The central focus of this thesis is the design, fabrication and characterization of amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS) thin-film transistor (TFT) current mirrors. The thin-film deposition and circuit fabrication methods used to realize zinc tin oxide (ZTO) TFT
current mirrors are addressed in order to elucidate the processing challenges for this...
A computationally efficient and accurate substrate noise coupling model for multiple contacts in heavily doped CMOS processes is presented and validated with simulations and experimental data. The model is based on Z parameters that are scalable with contact separation and size. This results in fast extraction of substrate resistances for...
Contemporary circuit design involves significant computer-based simulation, calling for a balance between circuit model accuracy and simulation run time. Traditionally, circuit modelers concentrated on producing either (1) physically-based models, where each element in the model correlates to a physically meaningful aspect of the device being modeled or (2) mathematically-based "macromodels,"...
This thesis describes the design of a baseband digital predistortion
architecture for radio frequency (RF) amplifier linearization. Existing amplifier
linearization techniques are first examined. The nonlinearity of an amplifier can
be characterized as amplitude-to-amplitude distortion and amplitude-to-phase
distortion. The distortion can be corrected by providing a predistorted driver
signal (both...
Alternating-current thin-film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) devices are metal-insulator-semiconductorinsulator-
metal (MISIM) structures which emit light under high field, pulsed excitation. One aspect of ACTFEL operation that is not well understood is the aging of such devices with operating time. One of the primary goals of
this thesis is to characterize the kinetics...
The design of high-performance, high-speed clock generation and distribution becomes challenging in terms of phase noise, jitter and power consumption, due to the fast development of communication and computing systems. Injection locking is a promising clocking technique since it can significantly improve the energy efficiency, suppress the phase noise of...
The major goal of this research work was to develop better
electrical measurements for the evaluation of silicon material
quality.
The first approach investigated was the Zerbst generation
lifetime measurement technique. It was demonstrated that the
error in the estimation of the generation lifetime obtained with
this technique could be...
Digitally-programmable filters have been an ongoing research topic for a number of years. The first such filters were FIR transversal filters using Charge-Coupled Devices (CCD's) and IIR recursive filters using switched-capacitor (SC) techniques. Although both techniques achieve excellent results, they require non-standard and/or additional IC fabrication steps. Low substrate doping...
In high-frequency circuit design, performance is often limited by the quality of the passive components available for a particular process. Specifically, spiral inductors can be a major bottle-neck for Voltage-Controlled Oscillators (VCOs), Low-Noise Amplifiers (LNAs), mixers, etc. For designers to correctly optimize a circuit using a spiral inductor, several frequency-domain...
The addition of thin-film alloy magnetic materials to integrated circuit processing enables a number of novel monolithic circuits. Examples include fully integrated magnetic field sensors, signal and power galvanic isolation circuits, and power supplies on chip (PwrSoC). There are several benefits to integrating these traditionally off-chip devices, including improved manufacturability,...