Abstract: This disclosure describes a work site utility carrier that configures as a dolly or hand truck in its retracted mode and a work bench in its elevated mode. Pivoting arm pairs enable the carrier's lower and upper receptacles to be transitioned between modes. Two “wheelbarrow” handles are pivotally attached at the lower outer end of the upper receptacle. When oriented at right angles to the upper receptacle bottom, the handles lessen the effort needed to maneuver the carrier. In a “semi-inclined” position the carrier rests in part on the handle outer ends, with much of the mass of the upper receptacle already elevated. Full elevation is facilitated by moving the lower receptacle toward the handle outer ends which act as brakes to keep the carrier stationary during the elevation.

Abstract: This disclosure describes a low particle concentration formulation for slurry which is particularly useful in continuous CMP polishing of copper layers during semiconductor wafer manufacture. The slurry is characterized by particle concentrations generally less than 2 wt %, and advantageously less than 1 wt %. In particular embodiments, where the particle concentration is in a range of 50 to 450 PPM, an 8-fold increase in polishing rate over reactive liquid slurries has been realized. Slurries thus formulated also achieve a reduction in defectivity and in the variations in planarity from wafer to wafer during manufacture, by improving the stability of polishing quality. The slurry formulations permit substantial cost savings over traditional 2-component, reactive liquid and fixed/bonded abrasive slurries. In addition the formulations provides an advantageous way during CMP to easily change the selectivity or rate of removal of one film material vs. another.

Abstract: This disclosure describes a work site utility carrier that configures into a dolly and hand truck in its retracted mode and a work bench in its elevated mode. A lower receptacle formed as part of a chassis with wheels, and an upper receptacle are pivotally connected by a unique positioning apparatus. In a retracted position the two receptacles lie side-by-side with their top surfaces essentially planar. In this mode, the carrier serves as a dolly or a hand truck. In the elevated mode the second receptacle pivots up to station securely above the chassis, The top of the second receptacle becomes a work bench. The receptacles may comprise tool boxes. One or both tool boxes may include tool drawers. Unique latching mechanisms positively secure the carrier in either mode. The latching in an elevated mode is aided by the weight of the upper receptacle.

Abstract: In the fabrication of semiconductor devices using the PECVD process to deposit hardmask material such as amorphous carbon, structure and process are described for reducing migration of species from the amorphous carbon which can damage an overlying photoresist. In one embodiment useful to 248 nm and 193 nm photolithography exposure wavelengths, amorphous carbon is plasma-deposited on a substrate to pre-defined thickness and pre-defined optical properties. A SiON layer is combined with a silicon-rich oxide layer, a silicon-rich nitride layer or a TEOS layer to create a capping layer resistant to species-migration. Layers are formulated to pre-determined thicknesses, refractive indices and extinction coefficients. The capping stacks constitute an effective etch mask for the amorphous carbon; and the hardmask properties of the amorphous carbon are not compromised. The disclosure has immediate application to fabricating polysilicon gates.

Abstract: This disclosure describes an electric light strand mounting device for simplifying the installation and removal of light strands from, for example, a holiday tree. The device consists of a light strand receiver and an associated base that rests on a floor or horizontal surface. Indents are provided on the receiver for preventing downward slippage of mounted strands. The receiver is rotatable around a vertical axis; and simultaneously, the base is moveable in any horizontal direction. Both movements are provided in one version, by a unitary base-receiver structure resting on base castors. In another version the receiver is rotatable with respect to a slidable base; but receiver and base are permanently attached to one another. In a third, version, a slidable base and its receiver are mutually rotatable, but are readily detachable from each other by a simple lifting motion. In all versions light strands are installed by feeding one strand at a time onto the receiver as it is rotated.

Abstract: In a feature layer of a semiconductor wafer, dummy tiles which overcome the tendency of dishing and erosion to occur during a CMP process are placed with various sizes and in various positions. An isolation zone is provided around active features. A scanning process of the feature layout surveys oxide density and nitride density over the wafer layer outside of said isolation zone. Values of the ratios of oxide/nitride density for two or more length scales which define tiling zones, are calculated. Tile placement and sizing in the zones is dependent upon the oxide/nitride density ratio values; and further upon an oxide deposition model specific to the oxide used in the fabrication process and upon a polishing model of the CMP process being employed.

