scholarly journals Process Variability in Top-Down Fabrication of Silicon Nanowire-Based Biosensor Arrays

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 5153
Author(s):  
Marcel Tintelott ◽  
Vivek Pachauri ◽  
Sven Ingebrandt ◽  
Xuan Thang Vu

Silicon nanowire field-effect transistors (SiNW-FET) have been studied as ultra-high sensitive sensors for the detection of biomolecules, metal ions, gas molecules and as an interface for biological systems due to their remarkable electronic properties. “Bottom-up” or “top-down” approaches that are used for the fabrication of SiNW-FET sensors have their respective limitations in terms of technology development. The “bottom-up” approach allows the synthesis of silicon nanowires (SiNW) in the range from a few nm to hundreds of nm in diameter. However, it is technologically challenging to realize reproducible bottom-up devices on a large scale for clinical biosensing applications. The top-down approach involves state-of-the-art lithography and nanofabrication techniques to cast SiNW down to a few 10s of nanometers in diameter out of high-quality Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) wafers in a controlled environment, enabling the large-scale fabrication of sensors for a myriad of applications. The possibility of their wafer-scale integration in standard semiconductor processes makes SiNW-FETs one of the most promising candidates for the next generation of biosensor platforms for applications in healthcare and medicine. Although advanced fabrication techniques are employed for fabricating SiNW, the sensor-to-sensor variation in the fabrication processes is one of the limiting factors for a large-scale production towards commercial applications. To provide a detailed overview of the technical aspects responsible for this sensor-to-sensor variation, we critically review and discuss the fundamental aspects that could lead to such a sensor-to-sensor variation, focusing on fabrication parameters and processes described in the state-of-the-art literature. Furthermore, we discuss the impact of functionalization aspects, surface modification, and system integration of the SiNW-FET biosensors on post-fabrication-induced sensor-to-sensor variations for biosensing experiments.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Graziosi ◽  
Jgor Arduini ◽  
Paolo Bonasoni ◽  
Francesco Furlani ◽  
Umberto Giostra ◽  
...  

Abstract. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a long-lived radiatively-active compound able to destroy stratospheric ozone. Due to its inclusion in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the last two decades have seen a sharp decrease in its large scale emissive use with a consequent decline of its atmospheric mole fractions. However, the Montreal Protocol restrictions do not apply to the use of carbon tetrachloride as feedstock for the production of other chemicals, implying the risk of fugitive emissions from the industry sector. The occurrence of such unintended emissions is suggested by a significant discrepancy between global emissions as derived by reported production and feedstock usage (bottom-up emissions), and those based on atmospheric observations (top-down emissions). In order to better constrain the atmospheric budget of carbon tetrachloride, several studies based on a combination of atmospheric observations and inverse modelling have been conducted in recent years in various regions of the world. This study is focused on the European scale and based on long-term high-frequency observations at three European sites, combined with a Bayesian inversion methodology. We estimated that average European emissions for 2006–2014 were 2.3 (± 0.8) Gg yr−1, with an average decreasing trend of 7.3 % per year. Our analysis identified France as the main source of emissions over the whole study period, with an average contribution to total European emissions of 25 %. The inversion was also able to allow the localisation of emission "hot-spots" in the domain, with major source areas in Southern France, Central England (UK) and Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg), where most of industrial scale production of basic organic chemicals are located. According to our results, European emissions correspond to 4.0 % of global emissions for 2006–2012. Together with other regional studies, our results allow a better constraint of the global budget of carbon tetrachloride and a better quantification of the gap between top-down and bottom-up estimates.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate J. Norris ◽  
Andrew J. Lohn ◽  
Elane Coleman ◽  
Gary S. Tompa ◽  
Nobuhiko P. Kobayashi

