriptionSilicon-based light sources are a promising new path towards integrated, compact, and industrially scalable microsystems for advanced computing, networking, and sensing. However, current methods for producing these next-generation lights are lacking. These techniques are often expensive, since they require high temperature, and/or...
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