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ABSTRACT The D flip flop acts as a sequencing element while designing any pipelined system. Radiation Hardening by Design (RHBD) allows hardened circuits to be fabricated on commercially available CMOS manufacturing process. Recently, single event transients (SET's) have become as important as single event upset (SEU) in radiation hardened high

ABSTRACT The D flip flop acts as a sequencing element while designing any pipelined system. Radiation Hardening by Design (RHBD) allows hardened circuits to be fabricated on commercially available CMOS manufacturing process. Recently, single event transients (SET's) have become as important as single event upset (SEU) in radiation hardened high speed digital designs. A novel temporal pulse based RHBD flip-flop design is presented. Temporally delayed pulses produced by a radiation hardened pulse generator design samples the data in three redundant pulse latches. The proposed RHBD flip-flop has been statistically designed and fabricated on 90 nm TSMC LP process. Detailed simulations of the flip-flop operation in both normal and radiation environments are presented. Spatial separation of critical nodes for the physical design of the flip-flop is carried out for mitigating multi-node charge collection upsets. The proposed flip-flop is also used in commercial CAD flows for high performance chip designs. The proposed flip-flop is used in the design and auto-place-route (APR) of an advanced encryption system and the metrics analyzed.
ContributorsKumar, Sushil (Author) / Clark, Lawrence (Thesis advisor) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Ogras, Umit Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
Sliding-Mode Control (SMC) has several benefits over traditional Proportional-Integral-Differential (PID) control in terms of fast transient response, robustness to parameter and component variations, and low sensitivity to loop disturbances. An All-Digital Sliding-Mode (ADSM) controlled DC-DC converter, utilizing single-bit oversampled frequency domain digitizers is proposed. In the proposed approach, feedback and

Sliding-Mode Control (SMC) has several benefits over traditional Proportional-Integral-Differential (PID) control in terms of fast transient response, robustness to parameter and component variations, and low sensitivity to loop disturbances. An All-Digital Sliding-Mode (ADSM) controlled DC-DC converter, utilizing single-bit oversampled frequency domain digitizers is proposed. In the proposed approach, feedback and reference digitizing Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADC) are based on a single-bit, first order Sigma-Delta frequency to digital converter, running at 32MHz over-sampling rate. The ADSM regulator achieves 1% settling time in less than 5uSec for a load variation of 600mA. The sliding-mode controller utilizes a high-bandwidth hysteretic differentiator and an integrator to perform the sliding control law in digital domain. The proposed approach overcomes the steady state error (or DC offset), and limits the switching frequency range, which are the two common problems associated with sliding-mode controllers. The IC is designed and fabricated on a 0.35um CMOS process occupying an active area of 2.72mm-squared. Measured peak efficiency is 83%.
ContributorsDashtestani, Ahmad (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Thornton, Trevor (Committee member) / Song, Hongjiang (Committee member) / Kiaei, Sayfe (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Non-volatile memories (NVM) are widely used in modern electronic devices due to their non-volatility, low static power consumption and high storage density. While Flash memories are the dominant NVM technology, resistive memories such as phase change access memory (PRAM) and spin torque transfer random access memory (STT-MRAM) are gaining ground.

Non-volatile memories (NVM) are widely used in modern electronic devices due to their non-volatility, low static power consumption and high storage density. While Flash memories are the dominant NVM technology, resistive memories such as phase change access memory (PRAM) and spin torque transfer random access memory (STT-MRAM) are gaining ground. All these technologies suffer from reliability degradation due to process variations, structural limits and material property shift. To address the reliability concerns of these NVM technologies, multi-level low cost solutions are proposed for each of them. My approach consists of first building a comprehensive error model. Next the error characteristics are exploited to develop low cost multi-level strategies to compensate for the errors. For instance, for NAND Flash memory, I first characterize errors due to threshold voltage variations as a function of the number of program/erase cycles. Next a flexible product code is designed to migrate to a stronger ECC scheme as program/erase cycles increases. An adaptive data refresh scheme is also proposed to improve memory reliability with low energy cost for applications with different data update frequencies. For PRAM, soft errors and hard errors models are built based on shifts in the resistance distributions. Next I developed a multi-level error control approach involving bit interleaving and subblock flipping at the architecture level, threshold resistance tuning at the circuit level and programming current profile tuning at the device level. This approach helped reduce the error rate significantly so that it was now sufficient to use a low cost ECC scheme to satisfy the memory reliability constraint. I also studied the reliability of a PRAM+DRAM hybrid memory system and analyzed the tradeoffs between memory performance, programming energy and lifetime. For STT-MRAM, I first developed an error model based on process variations. I developed a multi-level approach to reduce the error rates that consisted of increasing the W/L ratio of the access transistor, increasing the voltage difference across the memory cell and adjusting the current profile during write operation. This approach enabled use of a low cost BCH based ECC scheme to achieve very low block failure rates.
ContributorsYang, Chengen (Author) / Chakrabarti, Chaitali (Thesis advisor) / Cao, Yu (Committee member) / Ogras, Umit Y. (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
With increasing demand for System on Chip (SoC) and System in Package (SiP) design in computer and communication technologies, integrated inductor which is an essential passive component has been widely used in numerous integrated circuits (ICs) such as in voltage regulators and RF circuits. In this work, soft ferromagnetic core

