STMicroelectronics

About: STMicroelectronics is a company organization based out in Geneva, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Signal & Transistor. The organization has 17172 authors who have published 29543 publications receiving 300766 citations. The organization is also known as: SGS-Thomson & STM.

Electroluminescence of silicon nanocrystals in MOS structures

Abstract: We have studied the structural, electrical and optical properties of MOS devices, where the dielectric layer consists of a substoichiometric SiOx (x 1000 °C) to induce the separation of the Si and the SiO2 phases with the formation of Si nanocrystals embedded in the insulating matrix. We observed at room temperature a quite intense electroluminescence (EL) signal with a peak at ∼850 nm. The EL peak position is very similar to that observed in photoluminescence in the very same device, demonstrating that the observed EL is due to electron–hole recombination in the Si nanocrystals and not to defects. The effects of the Si concentration in the SiOx layer and of the annealing temperature on the electrical and optical properties of these devices are also reported and discussed. In particular, it is shown that by increasing the Si content in the SiOx layer the operating voltage of the device decreases and the total efficiency of emission increases. These data are reported and their implications discussed.

A novel microcontroller-based sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive for automotive fuel pumps

Abstract: This paper presents a novel back-electromotive-force (EMF) detection method for sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive systems. By this method, a true back-EMF signal can be directly extracted for each phase without sensing the neutral point of the motor. The method proposed is not sensitive to switching noise and requires no filtering. Good motor performance is achieved over a wide speed range as well. This novel sensing scheme is implemented into a hardware macro cell inside a mixed-signal microcontroller. The proposed microcontroller-based sensorless BLDC drive system has been successfully applied to automotive fuel-pump applications, which require high reliability and intelligence at a low cost.

A 160×128 single-photon image sensor with on-pixel 55ps 10b time-to-digital converter

Abstract: Image sensors capable of resolving the time-of-arrival (ToA) of individual photons with high resolution are needed in several applications, such as fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET), optical rangefinding, and positron emission tomography In FRET, for example, typical fluorescence lifetime is of the order of 100 to 300ps, thus deep-subnanosecond resolutions are needed in the instrument response function (IRF) This in turn requires new time-resolved image sensors with better time resolution, increased throughput, and lower costs Solid-state avalanche photodiodes operated in Geiger-mode, or single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs), have existed for decades [1] but only recently have SPADs been integrated in CMOS However, as array sizes have grown, the readout bottleneck has also become evident, leading to hybrid designs or more integration and more parallelism on-chip [2,3] This trend has accelerated with the introduction of SPAD devices in deep-submicron CMOS, that have enabled the design of massively parallel arrays where the entire photon detection and ToA circuitry is integrated on-pixel [4,5]