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Showing papers by "STMicroelectronics published in 2018"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review some emerging trends in the processing of wide band gap (WBG) semiconductor devices (e.g., diodes, MOSFETs, HEMTs, etc.).

242 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A stretchable wireless system for sweat pH monitoring, able to withstand up to 53% uniaxial strain and more than 500 cycles to 30% strain is reported, which can be wirelessly and continuously transmitted to smartphone through a stretchable radio-frequency-identification antenna.

230 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The fabrication and characterization of Near-Field Communication devices based on highly flexible, carbon-based antennas composed of stacked graphene multilayers, matching the performance of standard, commercial metallic antennas are described.

124 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
30 Jan 2018-Sensors
TL;DR: The multisite combo PPG-ECG system proposed in this work overpasses the limitations of the state of the art in this field providing a reliable system for assessing the above-mentioned physiological parameters and their monitoring over time for robust medical assessment.
Abstract: Physiological signals are widely used to perform medical assessment for monitoring an extensive range of pathologies, usually related to cardio-vascular diseases. Among these, both PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG) and Electrocardiography (ECG) signals are those more employed. PPG signals are an emerging non-invasive measurement technique used to study blood volume pulsations through the detection and analysis of the back-scattered optical radiation coming from the skin. ECG is the process of recording the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time using electrodes placed on the skin. In the present paper we propose a physiological ECG/PPG "combo" pipeline using an innovative bio-inspired nonlinear system based on a reaction-diffusion mathematical model, implemented by means of the Cellular Neural Network (CNN) methodology, to filter PPG signal by assigning a recognition score to the waveforms in the time series. The resulting "clean" PPG signal exempts from distortion and artifacts is used to validate for diagnostic purpose an EGC signal simultaneously detected for a same patient. The multisite combo PPG-ECG system proposed in this work overpasses the limitations of the state of the art in this field providing a reliable system for assessing the above-mentioned physiological parameters and their monitoring over time for robust medical assessment. The proposed system has been validated and the results confirmed the robustness of the proposed approach.

121 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
20 Sep 2018-Sensors
TL;DR: An overview of the biological role of extracellular vesicles, standard biochemical methods of analysis and their limits, and a survey of lab-on-chip methods that are able to meet the needs of a deeper exploitation of these biological entities to drive their use in common clinical practice are provided.
Abstract: Interest in extracellular vesicles and in particular microvesicles and exosomes, which are constitutively produced by cells, is on the rise for their huge potential as biomarkers in a high number of disorders and pathologies as they are considered as carriers of information among cells, as well as being responsible for the spreading of diseases. Current methods of analysis of microvesicles and exosomes do not fulfill the requirements for their in-depth investigation and the complete exploitation of their diagnostic and prognostic value. Lab-on-chip methods have the potential and capabilities to bridge this gap and the technology is mature enough to provide all the necessary steps for a completely automated analysis of extracellular vesicles in body fluids. In this paper we provide an overview of the biological role of extracellular vesicles, standard biochemical methods of analysis and their limits, and a survey of lab-on-chip methods that are able to meet the needs of a deeper exploitation of these biological entities to drive their use in common clinical practice.

109 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of the growth process on the formation of defects in the hetero-epitaxial 3C-SiC film and the possible path for defects reduction has been reported.

91 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the design and characterization of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) fabricated in a 0.16 μ m BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) technology is reported.
Abstract: CMOS single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) have recently become an emerging imaging technology for applications requiring high sensitivity and high frame-rate in the visible and near-infrared range. However, a higher photon detection efficiency (PDE), particularly in the 700–950 nm range, is highly desirable for many growing markets, such as eye-safe three-dimensional imaging (LIDAR). In this paper, we report the design and characterization of SPADs fabricated in a 0.16 μ m BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) technology. The overall detection performance is among the best reported in the literature: 1) PDE of 60% at 500 nm wavelength and still 12% at 800 nm; 2) very low dark count rate of μ m2 (in counts per second per unit area); 3) < 1% afterpulsing probability with 50 ns dead-time; and 4) temporal response with 30 ps full width at half-maximum and less than 50 ps diffusion tail time constant.

83 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a single-photon avalanche diode image sensor operating at 100 kfps with fill factor of 61% and pixel pitch of $16~\mu \text{m}$ is reported.
Abstract: A $256\times256$ single-photon avalanche diode image sensor operating at 100 kfps with fill factor of 61% and pixel pitch of $16~\mu \text{m}$ is reported. An all-nMOS 7T pixel allows gated operation down to 4 ns and ~600-ps fall time with on-chip delay generation. The sensor operates with 0.996 temporal aperture ratio in rolling shutter. Gating and cooling allow the suppression of dark noise, which, in combination with the high fill factor, enables competitive low-light performance with electron multiplying charge-coupled devices while offering time-resolved imaging modes.