With increasing demand for System on Chip (SoC) and System in Package (SiP) design in computer and communication technologies, integrated inductor which is an essential passive component has been widely used in numerous integrated circuits (ICs) such as in voltage regulators and RF circuits. In this work, soft ferromagnetic core material, amorphous Co-Zr-Ta-B, was incorporated into on-chip and in-package inductors in order to scale down inductors and improve inductors performance in both inductance density and quality factor. With two layers of 500 nm Co-Zr-Ta-B films a 3.5X increase in inductance and a 3.9X increase in quality factor over inductors without magnetic films were measured at frequencies as high as 1 GHz. By laminating technology, up to 9.1X increase in inductance and more than 5X increase in quality factor (Q) were obtained from stripline inductors incorporated with 50 nm by 10 laminated films with a peak Q at 300 MHz. It was also demonstrated that this peak Q can be pushed towards high frequency as far as 1GHz by a combination of patterning magnetic films into fine bars and laminations. The role of magnetic vias in magnetic flux and eddy current control was investigated by both simulation and experiment using different patterning techniques and by altering the magnetic via width. Finger-shaped magnetic vias were designed and integrated into on-chip RF inductors improving the frequency of peak quality factor from 400 MHz to 800 MHz without sacrificing inductance enhancement. Eddy current and magnetic flux density in different areas of magnetic vias were analyzed by HFSS 3D EM simulation. With optimized magnetic vias, high frequency response of up to 2 GHz was achieved. Furthermore, the effect of applied magnetic field on on-chip inductors was investigated for high power applications. It was observed that as applied magnetic field along the hard axis (HA) increases, inductance maintains similar value initially at low fields, but decreases at larger fields until the magnetic films become saturated. The high frequency quality factor showed an opposite trend which is correlated to the reduction of ferromagnetic resonant absorption in the magnetic film. In addition, experiments showed that this field-dependent inductance change varied with different patterned magnetic film structures, including bars/slots and fingers structures. Magnetic properties of Co-Zr-Ta-B films on standard organic package substrates including ABF and polyimide were also characterized. Effects of substrate roughness and stress were analyzed and simulated which provide strategies for integrating Co-Zr-Ta-B into package inductors and improving inductors performance. Stripline and spiral inductors with Co-Zr-Ta-B films were fabricated on both ABF and polyimide substrates. Maximum 90% inductance increase in hundreds MHz frequency range were achieved in stripline inductors which are suitable for power delivery applications. Spiral inductors with Co-Zr-Ta-B films showed 18% inductance increase with quality factor of 4 at frequency up to 3 GHz.
ContributorsWu, Hao (Author) / Yu, Hongbin (Thesis advisor) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Cao, Yu (Committee member) / Chickamenahalli, Shamala (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
This thesis presents approaches to develop micro seismometers and accelerometers based on molecular electronic transducers (MET) technology using MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) techniques. MET is a technology applied in seismic instrumentation that proves highly beneficial to planetary seismology. It consists of an electrochemical cell that senses the movement of liquid electrolyte

This thesis presents approaches to develop micro seismometers and accelerometers based on molecular electronic transducers (MET) technology using MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) techniques. MET is a technology applied in seismic instrumentation that proves highly beneficial to planetary seismology. It consists of an electrochemical cell that senses the movement of liquid electrolyte between electrodes by converting it to the output current. MET seismometers have advantages of high sensitivity, low noise floor, small size, absence of fragile mechanical moving parts and independence on the direction of sensitivity axis. By using MEMS techniques, a micro MET seismometer is developed with inter-electrode spacing close to 1μm, which improves the sensitivity of fabricated device to above 3000 V/(m/s^2) under operating bias of 600 mV and input acceleration of 400 μG (G=9.81m/s^2) at 0.32 Hz. The lowered hydrodynamic resistance by increasing the number of channels improves the self-noise to -127 dB equivalent to 44 nG/√Hz at 1 Hz. An alternative approach to build the sensing element of MEMS MET seismometer using SOI process is also presented in this thesis. The significantly increased number of channels is expected to improve the noise performance. Inspired by the advantages of combining MET and MEMS technologies on the development of seismometer, a low frequency accelerometer utilizing MET technology with post-CMOS-compatible fabrication processes is developed. In the fabricated accelerometer, the complicated fabrication of mass-spring system in solid-state MEMS accelerometer is replaced with a much simpler post-CMOS-compatible process containing only deposition of a four-electrode MET structure on a planar substrate, and a liquid inertia mass of an electrolyte droplet encapsulated by oil film. The fabrication process does not involve focused ion beam milling which is used in the micro MET seismometer fabrication, thus the cost is lowered. Furthermore, the planar structure and the novel idea of using an oil film as the sealing diaphragm eliminate the complicated three-dimensional packaging of the seismometer. The fabricated device achieves 10.8 V/G sensitivity at 20 Hz with nearly flat response over the frequency range from 1 Hz to 50 Hz, and a low noise floor of 75 μG/√Hz at 20 Hz.
ContributorsHuang, Hai (Author) / Yu, Hongyu (Thesis advisor) / Jiang, Hanqing (Committee member) / Dai, Lenore (Committee member) / Si, Jennie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
The design and development of analog/mixed-signal (AMS) integrated circuits (ICs) is becoming increasingly expensive, complex, and lengthy. Rapid prototyping and emulation of analog ICs will be significant in the design and testing of complex analog systems. A new approach, Programmable ANalog Device Array (PANDA) that maps any AMS design problem

