A recently developed PZT sol-gel deposition machine for minimal fab is employed to form a PZT film with various temperature ramping rates. The machine is equipped with a spin coating unit for a PZT sol-gel solution and laser heating unit which is newly applied to use as a rapid thermal annealing (RTA) for a device manufacturing process on a half-inch wafer. The thin film formation can be repeated for many times without terminating the process. The laser heating system can control the ramping rate of the heating in a wide range. In this work, we introduce for the first time detailed analyses of the PZT film annealed using laser heating method. Annealing with a high ramping rate of 60°C/sec in a crystallization process, a PZT (100) film is formed on the Si wafer. In contrast, with a low ramping rate of 1.7°C/sec, a PZT (111) film is formed. The PZT (100) and (111) films are analyzed using X-ray diffraction and Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy.

We have developed an inductively-coupled plasma-reactive ion etching system (ICP-RIE) in a human-size machine of minimal fab for processing a half-inch wafer. The etching system has performed a Bosch etching process with a short switching cycle in a tiny chamber with a volume of 1/4ℓ. For the tiny chamber, a plasma density generated by typical radio frequency of 13.56 MHz is too low according to the small space of the chamber. Thus, a higher frequency of 100 MHz is employed for a high density plasma operation although the power consumed is only ~40W. The Si etching rate of the Bosch process is ~2.5µm/min. Moreover, owing to a fast residence time of ~0.2 second, deposition gas (C₄F₈) and etching gas (SF₆) are exchanged rapidly, which makes a Bosch cycle time of only 2 seconds. The resultant etching sidewall of Si structure becomes a scallop-less straight wall.

Constant monitoring and detailed examination of microbial metabolism have been required for advanced quality control in bioindustry. Although microbial evaluation using dielectrophoresis (DEP) should be an attractive scheme, the relationship with metabolism has not been understood well. In this paper, the membrane states and metabolic change of injured Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) with heat treatment were investigated using DEP velocimetry in a micro cell. As a result, the treatment time at low temperature and afterheat stress sensitively influenced DEP velocity of S. cerevisiae. The fluorescent observation of stained S. cerevisiae indicated DEP velocity has a correlation with the transmembrane state and growth activity. These results suggest that DEP velocimetry would be available for rapid and simple metabolic evaluation.

In this paper, we discuss electroplating method to deposit platinum catalyst called platinum black on the both-side of sensors on a quartz wafer to improve sensitivity of hydrogen sensors using quartz resonators. By increasing current density until the limiting current density, the platinum black films were deposited on the electrodes of sensors in a stable. Under the constant current condition, controllability of film thickness of platinum black by time was confirmed. As a result of comparison to the sputtered platinum thin film catalyst, the platinum black catalyst showed higher catalytic activity.

This paper reports part of a novel packaging method for a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) based ultrasonic endoscope using low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) side via architecture. An annular ring array CMUT device is designed and fabricated for packaging. LTCC is used as a prime wafer for CMUT fabrication and LTCC side via structure is achieved by hexagonal shape dicing of the fabricated CMUT device. A hexagonal shaped polyimide substrate mounted at the backside of the CMUT is used as a base layer for IC integration (flip-chip bonding) and also provides mechanical support to the CMUT. Cr/Au electrodes were patterned on the LTCC side via and polyimide substrate to achieve electrical connection between CMUT arrays and IC circuits. Au bonding pads were successfully completed on the polyimide substrate by electroplating for flip-chip bonding. Flip-chip mounting on the polyimide substrate is described and the electrical resistance of bumps is measured using the 4-probe method. The difference between the measured and calculated resistance is discussed. This method with the indirect connection of CMUT arrays and IC circuits has flexibility for high performance tube-shaped CMUT packaging with small diameters for intravascular imaging.

This paper proposes a method to reconstruct smoke by estimating its spatial density. In this method, light field cameras are employed to estimate an initial spatial density by generating refocused images. First, an initial spatial density is determined using the minimum density value in the estimated space of each light field camera. The initial spatial density includes a spatial blur caused by the aperture of the light field cameras. The spatial density is reconstructed by removing the spatial blur using a blur model. We have previously proposed the fundamental model for the method. However, the previous model had two problems. The first problem was that the model did not consider directivity of light scattering. The second was that the model assumed that the blur spread uniformly. Furthermore, the previously conducted actual experiment was only evaluated visually, which was insufficient. In this paper, we propose a method that can resolve these problems. Our method is numerically evaluated by an actual experiment. Our experimental results show that smoke and fog can be reconstructed using two light field cameras.