ABSTRACTWe report the growth of silicon nanowires by plasma assisted metal organic chemical vapor deposition. Silicon nanowires grew as three-dimensional networks in which electrical charges and heat can travel over the distance much longer than the mean length of the constituent nanowires. We studied the dependence of thermoelectric properties on two factors; nominal doping concentrations and geometrical factors within the silicon nanowire networks. The silicon nanowire networks show Seebeck coefficients comparable with that of bulk silicon for a given nominal doping concentration, allowing us to control Seebeck coefficients by tuning the doping concentrations. Rather than studying single nanowires, we chose networks of nanowires formed densely across large areas required for large scale production. We also studied the role played by intersections where multiple nanowires were fused to form the nanowire networks. Structural analysis, transport measurement, and modeling based on finite-element analysis were carried out to obtain insights of physical properties at the intersections. Understanding these physical properties of three-dimensional nanowire networks will advance the development of thermoelectric devices.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (20) ◽  
pp. 12849-12859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Graziosi ◽  
Jgor Arduini ◽  
Paolo Bonasoni ◽  
Francesco Furlani ◽  
Umberto Giostra ◽  
...  

Abstract. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a long-lived radiatively active compound with the ability to destroy stratospheric ozone. Due to its inclusion in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (MP), the last two decades have seen a sharp decrease in its large-scale emissive use with a consequent decline in its atmospheric mole fractions. However, the MP restrictions do not apply to the use of carbon tetrachloride as feedstock for the production of other chemicals, implying the risk of fugitive emissions from the industry sector. The occurrence of such unintended emissions is suggested by a significant discrepancy between global emissions as derived from reported production and feedstock usage (bottom-up emissions), and those based on atmospheric observations (top-down emissions). In order to better constrain the atmospheric budget of carbon tetrachloride, several studies based on a combination of atmospheric observations and inverse modelling have been conducted in recent years in various regions of the world. This study is focused on the European scale and based on long-term high-frequency observations at three European sites, combined with a Bayesian inversion methodology. We estimated that average European emissions for 2006–2014 were 2.2 (± 0.8) Gg yr−1, with an average decreasing trend of 6.9 % per year. Our analysis identified France as the main source of emissions over the whole study period, with an average contribution to total European emissions of approximately 26 %. The inversion was also able to allow the localisation of emission "hot spots" in the domain, with major source areas in southern France, central England (UK) and Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg), where most industrial-scale production of basic organic chemicals is located. According to our results, European emissions correspond, on average, to 4.0 % of global emissions for 2006–2012. Together with other regional studies, our results allow a better constraint of the global budget of carbon tetrachloride and a better quantification of the gap between top-down and bottom-up estimates.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Delacour ◽  
F. Veliev ◽  
T. Crozes ◽  
G. Bres ◽  
J. Minet ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTSilicon nanowire field effect transistors SiNW-FETs provide a local probe for sensing neuronal activity at the subcellular scale, thanks to their nanometer size and ultrahigh sensitivity. The combination with micro-patterning or microfluidic techniques to build model neurons networks above SiNW arrays could allow monitoring spike propagation and tailor specific stimulations, being useful to investigate network communications at multiple scales, such as plasticity or computing processes. This versatile device could be useful in many research areas, including diagnosis, prosthesis, and health security. Using top-down silicon nanowires-based array, we show here the ability to record electrical signals from matured neurons with top-down silicon nanowires, such as local field potential and unitary spike within ex-vivo preparations and hippocampal neurons grown on chip respectively. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability to guide neurites above the sensors array during 3 weeks of cultures and follow propagation of spikes along cells. Silicon nanowire field effect transistors are obtained by top-down approach with CMOS compatible technology, showing the possibility to implement them at manufacturing level. These results confirm further the potentiality of the approach to follow spike propagation over large distances and at precise location along neuronal cells, by providing a multiscale addressing at the nano and mesoscales.


