• ETRI Journal
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.70-78
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• 2007

A new low-voltage CMOS interface circuit with digital output for piezo-resistive transducer is proposed. An input current sensing configuration is used to detect change in piezo-resistance due to applied pressure and to allow low-voltage circuit operation. A simple 1-bit first-order delta-sigma modulator is used to produce an output digital bitstream. The proposed interface circuit is realized in a 0.35 ${\mu}m$ CMOS technology and draws less than 200 ${\mu}A$ from a single 1.5 V power supply voltage. Simulation results show that the circuit can achieve an equivalent output resolution of 9.67 bits with less than 0.23% non-linearity error.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.348-352
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• 2022

Resistive switching behaviors of a co-sputtered zinc silicate thin film (ZnO and SiO₂ targets) have been investigated. We fabricated an Ag/ZnSiO_x/highly doped n-type Si substrate device by using an RF magnetron sputter system. X-ray diffraction pattern (XRD) indicated that the Zn₂SiO₄ was formed by a post annealing process. A unique morphology was observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). As a result of annealing process, 50 nm sized nano clusters were formed spontaneously in 200~300 nm sized grains. The device showed a unipolar resistive switching process. The average value of the ratio of the resistance change between the high resistance state (HRS) and the low resistance state (LRS) was about 106 when the readout voltage (0.5 V) was achieved. Resistance ratio is not degraded during 50 switching cycles. The conduction mechanisms were explained by using Ohmic conduction for the LRS and Schottky emission for the HRS.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.479-485
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• 2015

A resistance deviation-to-time interval converter based on dual-slope integration using second generation current conveyors (CCIIs) is designed for connecting resistive bridge sensors with a digital system. It consists of a differential integrator using CCIIs, a voltage comparator, and a digital control logic for controlling four analog switches. Experimental results exhibit that a conversion sensitivity amounts to $15.56{\mu}s/{\Omega}$ over the resistance deviation range of $0-200{\Omega}$ and its linearity error is less than ${\pm}0.02%$. Its temperature stability is less than $220ppm/^{\circ}C$ in the temperature range of $-25-85^{\circ}C$. Power dissipation of the converter is 60.2 mW.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.28.2-28.2
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• 2011

Resistance random access memory (ReRAM) is a promising candidate for next-generation nonvolatile memory because of its advantageous qualities such as simple structure, superior scalability, fast switching speed, low-power operation, and nondestructive readout. We investigated the resistive switching behavior of tantalum oxide that has been widely used in dynamic random access memories (DRAM) in the present semiconductor industry. As a result, it possesses full compatibility with the entrenched complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor processes. According to previous studies, TiN is a good oxygen reservoir. The TiN top electrode possesses the specific properties to control and modulate oxygen ion reproductively, which results in excellent resistive switching characteristics. This study presents fully room temperature fabricated the TiN/$TaO_x$/Pt devices and their electrical properties for nonvolatile memory application. In addition, we investigated the TiN electrode dependence of the electrical properties in $TaO_x$ memory devices. The devices exhibited a low operation voltage of 0.6 V as well as good endurance up to $10^5$ cycles. Moreover, the benefits of high devise yield multilevel storage possibility make them promising in the next generation nonvolatile memory applications.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.48 no.9
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• pp.31-39
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a signal readout system with small area and low power consumption for CNT sensor arrays. The proposed system consists of signal readout circuitry, a digital controller, and UART I/O. The key components of the signal readout circuitry are 64 transimpedance amplifiers (TIA) and SAR-ADC with 11-bit resolution. The TIA adopts an active input current mirror (AICM) for voltage biasing and current amplification of a sensor. The proposed architecture can reduce area and power without sampling rate degradation because the 64 TIAs share a variable gain amplifier (VGA) which needs large area and high power due to resistive feedback. In addition, the SAR-ADC is designed for low power with modified algorithm where the operation of the lower bits can be skipped according to an input voltage level. The operation of ADC is controlled by a digital controller based on UART protocol. The data of ADC can be monitored on a computer terminal. The signal readout circuitry was designed with 0.13${\mu}m$ CMOS technology. It occupies the area of 0.173 $mm^2$ and consumes 77.06${\mu}W$ at the conversion rate of 640 samples/s. According to measurement, the linearity error is under 5.3% in the input sensing current range of 10nA - 10${\mu}A$. The UART I/O and the digital controller were designed with 0.18${\mu}m$ CMOS technology and their area is 0.251 $mm^2$.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2011

The PHENIX Experiment is the largest of the four experiments that have taken data at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. PHENIX, the Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment, is designed specifically to measure direct probes of the collisions such as electrons, muons, and photons. The primary goal of PHENIX is to discover and study a new state of matter called the Quark-Gluon Plasma. Among many particles, muons coming from W-boson decay gives us key information to analyze the spin of proton. Resistive plate chambers are proposed as a suitable solution as a muon trigger because of their fast response and good time resolution, flexibility in signal readout, robustness and the relatively low cost of production. The RPC detectors for upgrade were assembled and their performances were evaluated. The procedure to make the detectors better was optimized and described in detail in this thesis. The code based on ROOT was written and by using this the performance of the detectors made was evaluated, and all of the modules for north muon arm met the criteria and installation at PHENIX completed in November 2009. As RPC detectors that we made showed fast response, capacity of covering wide area with a resonable price and good spatial resolution, this will give the opportunity for applications, such as diagnosis and customs inspection system.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.39C no.1
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• pp.82-89
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• 2014

Recently, inertial sensors are popularly used for the location and position recognition of small devices for M2M/IoT. In this paper, we designed low power, low noise, small sized 6-axis inertial sensor IC for mobile applications, which uses a 3-axis piezo-electric gyroscope sensor and a 3-axis piezo-resistive accelerometer sensor. Proposed IC is composed of 3-axis gyroscope readout circuit, two gyroscope sensor driving circuits, 3-axis accelerometer readout circuit, 16bit sigma-delta ADC, digital filter and control circuit and memory. TSMC $0.18{\mu}m$ mixed signal CMOS process was used. Proposed IC reduces 27% of the current consumption of LSM330.