• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.140-140
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• 2018

The 3D interconnect technologies have been appeared, as the density of Integrated Circuit (IC) devices increases. Through Silicon Via (TSV) process is an important technology in the 3D interconnect technologies. And the process is used to form a vertically electrical connection through silicon dies. This TSV process has some advantages that short length of interconnection, high interconnection density, low electrical resistance, and low power consumption. Because of these advantages, TSVs could improve the device performance higher. The fabrication process of TSV has several steps such as TSV etching, insulator deposition, seed layer deposition, metallization, planarization, and assembly. Among them, TSV metallization (i.e. TSV filling) was core process in the fabrication process of TSV because TSV metallization determines the performance and reliability of the TSV interconnect. TSVs were commonly filled with metals by using the simple electrochemical deposition method. However, since the aspect ratio of TSVs was become a higher, it was easy to occur voids and copper filling of TSVs became more difficult. Using some additives like an accelerator, suppressor and leveler for the void-free filling of TSVs, deposition rate of bottom could be fast whereas deposition of side walls could be inhibited. The suppressor was adsorbed surface of via easily because of its higher molecular weight than the accelerator. However, for high aspect ratio TSV fillers, the growth of the top of via can be accelerated because the suppressor is replaced by an accelerator. The substitution of the accelerator and the suppressor caused the side wall growth and defect generation. The suppressor was used as Single additive electrodeposition of TSV to overcome the constraints. At the electrochemical deposition of high aspect ratio of TSVs, the suppressor as single additive could effectively suppress the growth of the top surface and the void-free bottom-up filling became possible. Generally, copper was used to fill TSVs since its low resistivity could reduce the RC delay of the interconnection. However, because of the large Coefficients of Thermal Expansion (CTE) mismatch between silicon and copper, stress was induced to the silicon around the TSVs at the annealing process. The Keep Out Zone (KOZ), the stressed area in the silicon, could affect carrier mobility and could cause degradation of the device performance. Cobalt can be used as an alternative material because the CTE of cobalt was lower than that of copper. Therefore, using cobalt could reduce KOZ and improve device performance. In this study, high-aspect ratio TSVs were filled with cobalt using the electrochemical deposition. And the filling performance was enhanced by using the suppressor as single additive. Electrochemical analysis explains the effect of suppressor in the cobalt filling bath and the effect of filling behavior at condition such as current type was investigated.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2012

Three-dimensional integrated circuit(3D IC) technology has become increasingly important due to the demand for high system performance and functionality. In this work, BOE and HF wet etching of Cu line surfaces after CMP were conducted for Cu-Cu pattern direct bonding. Step height of Cu and $SiO_2$ as well as Cu dishing after Cu CMP were analyzed by the 3D-Profiler. Step height increased and Cu dishing decreased with increasing BOE and HF wet etching times. XPS analysis of Cu surface revealed that Cu surface oxide layer was partially removed by BOE and HF wet etching treatment. BOE treatment showed not only the effective $SiO_2$ etching but also reduced dishing and Cu surface oxide rather than HF treatment, which can be used as an meaningful process data for reliable Cu-Cu pattern bonding characteristics.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.23-36
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• 2005

PLLs have been widely used for many applications including communication systems. This paper presents a VCO with an improved negative skewed delay scheme and a PLL using this VCO. The proposed VCO and PLL are intended for replacing traditional LC oscillators and PLLs used in communication systems and other applications. The circuit designs of the VCO and PLL are based on 0.18um CMOS technology with 1.8V supply voltage. The proposed VCO employs subfeedback loops using pass-transistors and needs two opposite control voltages for the pass transistors. The subfeedback loops speed up oscillation depending on the control voltages and thus provide a high oscillation frequency. The two voltage controls have opposite frequency gain characteristics and result in low phase-noise. The 7-stage VCO in 0.18um CMOS technology operates from $3.2GHz\~6.3GHz$ with phase noise of about -128.8 dBc/Hz at 1MHz frequency onset. For 1.8V supply voltage, the current consumption is about 3.8mA. The proposed PLL has dual loop-filters for the proposed VCO. The PLL is operated at 5GHz with 1.8V supply voltage. These results indicate that the proposed VCO can be used for radio frequency operations replacing LC oscillators. The circuits have been designed and simulated using 0.18um TSMC library.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.7 no.2 s.13
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• pp.236-244
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• 2003

In this paper, RF and IF circuits for mobile terminals which have usually been implemented using expensive BiCMOS processes are designed using CMOS circuits, and a Tx CMOS RF/IF single chip for PCS applications is designed. The designed circuit consists of an IF block including an IF PLL frequency synthesizer, an IF mixer, and a VGA and an RF block including a SSB RF mixer and a driver amplifier, and performs all transmit signal processing functions required between digital baseband and the power amplifier. The phase noise level of the designed IF PLL frequency synthesizer is -114dBc/Hz@100kHz and the lock time is less than $300{\mu}s$. It consumes 5.3mA from a 3V power supply. The conversion gain and OIP3 of the IF mixer block are 3.6dB and -11.3dBm. It consumes 5.3mA. The 3dB frequencies of the VGA are greater than 250MHz for all gain settings. The designed VGA consumes 10mA. The designed RF block exhibits a gain of 14.93dB and an OIP3 of 6.97dBm. The image and carrier suppressions are 35dBc and 31dBc, respectively. It consumes 63.4mA. The designed circuits are under fabrication using a $0.35{\mu}m$ CMOS process. The designed entire chip consumes 84mA from a 3V supply, and its area is $1.6㎜{\times}3.5㎜$.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.48-57
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• 2020

MCU used in applications such as wireless chargers and USB type-C require MTP memory with a small cell size and a small additional process mask. Conventional double poly EEPROM cells are small in size, but additional processing masks of about 3 to 5 sheets are required, and FN tunneling type single poly EEPROM cells have a large cell size. In this paper, a 110nm MTP cell using a vertical PIP capacitor is proposed. The erase operation of the proposed MTP cell uses FN tunneling between FG and EG, and the program operation uses CHEI injection method, which reduces the MTP cell size to 1.09㎛2 by sharing the PW of the MTP cell array. Meanwhile, MTP memory IP required for applications such as USB type-C needs to operate over a wide voltage range of 2.5V to 5.5V. However, the pumping current of the VPP charge pump is the lowest when the VCC voltage is the minimum 2.5V, while the ripple voltage is large when the VCC voltage is 5.5V. Therefore, in this paper, the VPP ripple voltage is reduced to within 0.19V through SPICE simulation because the pumping current is suppressed to 474.6㎂ even when VCC is increased by controlling the number of charge pumps turned on by using the VCC detector circuit.