82 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) based pressure sensor for tactile sensing is presented, which comprises GFET connected with a piezoelectric metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor in an extended gate configuration.
Abstract: This paper presents graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) based pressure sensors for tactile sensing. The sensing device comprises GFET connected with a piezoelectric metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor in an extended gate configuration. The application of pressure on MIM generates a piezo-potential which modulates the channel current of GFET. The fabricated pressure sensor was tested over a range of 23.54–94.18 kPa, and it exhibits a sensitivity of 4.55 × 10−3 kPa−1. Further, the low voltage (∼100 mV) operation of the presented pressure sensors makes them ideal for wearable electronic applications.

81 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an nMOS quantum-dot dedicated structure was built in thin silicon film fabricated with 28 nm high- $k$ metal gate ultra-thin body and ultra thin buried oxide advanced CMOS technology.
Abstract: Silicon co-integration offers compelling scale-up opportunities for quantum computing. In this framework, cryogenic temperature is required for the coherence of solid-state quantum devices. This paper reports the characterization of an nMOS quantum-dot dedicated structure below 100 mK. The device under test is built in thin silicon film fabricated with 28 nm high- $k$ metal gate ultra-thin body and ultra-thin buried oxide advanced CMOS technology. The MOS structure is functional with improved performances at cryogenic temperature. The results open new research avenues in CMOS co-integration for quantum computing applications within the FD-SOI platform.

DOI
13 Dec 2018
TL;DR: Xoodoo, a 48-byte cryptographic permutation with excellent propagation properties, is presented and it is proved lower bounds on the weight of trails using the tree search-based technique of Mella et al. (ToSC 2017).
Abstract: This paper presents Xoodoo, a 48-byte cryptographic permutation with excellent propagation properties. Its design approach is inspired by Keccak-p, while it is dimensioned like Gimli for efficiency on low-end processors. The structure consists of three planes of 128 bits each, which interact per 3-bit columns through mixing and nonlinear operations, and which otherwise move as three independent rigid objects. We analyze its differential and linear propagation properties and, in particular, prove lower bounds on the weight of trails using the tree search-based technique of Mella et al. (ToSC 2017). Xoodoo’s primary target application is in the Farfalle construction that we instantiate for the doubly-extendable cryptographic keyed (or deck) function Xoofff. Combining a relatively narrow permutation with the parallelism of Farfalle results in very efficient schemes on a wide range of platforms, from low-end devices to high-end processors with vector instructions.

