A fluid ejection device includes groups of firing cells, sharing a common fire signal and a common address selection mechanism, each firing cell having a drop generator for ejecting fluid and a dynamic memory addressable by the common address selection mechanism. Circuitry interfaces with the firing cells to allow the capture of data during two consecutive select cycles, then firing of all cells during a third cycle.

Fluid ejection device

Several fabricating processes for ink jet printheads are disclosed, each printhead being composed of two parts aligned and bonded together. One part is a substantially flat substrate which contains on the surface thereof a lineal array of heating elements and addressing electrodes, and the second part is a substrate having at least one recess anisotropically etched therein to serve as an ink supply manifold when the two parts are bonded together. A lineal array of parallel grooves are formed in the second part, so that one end of the grooves communicate with the manifold recess an the other ends are open for use as an ink droplet expelling nozzles. Many printheads can be made simultaneously by producing a plurality of sets of heating elements array with their addressing electrodes on a silicon wafer and by placing alignment marks thereon at predetermined locations. A corresponding plurality of sets of channels and associated manifolds are produced in a second silicon wafer and, in one embodiment, alignment openings are etched thereon at predetermined locations. The two wafers are aligned via the alignment openings and alignment marks, then bonded together and diced into many separate printheads. A number of printheads can be fixedly mounted in a pagewidth configuration which confronts a moving recording medium for pagewidth printing or individual printheads may be adapted for carriage type ink jet printing.

Thermal ink jet printhead and process therefor

Capacitive-type measuring apparatus for making absolute measurements comprises first and second support members which are relatively displaceable with respect to a measurement axis; an array of first transmitter electrodes disposed on the first support member; an array of first receiver electrodes disposed on the second support member such that differing portions of the first receiver electrode array are capacitively coupled with the first transmitter electrode array in dependence on the relative positions of the support members; an array of second transmitter electrodes disposed on the second support member so as to be spatially offset from and electrically connected to corresponding first receiver electrodes; and a second receiver electrode arrangement disposed on the first support member for sensing the voltage distribution of the electric field created by the second transmitter electrode array in response to excitation of the first transmitter electrode array with N excitation signals The degree of offset of a second transmitter electrode relative to its corresponding first receiver electrode is a predetermined function of the distance of the second transmitter electrode from a reference position The first receiver electrodes define a fine wavelength, the first transmitter electrodes are arranged to occupy unique relative fine wavelength segment positions, and the second receiver electrode arrangement is adapted to produce outputs in response to predetermined combinations of excitation signals applied to the first transmitter electrodes which permit different transfer functions to be sensed, thereby permitting different resolution measurements to be made with the same electrode arrays which can be combined to obtain high accuracy absolute position measurements over an extended measuring range

Capacitance-type measuring device for absolute measurement of positions

A surface and/or bulk micromachined hermetically sealed cavity containing at least one suspended structure in a low pressure ambient, and the associated fabrication method. The cavity is bounded by a thin-film membrane and a substrate which may have a recess. The method can be used for the production, for example, of thermionic-emission vacuum tubes, gas filled tubes and electromechanical devices. In vacuum tubes the cathode is a suspended refractory filament. Other electrodes may also be suspended. In electromechanical devices the suspended members may be cantilever beams capable of low friction motion.

Sealed micromachined vacuum and gas filled devices

A method and apparatus for constructing, repairing and operating modular electronic systems utilize peripheral half-capacitors (14, 15) (i.e., conductive plates on the outside of the modules) to communicate non-conductively between abutting modules. Such systems provide lower cost, improved testability/repairability and greater density then conventional modular packaging techniques, such as printed circuit board (10) and multi-chip modules. The non-conductive interconnection technique of the invention can be applied to all levels in the packaging hierarchy, from bare semiconductor dies to complete functional sub-units. Numerous exemplary systems and applications are described.

Method and apparatus for non-conductively interconnecting integrated circuits

An aligner for aligning a mask and a wafer during photolithography of a semiconductor chip uses detection of the differential capacitance between two sets of conductive fingers on the mask and ridges on the wafer. An A.C. signal is coupled between the ridges and the fingers and the phase or amplitude of the signals is detected. An aligner utilizing multiple groups of ridges and fingers allows rotational alignment or two axis lateral alignment. An aligner having reference ledges to which the mask and the wafer are capacitively coupled allows alignment when the distance between the mask and the wafer is too great to permit meaningful capacitive coupling between the mask and the wafer to occur.

Capacitive mask aligner

A new type of thermal ink jet print head is provided which is driven by an electron beam. The print head is constructed of an electron permeable thin film (electron window) which in one embodiment, has on one of its surfaces a plurality of electron absorbing (heater) pads that are in thermal contact with an ink reservoir. As electrons from a CRT traverse the thin film and are absorbed by a pad, they introduce an extremely large and rapid temperature increase in the pad. As a result, a sufficient amount of thermal energy is absorbed by the ink to cause a vapor explosion within the ink, thereby ejecting ink droplets from a nearby orifice in the ink reservoir. In another embodiment, the electrons traverse the window and are absorbed in the ink rather than in pads, and in another embodiment the electrons are absorbed directly in the window itself.

Electron beam driven ink jet printer

An X-ray lithography apparatus permits the successive exposure of each of four quadrants of a semiconductor wafer through a single mask. The mask overlays one quadrant of the wafer at a time and the wafer is rotated through 90 degrees after exposure of a quadrant to allow exposure of succeeding wafer quadrants; each wafer quadrant is independently aligned to the mask prior to exposure. In an alternative preferred embodiment, a rotatable diaphragm is used to select a single mask quadrant from a mask which overlays the entire surface of the semiconductor wafer. Both the wafer and the diaphragm may be rotated to allow various exposure combinations of mask and wafer quadrants.

Garrett A. Garrettson

Papers

Capacitive mask aligner

Electron beam driven ink jet printer

Method and apparatus for lithographic rotate and repeat processing