Sharif Digital Repository

Due to the high cost of the conventional silicon-based circuits, printed electronic introduced as an ultra-low-cost saving techniques which are widely used in RFID tags, displays, sensors and thin film transistors and so on. Unlike the silicon-based devices, Organic materials are used in printed electronic devices, owing to this these devices can be used on large and flexible substrates like glass and plastic. Also in the printing method, there is no demand for expensive and time-consuming processes such as lithography or sputtering. Only by an ink-jet printer or graved cylinders the different layers of a device can be deposited. Besides these advantages of printed electronics to... 

Growing transistor counts, limited power budgets, and the breakdown of voltage scaling are currently conspiring to create a utilization wall that limits the fraction of a chip that can run at full speed at one time. This concept is the basis of the Dark Silicon definition. To address this issue, it is needed a structure to guaranty Limited power budget and obtain sufficient flexibility and performance for different applications with variety communication needs. Regarding to this structure, our aim is to present a platform for Networks-on-Chip that uses clustering and resource sharing among cores. Moreover, as task mapping on processing elements in NOCs is one of the most effective way to... 

Thin film solar cells have low efficiency compared to crystalline silicon solar cells; however, they are low-cost and flexible. In manufacturing these solar cells, thin films are deposited at high temperatures (higher than 200℃) on a thick metal, plastic, or glass substrate using sputtering and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) methods. Since the thin films and substrate have different thermal expansion coefficients, cooling the system from deposition temperature to room temperature induces thermal residual stresses in both the films and substrate. In addition, these stresses, especially those induced in the amorphous silicon layer can change the carrier mobility and band gap... 

First atomistic simulation was used to study the deformation and fracture mechanisms of Ni-Si interfaces under tensile and shear loads dependent on the crystal structure of interface zone. Modified embedded atom method (MEAM) potential was utilized for molecular dynamics (MD) modeling. The simulation includes analysis of common neighbors, coordination number, least-square atomic local strain, and radial distribution function. The profound effect of interface crystallography on the tensile and shear deformation is shown. The highest tensile strength is obtained for interfaces with high plane density due to lowest atomic disorder while under shear loading planes with low density exhibit a high... 

Due to the physical limitations of the conventional 2D ICs at Giga-Scale Integration, modern technologies have been emerged. Among them, through silicon via (TSV) - based 3D ICs have been used to continue Moore’s law in the interconnect era. In these systems, dies are stacked at z-direction after wafer thinning. Electrical connections between stacked dies are done by TSVs. One important advantage of 3D integration technology is their ability to stack heterogeneous systems with different technologies on a single chip. This will not only increase interconnect density but also will reduce the delay and power consumption. However, nowadays, fabrication and optimum design of TSVs are still big... 

There are a wide variety of light-triggered switches. Photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs) have been investigated intensively for many applications owing to their unique advantages over other switches. The advantages of PCSSs make them a perfect choice for many important applications where high switching accuracy and high-power capability are required. Photoconductive switches are fabricated from a variety of semiconductors, including silicon carbide (SiC), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN). In Photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs) the switching mechanism is initiated by optical illumination and laser source controls the flow of current. In the off or... 

In Li-ion batteries, large volume changes of electrodes with high capacity, such as silicon electrodes during charging and discharging processes (insertion/extraction of lithium into/from the electrode), lead to restrictions on the use of this type of electrode. Given the very high capacity of silicon, predicting and modeling the behavior of silicon electrodes during electrochemical cycles is important and is also addressed in this thesis. First, using the theory of linear elasticity, relations are proposed that couple the diffusion of particles with small elastic deformation. The effect of hydrostatic stress on diffusion and stresses is investigated in lithiation processes. Then, the... 

Among the various materials, silicon anodes have the highest lithium absorption in lithium-ion batteries. But this high lithium absorption capacity can cause 300 percent volume expansion and large stresses. Experimental observations show that charge and discharge cycles may cause plastic deformation in some parts of the electrode particle. On the other hand, there is a possibility of a ratcheting phenomenon due to changing in elastic properties of the electrode material during the charging and discharging processes. However, this phenomenon has not been reported for silicon spherical electrode particles yet.This study aims to model the elastic-plastic behavior of silicon spherical electrode... 

Analog computing has emerged as a promising candidate for Neural networks' implementation due to its high Interconnectivity, high bandwidth, parallel computing, high-speed processing, and low power consumption. Artificial Neural Networks have a wide range of applications; however, the Implementation of complicated Neural Networks on traditional computers would encounter two fundamental obstacles: limited processing speed and non-optimal energy consumption. This thesis's primary focus is on designing and simulating a whole-passive planar Optical neural network(ONN) based on silicon photonics technology. Firstly, the concept of ONN is studied using some lately proposed work. The device is... 

Studying the interactions between gas molecules and surface is one of the important issues in the field of sensing. In nanometer scales, it can play a key role in fabricating novel nanosensors. Tunneling spectroscopy, on the other hand, is a powerful method for studying the local electrical properties of surface. Our purpose in this project is to design and construct a local tunneling spectroscope, which is able to probe the effects of adsorption of gas molecules on local density of state (LDOS) in sub-nanometer scales. The designed and constructed local tunneling spectroscope system includes a small chamber, which is isolated from any vibrations by means of a set of dampers. In the main... 