The design and development of analog/mixed-signal (AMS) integrated circuits (ICs) is becoming increasingly expensive, complex, and lengthy. Rapid prototyping and emulation of analog ICs will be significant in the design and testing of complex analog systems. A new approach, Programmable ANalog Device Array (PANDA) that maps any AMS design problem to a transistor-level programmable hardware, is proposed. This approach enables fast system level validation and a reduction in post-Silicon bugs, minimizing design risk and cost. The unique features of the approach include 1) transistor-level programmability that emulates each transistor behavior in an analog design, achieving very fine granularity of reconfiguration; 2) programmable switches that are treated as a design component during analog transistor emulating, and optimized with the reconfiguration matrix; 3) compensation of AC performance degradation through boosting the bias current. Based on these principles, a digitally controlled PANDA platform is designed at 45nm node that can map AMS modules across 22nm to 90nm technology nodes. A systematic emulation approach to map any analog transistor to 45nm PANDA cell is proposed, which achieves transistor level matching accuracy of less than 5% for ID and less than 10% for Rout and Gm. Circuit level analog metrics of a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) emulated by PANDA, match to those of the original designs in 22nm and 90nm nodes with less than a 5% error. Several other 90nm and 22nm analog blocks are successfully emulated by the 45nm PANDA platform, including a folded-cascode operational amplifier and a sample-and-hold module (S/H). Further capabilities of PANDA are demonstrated by the first full-chip silicon of PANDA which is implemented on 65nm process This system consists of a 24×25 cell array, reconfigurable interconnect and configuration memory. The voltage and current reference circuits, op amps and a VCO with a phase interpolation circuit are emulated by PANDA.
ContributorsSuh, Jounghyuk (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Cao, Yu (Committee member) / Ozev, Sule (Committee member) / Kozicki, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
In engineering, buckling is mechanical instability of walls or columns under compression and usually is a problem that engineers try to prevent. In everyday life buckles (wrinkles) on different substrates are ubiquitous -- from human skin to a rotten apple they are a commonly observed phenomenon. It seems that buckles

In engineering, buckling is mechanical instability of walls or columns under compression and usually is a problem that engineers try to prevent. In everyday life buckles (wrinkles) on different substrates are ubiquitous -- from human skin to a rotten apple they are a commonly observed phenomenon. It seems that buckles with macroscopic wavelengths are not technologically useful; over the past decade or so, however, thanks to the widespread availability of soft polymers and silicone materials micro-buckles with wavelengths in submicron to micron scale have received increasing attention because it is useful for generating well-ordered periodic microstructures spontaneously without conventional lithographic techniques. This thesis investigates the buckling behavior of thin stiff films on soft polymeric substrates and explores a variety of applications, ranging from optical gratings, optical masks, energy harvest to energy storage. A laser scanning technique is proposed to detect micro-strain induced by thermomechanical loads and a periodic buckling microstructure is employed as a diffraction grating with broad wavelength tunability, which is spontaneously generated from a metallic thin film on polymer substrates. A mechanical strategy is also presented for quantitatively buckling nanoribbons of piezoelectric material on polymer substrates involving the combined use of lithographically patterning surface adhesion sites and transfer printing technique. The precisely engineered buckling configurations provide a route to energy harvesters with extremely high levels of stretchability. This stiff-thin-film/polymer hybrid structure is further employed into electrochemical field to circumvent the electrochemically-driven stress issue in silicon-anode-based lithium ion batteries. It shows that the initial flat silicon-nanoribbon-anode on a polymer substrate tends to buckle to mitigate the lithiation-induced stress so as to avoid the pulverization of silicon anode. Spontaneously generated submicron buckles of film/polymer are also used as an optical mask to produce submicron periodic patterns with large filling ratio in contrast to generating only ~100 nm edge submicron patterns in conventional near-field soft contact photolithography. This thesis aims to deepen understanding of buckling behavior of thin films on compliant substrates and, in turn, to harness the fundamental properties of such instability for diverse applications.
ContributorsMa, Teng (Author) / Jiang, Hanqing (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongyu (Committee member) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Poon, Poh Chieh Benny (Committee member) / Rajagopalan, Jagannathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
ABSTRACT Electronics especially mobile electronics such as smart phones, tablet PCs, notebooks and digital cameras are undergoing rapid development nowadays and have thoroughly changed our lives. With the requirement of more transistors, higher power, smaller size, lighter weight and even bendability, thermal management of these devices became one of the