Journal ArticleDOI
24 Oct 2018-Sensors
TL;DR: Here, recent advances and perspectives will be reviewed across the large spectrum of POC devices and the integration of the relevant key enabling technologies on an industrial scale.
Abstract: A major trend in biomedical engineering is the development of reliable, self-contained point-of-care (POC) devices for diagnostics and in-field assays. The new generation of such platforms increasingly addresses the clinical and environmental needs. Moreover, they are becoming more and more integrated with everyday objects, such as smartphones, and their spread among unskilled common people, has the power to improve the quality of life, both in the developed world and in low-resource settings. The future success of these tools will depend on the integration of the relevant key enabling technologies on an industrial scale (microfluidics with microelectronics, highly sensitive detection methods and low-cost materials for easy-to-use tools). Here, recent advances and perspectives will be reviewed across the large spectrum of their applications.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper deals with the rotation synchronization problem, which arises in global registration of 3D point-sets and in structure from motion in an unprecedented way as a low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition that handles both outliers and missing data.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Si NWs sensor showed high sensitivity and specificity, easy detection method, and low manufacturing cost fully compatible with standard silicon process technology, key factors for the future development of a new class of genetic point-of-care devices that are reliable, fast, low cost, and easy to use for self-testing including in the developing countries.
Abstract: The realization of an innovative label- and PCR-free silicon nanowires (NWs) optical biosensor for direct genome detection is demonstrated. The system is based on the cooperative hybridization to selectively capture DNA and on the optical emission of quantum confined carriers in Si NWs whose quenching is used as detection mechanism. The Si NWs platform was tested with Hepatitis B virus (HBV) complete genome and it was able to reach a Limit of Detection (LoD) of 2 copies/reaction for the synthetic genome and 20 copies/reaction for the genome extracted from human blood. These results are even better than those obtained with the gold standard real-time PCR method in the genome analysis. The Si NWs sensor showed high sensitivity and specificity, easy detection method, and low manufacturing cost fully compatible with standard silicon process technology. All these points are key factors for the future development of a new class of genetic point-of-care devices that are reliable, fast, low cost, and easy to use ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a single-stage approach for the 48-V voltage regulation module (VRM) based on a quasi-resonant constant on-time (COT) operation is presented.
Abstract: In order to increase the efficiency of modern microprocessors power supplies used in data centers, the 48-V dc distribution bus is gaining growing attention. For such applications, voltage regulation modules (VRMs) are currently obtained using two-stage conversion systems with an intermediate 12-V dc bus. This paper presents an innovative single-stage approach for the 48-V VRM based on a quasi-resonant constant on-time (COT) operation. The proposed topology inherently integrates the multiphase approach, providing fast phase shedding and flat high-efficiency curves even at light load conditions. This is a unique advantage, usually not available in the two-stage approach, that is very important in server architectures, where high efficiency is required even at light load conditions. The paper analyses the circuit topology, and proposes a control architecture for fast transient response, including the current sharing capabilities, and a solution for implementing the integrated magnetics. The digital controller has been implemented in 0.16- $\mu$ m lithography together with a digital pulse-width-modulation with a 195 ps resolution, and a 40 MS/s, 7-bit ADC. Experimental results show an efficiency of 93.1% for a 250 A, 1.8 V VRM, and of 93.2% for a 102 A, 1.2-V double data rate (DDR) power supply.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Oct 2018
TL;DR: The state-of-the-art covering both the Si/SiGe HBTs and the CMOS nodes is shown and a focus on the ongoing European research activities through the presentation of the TARANTO project, whose main objective is to help developing nanoscale SiGe BiCMOS platforms.
Abstract: This paper reviews the advantages of SiGe BiCMOS technologies and their applications in the millimeterwave to terahertz domains. The state-of-the-art covering both the Si/SiGe HBTs and the CMOS nodes is shown. Future perspectives and related main challenges are discussed with a focus on the ongoing European research activities through the presentation of the TARANTO project, whose main objective is to help developing 600 GHz $\pmb{f}_{\mathbf{MAX}}$ nanoscale SiGe BiCMOS platforms.

