This paper reports a versatile nano-sensor technology using "top-down" poly-silicon nanowire field-effect transistors (FETs) in the conventional Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible semiconductor process. The nanowire manufacturing technique reduced nanowire width scaling to 50 nm without use of extra lithography equipment, and exhibited superior device uniformity. These n ...

Fabricationand measurement-induced stresses in surface micromachined structures are investigated by wafer-level probing of electrostatically actuated polysilicon test structures fabricated by the MUMPs process of MCNC. The test structures are based on M-Test, an electrostatic pull-in approach for monitoring process uniformity and reproducibility, and, when used in conjunction with suitable geom...

An overview of the major sensor and actuator projects using the micromachining capabilities of the Microelectronics Development Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratories will be presented. Development efforts are underway for a variety of micromechanical devices and control electronics for those devices. Surface micromachining is the predominant technology under development. Pressure sensors b...

This letter reports, for the first time, an integrated polysilicon microhemispherical resonating gyroscope (μHRG) with selfaligned drive, sense, and tuning electrodes, all fabricated using a single wafer process. The polysilicon hemispherical shell is 700 nm in thickness and 1.2 mm in diameter, resulting in a 1:3000 aspect ratio threedimensional (3-D) microstructure. The quality factor of the w...

This paper discusses the design and testing of an eight-by-eight tactile capacitive array sensor for detection of sub-millimeter features and objects, where the entire sensor array is smaller than normal human spatial resolution of 1mm. Each square tactel is less than 100μm on a side, with similar spacing between elements. The structural material was doped polysilicon with an air gap dielectric...

A highly innovative miniature silicon comb to sense differential microphone diaphragm has been developed that is highly stable when subjected to various bias voltages [1]. The bio-inspired microphone diaphragm consists of a 1 mm by 2 mm stiffener-reinforced plate fabricated out of phosphorous-doped polysilicon that is supported on a central hinge [2,3,4]. Interdigitated comb fingers are formed ...

We investigate the impact of varying the grain boundary (GB) position on the output (Id–Vd) characteristics of submicron single GB polysilicon thin film transistors (TFTs), by two-dimensional (2D), drift-diffusion based, device simulation. We employ a localized GB trapping model with a distribution of both donor-like and acceptor-like trap states over the forbidden energy gap of the GB region. ...

We report the fabrication process, material and electrical characterizations of ultra thin body (UTB) thin film transistors (TFTs) by using in situ doped polysilicon followed by the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. The resulting polysilicon film is about 13 nm thick with approximately 1019 cm-3 body doping. Root mean square (RMS) surface roughness below 1 nm is achieved over 25 μm2 ...

As the size of a transistor continuously scales down, single electron effects become important [1 – 3]. Previously, we have studied charge transport in single-electron quantum dot transistors which have a channel consisting of a silicon dot separated from the source and the drain by two constrictions [4], and in single-electron MOS memories that have a polysilicon dot floating gate stacked on a...