ABSTRACT Electronics especially mobile electronics such as smart phones, tablet PCs, notebooks and digital cameras are undergoing rapid development nowadays and have thoroughly changed our lives. With the requirement of more transistors, higher power, smaller size, lighter weight and even bendability, thermal management of these devices became one of the key challenges. Compared to active heat management system, heat pipe, which is a passive fluidic system, is considered promising to solve this problem. However, traditional heat pipes have size, weight and capillary limitation. Thus new type of heat pipe with smaller size, lighter weight and higher capillary pressure is needed. Nanofiber has been proved with superior properties and has been applied in multiple areas. This study discussed the possibility of applying nanofiber in heat pipe as new wick structure. In this study, a needleless electrospinning device with high productivity rate was built onsite to systematically investigate the effect of processing parameters on fiber properties as well as to generate nanofiber mat to evaluate its capability in electronics cooling. Polyethylene oxide (PEO) and Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) nanofibers were generated. Tensiometer was used for wettability measurement. The results show that independent parameters including spinneret type, working distance, solution concentration and polymer type are strongly correlated with fiber morphology compared to other parameters. The results also show that the fabricated nanofiber mat has high capillary pressure.
ContributorsSun, Tianwei (Author) / Jiang, Hanqing (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongyu (Committee member) / Chen, Kangping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Digital to analog converters (DACs) find widespread use in communications equipment. Most commercially available DAC's which are intended to be used in transmitter applications come in a dual configuration for carrying the in phase (I) and quadrature (Q) data and feature on chip digital mixing. Digital mixing offers many benefits

Digital to analog converters (DACs) find widespread use in communications equipment. Most commercially available DAC's which are intended to be used in transmitter applications come in a dual configuration for carrying the in phase (I) and quadrature (Q) data and feature on chip digital mixing. Digital mixing offers many benefits concerning I and Q matching but has one major drawback; the update rate of the DAC must be higher than the intermediate frequency (IF) which is most commonly a factor of 4. This drawback motivates the need for interpolation so that a low update rate can be used for components preceding the DACs. In this thesis the design of an interpolating DAC integrated circuit (IC) to be used in a transmitter application for generating a 100MHz IF is presented. Many of the transistor level implementations are provided. The tradeoffs in the design are analyzed and various options are discussed. This thesis provides a basic foundation for designing an IC of this nature and will give the reader insight into potential areas of further research. At the time of this writing the chip is in fabrication therefore this document does not contain test results.
ContributorsNixon, Cliff (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Efficiency of components is an ever increasing area of importance to portable applications, where a finite battery means finite operating time. Higher efficiency devices need to be designed that don't compromise on the performance that the consumer has come to expect. Class D amplifiers deliver on the goal of increased

Efficiency of components is an ever increasing area of importance to portable applications, where a finite battery means finite operating time. Higher efficiency devices need to be designed that don't compromise on the performance that the consumer has come to expect. Class D amplifiers deliver on the goal of increased efficiency, but at the cost of distortion. Class AB amplifiers have low efficiency, but high linearity. By modulating the supply voltage of a Class AB amplifier to make a Class H amplifier, the efficiency can increase while still maintaining the Class AB level of linearity. A 92dB Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR) Class AB amplifier and a Class H amplifier were designed in a 0.24um process for portable audio applications. Using a multiphase buck converter increased the efficiency of the Class H amplifier while still maintaining a fast response time to respond to audio frequencies. The Class H amplifier had an efficiency above the Class AB amplifier by 5-7% from 5-30mW of output power without affecting the total harmonic distortion (THD) at the design specifications. The Class H amplifier design met all design specifications and showed performance comparable to the designed Class AB amplifier across 1kHz-20kHz and 0.01mW-30mW. The Class H design was able to output 30mW into 16Ohms without any increase in THD. This design shows that Class H amplifiers merit more research into their potential for increasing efficiency of audio amplifiers and that even simple designs can give significant increases in efficiency without compromising linearity.
ContributorsPeterson, Cory (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Barnaby, Hugh (Committee member) / Kiaei, Sayfe (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013