Journal ArticleDOI
06 Aug 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, a tensile-strained germanium microdisks have been fabricated with metallic pedestals, and the transferred tensile strain leads to a thin film with a direct bandgap.
Abstract: Strain engineering is a powerful approach in micro- and optoelectronics to enhance carrier mobility, tune the bandgap of heterostructures, or break lattice symmetry for nonlinear optics. The dielectric stressors and bonding interfaces used for strain engineering in photonics can however limit thermal dissipation and the maximum operation temperature of devices. We demonstrate a new approach for enhanced thermal dissipation with stressor layers by combining metals and dielectrics. The method is applied to the germanium semiconductor. All-around tensile-strained germanium microdisks have been fabricated with metallic pedestals. The transferred tensile strain leads to a germanium thin film with a direct bandgap. Under continuous wave optical pumping, the emission of the whispering gallery modes is characterized by a threshold and an abrupt linewidth narrowing by a factor larger than 2. The occurrence of stimulated emission is corroborated by modeling of the optical gain. This demonstrates lasing with pure germanium microdisks.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Measured performance is comparable to that of standard, nonintegrated, current sensors, demonstrating the effectiveness of the presented purely Hall approach for broadband current sensing.
Abstract: This paper presents a broadband ([dc—megahertz (MHz)]) current sensor for power applications, which is based only on a Hall-effect probe as the core sensing element. Unlike common solutions for broadband current sensing, the proposed architecture is suitable for integration of the measurement system on the same low-cost CMOS chip used for the power electronics (e.g., Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS), without the need for external transformers and allowing for the realization of “smart power circuits.” The Hall-effect probe is biased by implementing the offset compensation-oriented spinning-current technique through a novel front-end, designed to push the operative bandwidth toward the fundamental limit of the probe. Specifically, the proposed front-end employs switches, which are typical of spinning-current techniques, only for biasing the Hall probe, while the readout process is performed by minimum-sized differential amplifiers. In this way, the capacitive load seen by the Hall probe is minimized and the sensor practical bandwidth upper limit is strongly increased. A prototype of the proposed architecture was operated at 8-MHz spinning frequency and characterized by means of standard figures of merit, demonstrating the broadband capability and an adequate overall performance. At the same time, the prototype revealed a new bandwidth limit, masked in conventional architectures by stronger capacitance-induced effects, which is represented by a degradation of the effectiveness of the spinning-current technique. Measured performance is comparable to that of standard, nonintegrated, current sensors, demonstrating the effectiveness of the presented purely Hall approach for broadband current sensing. The architecture was validated by discussing two case studies typical of power applications.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The performance of an innovative and low cost coupling system for power line communication (PLC) on medium voltage (MV) smart grids that makes use of the capacitive divider of the voltage detecting systems (VDSs) to inject and receive the PLC signal.
Abstract: This paper proposes and verifies the performance of an innovative and low cost coupling system for power line communication (PLC) on medium voltage (MV) smart grids. The coupling system makes use of the capacitive divider of the voltage detecting systems (VDSs) to inject and receive the PLC signal. VDS are usually already installed in the MV switchboards of the major electrical manufacturer all over the world according to IEC 61243–5. VDS are used to detect the presence of the mains voltage to guarantee personnel safety. An interface circuit has been developed to be connected between the PLC transceiver and the VDS socket. In this way, the PLC signal can be coupled to the MV network without installing a dedicated MV coupler, thus avoiding the related costs of the coupler, the installation, and the temporary service interruption. The innovative device is able to couple digitally modulated narrowband PLC signals with modulation rate up to 19.2 kbit/s. In this paper, first a description of the proposed solution is reported. Second, its communication performance has been tested in laboratory. Finally, different tests have been carried out in two MV smart grid real installations under normal operation, i.e., in the presence of the mains voltage.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper reports the developments toward an integrated, tri-axial, frequency-modulated, consumer-grade, and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope with yaw- and pitch-rate sensing systems demonstrated.
Abstract: This paper reports the developments toward an integrated, tri-axial, frequency-modulated, consumer-grade, and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope. A custom low-power (160 μ A), low-phase-noise integrated circuit is designed specifically for frequency-modulated operation. Both yaw- and pitch-rate sensing systems are demonstrated by coupling the circuit with two novel micromachined structures fabricated with a 24- μ m-thick industrial process. In operation, both gyroscopes show a repeatable and stable scale factor, with less than 0.55% of part-to-part variability, obtained with no any calibration, and 35 ppm/ $^{\circ }$ C of variability over a 25–70 $^{\circ }$ C temperature range.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2018
TL;DR: For the first time, a 28nm FDSOI e-NVM solution for automotive micro-controller applications using a Phase Change Memory (PCM) based on chalcogenide ternary material is proposed and a true 5V transistor with high analog performance has been demonstrated.
Abstract: For the first time we propose a 28nm FDSOI e-NVM solution for automotive micro-controller applications using a Phase Change Memory (PCM) based on chalcogenide ternary material. A complete array organization is described exploiting body biasing capability of Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FDSOI) transistors. Leveraging triple gate oxide integration with high-k metal gate (HKMG) stack, a true 5V transistor with high analog performance has been demonstrated. Reliable PCM 0,036um2 analytical cell with 2 decades programming window after 1 Million of cycles has been demonstrated. Finally, current distributions based on a fully integrated 16MB macro-cell is presented achieving Bit Error Rate (BER) < 10−8 after multiple bakes at 150°C and 10k cycling of code storage memory.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Aug 2018
TL;DR: The work presented focuses on the design of embedded software for wearable devices that are connected in wireless mode to a remote monitoring system for fall detection with tri-axial accelerometers.
Abstract: Unintentional falls are the leading cause of fatal injuries and nonfatal trauma among older adults. An automated monitoring system that detects occurring falls and issues remote notifications will prove very valuable for improving the level of care that could be provided to people at higher risk. The work presented focuses on the design of embedded software for wearable devices that are connected in wireless mode to a remote monitoring system. The work focuses on the implementation of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) architectures of micro controller units (MCU) for fall detection with tri-axial accelerometers. A few general formulas for determining memory, computing power and power consumption for such architectures are presented. These formulas have been validated with an actual implementation for the SensorTile device by STMicroelectronics.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The first characterisation of a cylindrical-shaped microlens array applied to a small, 8 micron, pixel SPAD imager is presented, and the enhanced fill factor, ≈50% for collimated light, is the highest reported value amongst SPAD sensors with comparable resolution and pixel pitch.
Abstract: Single-photon avalanche photodiode (SPAD) image sensors offer time-gated photon counting, at high binary frame rates of >100 kFPS and with no readout noise. This makes them well-suited to a range of scientific applications, including microscopy, sensing and quantum optics. However, due to the complex electronics required, the fill factor tends to be significantly lower ( 90%), whilst the pixel size is typically larger, impacting the sensitivity and practicalities of the SPAD devices. This paper presents the first characterisation of a cylindrical-shaped microlens array applied to a small, 8 micron, pixel SPAD imager. The enhanced fill factor, ≈50% for collimated light, is the highest reported value amongst SPAD sensors with comparable resolution and pixel pitch. We demonstrate the impact of the increased sensitivity in single-molecule localisation microscopy, obtaining a resolution of below 40nm, the best reported figure for a SPAD sensor.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigates the feasibility of a smart metering architecture for modern power grids in the smart cities framework by exploiting power line communications at both low and medium voltage level, thanks to new devices and an innovative medium voltage PLC coupling system.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of the influence of hybrid bonding pitch shrinkage on a 3D stacked backside illuminated CMOS image sensor was performed from a process, device performance and robustness perspectives.
Abstract: Hybrid bonding is a high-density technology for 3D integration but further interconnect scaling down could jeopardize electrical and reliability performance. A study of the influence of hybrid bonding pitch shrinkage on a 3D stacked backside illuminated CMOS image sensor was performed from a process, device performance and robustness perspectives, from $8.8\ \mu\mathrm{m}$ down to $1.44\ \mu \mathrm{m}$ bonding pitches. As a result no defect related to smaller bonding pads was evidenced neither by thermal cycling nor by electromigration, thus validating fine-pitch hybrid bonding robustness and introduction for next generation image sensors.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The disjunctive graph model is used to represent job sequences and to adapt and extend known structural properties of the classical job-shop scheduling problem to the problem at hand.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present breakthrough in six areas that were previously considered as potential showstoppers for 3D sequential integration from either a manufacturability, reliability, performance or cost point of view.
Abstract: The 3D sequential integration, of active devices requires to limit the thermal budget of top tier processing to low temperature (LT) (i.e. $\mathrm{T}_{\text{TOP}}=500^{\circ}\mathrm{C})$ in order to ensure the stability of the bottom devices. Here we present breakthrough in six areas that were previously considered as potential showstoppers for 3D sequential integration from either a manufacturability, reliability, performance or cost point of view. Our experimental data demonstrate the ability to obtain 1) low-resistance poly-Si gate for the top FETs, 2) Full LT RSD epitaxy including surface preparation, 3) Stability of intermediate BEOL between tiers (iBEOL) with standard ULK/Cu technology, 4) Stable bonding above ULK, 5) Efficient contamination containment for wafers with Cu/ULK iBEOL enabling their re-introduction in FEOL for top FET processing 6) Smart Cut™ process above a CMOS wafer.