Author(s):  
My Kieu ◽  
Andrew D. Bagdanov ◽  
Marco Bertini

Pedestrian detection is a canonical problem for safety and security applications, and it remains a challenging problem due to the highly variable lighting conditions in which pedestrians must be detected. This article investigates several domain adaptation approaches to adapt RGB-trained detectors to the thermal domain. Building on our earlier work on domain adaptation for privacy-preserving pedestrian detection, we conducted an extensive experimental evaluation comparing top-down and bottom-up domain adaptation and also propose two new bottom-up domain adaptation strategies. For top-down domain adaptation, we leverage a detector pre-trained on RGB imagery and efficiently adapt it to perform pedestrian detection in the thermal domain. Our bottom-up domain adaptation approaches include two steps: first, training an adapter segment corresponding to initial layers of the RGB-trained detector adapts to the new input distribution; then, we reconnect the adapter segment to the original RGB-trained detector for final adaptation with a top-down loss. To the best of our knowledge, our bottom-up domain adaptation approaches outperform the best-performing single-modality pedestrian detection results on KAIST and outperform the state of the art on FLIR.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pranav Garg ◽  
Yi Hong ◽  
Md. Mash-Hud Iqbal ◽  
Stephen J. Fonash

ABSTRACTRecently, we have experimentally demonstrated a very simply structured unipolar accumulation-type metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (AMOSFET) using grow-in-place silicon nanowires. The AMOSFET consists of a single doping type nanowire, metal source and drain contacts which are separated by a partially gated region. Despite its simple configuration, it is capable of high performance thereby offering the potential of a low manufacturing-cost transistor. Since the quality of the metal/semiconductor ohmic source and drain contacts impacts AMOSFET performance, we repot here on initial exploration of contact variations and of the impact of thermal process history. With process optimization, current on/off ratios of 106 and subthreshold swings of 70 mV/dec have been achieved with these simple devices


2015 ◽  
Vol 821-823 ◽  
pp. 528-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Lewke ◽  
Karl Otto Dohnke ◽  
Hans Ulrich Zühlke ◽  
Mercedes Cerezuela Barret ◽  
Martin Schellenberger ◽  
...  

One challenge for volume manufacturing of 4H-SiC devices is the state-of-the-art wafer dicing technology – the mechanical blade dicing which suffers from high tool wear and low feed rates. In this paper we discuss Thermal Laser Separation (TLS) as a novel dicing technology for large scale production of SiC devices. We compare the latest TLS experimental data resulting from fully processed 4H-SiC wafers with results obtained by mechanical dicing technology. Especially typical product relevant features like process control monitoring (PCM) structures and backside metallization, quality of diced SiC-devices as well as productivity are considered. It could be shown that with feed rates up to two orders of magnitude higher than state-of-the-art, no tool wear and high quality of diced chips, TLS has a very promising potential to fulfill the demands of volume manufacturing of 4H-SiC devices.


2003 ◽  
Vol 776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe P. Gabriel

AbstractWe report our work on the fabrication of nanotube-based field effect transistors (NTFET). Nanotubes were grown by chemical vapor deposition using various approaches, including a new formulation of nanotube growth catalysts that were directly patterned using UV lithography. We also report NTFETs based on randomly oriented nanotube networks that have a modulation of one. Finally, we report that a systematical and statistical characterization of millions of devices has led to the development of a robust process that may be useful in large scale production of reproducible, nanotube-based FETs, which, in turn, can be used as a generic platform for chemical sensors.


Author(s):  
Lianli Gao ◽  
Zhilong Zhou ◽  
Heng Tao Shen ◽  
Jingkuan Song

Image edge detection is considered as a cornerstone task in computer vision. Due to the nature of hierarchical representations learned in CNN, it is intuitive to design side networks utilizing the richer convolutional features to improve the edge detection. However, there is no consensus way to integrate the hierarchical information. In this paper, we propose an effective and end-to-end framework, named Bidirectional Additive Net (BAN), for image edge detection. In the proposed framework, we focus on two main problems: 1) how to design a universal network for incorporating hierarchical information sufficiently; and 2) how to achieve effective information flow between different stages and gradually improve the edge map stage by stage. To tackle these problems, we design a consecutive bottom-up and top-down architecture, where a bottom-up branch can gradually remove detailed or sharp boundaries to enable accurate edge detection and a top-down branch offers a chance of error-correcting by revisiting the low-level features that contain rich textual and spatial information. And attended additive module (AAM) is designed to cumulatively refine edges by selecting pivotal features in each stage. Experimental results show that our proposed methods can improve the edge detection performance to new records and achieve state-of-the-art results on two public benchmarks: BSDS500 and NYUDv2.


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