Various applications of nanostructures in electronics, optoelectronics, MEMS, photonics and plasmonic make their fabrication an interesting research topic recently. Progress in nanotechnology depends on the capability to fabricate, position and interconnect nanometer-scale structures. The development of fabrication devices with nanoscales is mainly dependent on the existence of a suitable nanolithography approach. Patterning materials with nanoscale features aimed at improving integration and device performance faced several challenges. The limitation of conventional lithography systems including resolution related issues, operational costs and lack of flexibility to pattern organic and... 

Delay of Interconnects in modern digital ICs is several times greater than delay of gates. One proper measure for this problem is to shorten interconnects length by using three dimensional structures instead of conventional two dimensional structures. In these structures TSVs (Through Silicon Vias) make connection between stratums. Power integrity in 3D ICs necessitates power distribution networks to have minimum IR drop and Ldi/dt noise. In this dissertation we design power distribution network considering IR drop and Ldi/dt noise margin. We expand a mathematical model which represents differential equation of power distribution in the surface of each stratum. Using this expanded model we... 

The use of superhydrophobic surfaces is one the most promising methods for reducing the friction and increasing the flow rate in fluid transfer systems. Since in such systems the surface structure plays a key role, in the first part of this study, the performance of the hierarchical nanostructures is explored. These nanostructures are inspired by the superhydrophobic surface of the lotus leaf. The flow is considered between two walls with hierarchical nanostructures and simulate the system via the molecular dynamics (MD) method. The size of the nanostructures and the distance between them have been studied to find whether a design with maximum flow rate exists. The nanostructures have two... 

In this research we developed a superhydrophobic and anti-wear coating on a glass substrate using SiO2 nanoparticles to form a transparent superhydrophobic thin film and SiC nanoparticles to improve the wear resistance of coating.
Silica nanoparticles were produced via a simple sol gel method from Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as precursor. Hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) and Tetramethylclourosilane (TMCS) were used as hydrophobic inducing agents and at last SiC nanoparticles were dispersed in the solution in order to provide wear resistance. The final results indicate the contact angle (CA) of water droplet on the surface was about 158° and sliding angle (SA) lower than 9°. Studying the... 

Electrochemical deposition of multilayer coatings is one of the surface engineering techniques to create thin surface layers with a controlled structure in order to create desirable surface properties. In this research, the nickel-iron-silicon carbide multilayer coating is deposited from a single bath with a sulfate composition and by changing the current density between two values (10 and 40 mA/cm2). The number of layers in multilayer coating was 4, 8, 16, 32.The effect of current density and the number of layers on chemical composition, surface morphology, phase structure, corrosion resistance, nano hardness measurement, wear resistance of multilayer coatings respectively using electron... 

We studied porous silicon as a resistive gas sensor at room temperature. Meso- and macro- porous silicon were formed by electrochemical etching of single crystal silicon wafers in different conditions. For Meso porous Si we used p+-type wafers as substrate and for macro porous Si formation n- and p-type wafers were used. The mechanism of methanol vapor sensing was studied by Scanning tunneling spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results showed that methanol increases partial oxidation of surface and causes increase of defect density. These defects play important role to trap electrons and create “acceptor surface states”. These acceptor surface states in p+-type... 

Rehabilitation usually involves physical therapy, occupational therapy and counseling for the patient's morale to help to restore his power and performance. Considering the economic outlook and the costs of rehabilitation methods and due to the increasing prevalence of stroke and the need to recover the patients in a short period, only the use of robotic systems opens the door to the medical community. Since a large rehabilitation robots designed and built and each been used according to their advantages and shortcomings. In this project, the major shortcomings examined and exoskeleton designed on two major features including portability and covering shoulder workspace. Shoulder movement was... 

Semiconductor nanocrystals act as a good luminescent layer in new coming electroluminescence devices. Research on luminescent devices based on nanocrystals such as silicon nanoparticles, has been progressed over the last decades. In this research, silicon nanoparticles have been synthesized from porous silicon layer that was created through an electrochemical process. The effective luminescent parameters like electrolyte contents, current density and reaction time have been investigated. The maximum luminescence has been captured when the current density and reaction time were adjusted at 30 and 20 min, respectively. In addition, volume ratio Ethanol:HF 14:8 was another modified... 

Currently, precision positioning plays a pivotal role in technology. The need for accurate positioning in applications such as robotics, optoelectronics and micro and nano technology increases day by day. To begin with, we wanted to make a miniature prototype of a micro actuator but in this regard, we are faced with several problems. Some major problems were the high cost of this prototype plus the fact that we did not have the necessary equipment with acceptable resolution for making such a system, so we decided to decrease the scale and build it in micro scale which is accessible for us. The main idea and design of this micro actuator is by Mrs. Akbari. During this project, the researcher... 

Humans need the five senses to understand and interact constructively with their surrounding environment; in the world of robots and intelligent systems, this is achieved using sensors. In the modern world, tactile sensors based on triboelectric effect play a prominent role in important application areas such as health monitoring, human-computer interaction, robotics, pressure mapping, and electronic signature. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are one type of energy harvesting systems that convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. In these sensors, due to the contact and touch with the triboelectric material, an electric charge is generated and induced into the electrode, then...