Journal ArticleDOI
15 Jul 2018-Sensors
TL;DR: The main features of silicon carbide as a material and its potential application in the field of particles and photons detectors are discussed, the project structure and the strategies used for the prototype realization, and the first results concerning prototype production and their performance are discussed.
Abstract: Silicon carbide (SiC) is a compound semiconductor, which is considered as a possible alternative to silicon for particles and photons detection. Its characteristics make it very promising for the next generation of nuclear and particle physics experiments at high beam luminosity. Silicon Carbide detectors for Intense Luminosity Investigations and Applications (SiCILIA) is a project starting as a collaboration between the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and IMM-CNR, aiming at the realization of innovative detection systems based on SiC. In this paper, we discuss the main features of silicon carbide as a material and its potential application in the field of particles and photons detectors, the project structure and the strategies used for the prototype realization, and the first results concerning prototype production and their performance.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a digital silicon photomultiplier in 130-nm CMOS imaging technology implements time-correlated single photon counting at an order of magnitude beyond the conventional pile-up limit.
Abstract: A digital silicon photomultiplier in 130-nm CMOS imaging technology implements time-correlated single photon counting at an order of magnitude beyond the conventional pile-up limit. The sensor comprises a $32 \times 32\,\,43$ % fill-factor single photon avalanche diode array with a multi-event folded-flash time-to-digital converter architecture operating at 10 GS/s. 264 bins $\times16$ bit histograms are generated and read out from the chip at a maximal 188 kHz enabling fast time resolved scanning or ultrafast low-light event capture. Full optical and electrical characterization results are presented.