Abstract: This disclosure describes use of dielectric islands embedded in metallized regions of a semiconductor device. The islands are formed in a cavity of a dielectric layer, as upright pillars attached at their base to an underlying dielectric. The islands break up the metal-dielectric interface and thus resist delamination of metal at this interface. The top of each island pillar is recessed from the cavity entrance by a selected vertical distance. This distance may be varied within certain ranges, to place the island tops in optimal positions below the top surface plane of the dielectric. Metallization introduced into the cavity containing the islands, submerges the island tops to at least a minimum distance to provide a needed minimum thickness of continuous metal. The continuous metal surface serves favorably as a last metal layer for attaching solder or for bump-bonding package to the IC; and also serves as an intermediate test or probe pad in an interior layer.

Abstract: Data compression achieved by set partitioning of hierarchical trees is made more efficient by a family of related traversal schemes which act upon the tree structure and the significance values derived from the tree structure. The tree structure may be traversed in any of a number of sequences. In accordance with significance tests applied to the node data, bits are produced or not. The order in which the bits are produced may be freely chosen. Trees are traversed and bits are emitted which describe the relative magnitude of coefficients in the sub-trees of the current tree-node. The manner of traversal can either be known to the remote decoder or can be derived from the incoming data stream. The encoding scheme typically specifies all bits emitted by a given node v as a function of the traversal of its parents, the bit-plane b, the coefficient value c of v, the significances B1(v) and B2(v), and whether the parent node p still emits B2(p).

Abstract: Disclosed is a scheme for creating, manipulating and transmitting images of a 3-D object through networks. A useful layering coupled with vector quantization allows an efficient combination of compressing and encoding of both the topology (connectivity) and geometry (vertex coordinates) of polygon meshes such as triangles. Connectivity information is contained in both generalized triangle strips and exception strips, the latter characterized by triangles for which all three vertices lie in the parent vertex layer. Geometry encoding is achieved with a productive vector quantization scheme which uses correction vectors for which distortion is merged into a following correction vector. Progressive connectivity transmission is achieved by using both intra-layer and inter-layer decomposition and reconstruction. The process encodes connectivity and geometry separately. Encoding of 3-D objects having left-right mirror symmetries using the process is described.

Abstract: This disclosure describes the use in telecommunications of a data processing technique for accelerating the calculation of data points in volume image rendering using volume ray casting, to create 3-dimensional data sets of network operational characteristics. Following basic data collection from a telecommunications network, for example, the 3-D discrete wavelet transform of the volume ray casting is performed on the data volume. Then, an "index" volume is pre-computed with the same resolution as the original data volume, and is the basis for setting the sampling rate (distance) at each voxel. The spatial-frequency locality of the wavelet coefficients is utilized to detect the maximum local frequency. From the latter, the appropriate sampling distance is chosen. The index volume information is applied to perform adaptive-sampling ray casting computations in the spatial domain. The volume rendering therefore can be approximated in a fast but controlled process.

Abstract: Computer programs such as word processing, spreadsheet and electronic mail are run from a remote telecommunications terminal, without benefit of any user interaction with a screen display, by software associated with the computer that translates a combination of remotely-generated tone and voice signals to executable application program commands. The communication protocols use a conversant system's query-response sequences to call up an application and to run selected portions of the program. Pre-recorded voiceprints of a particular user's voice commands and utterances required to operate the software are stored at the computer; and compared during usage to the actual utterances. Insufficient matches result in suspension or termination of access.

Abstract: A telecommunications network service overcomes the annoying effects of transmitted noise by a signal processing which filters out the noise using interactive estimations of a linear predictive coding speech model. The speech model filter uses an accurate updated estimate of the current noise power spectral density, based upon incoming signal frame samples which are determined by a voice activity detector to be noise-only frames. A novel method of calculating the incoming signal using the linear predictive coding model provides for making intraframe iterations of the present frame based upon a selected number of recent past frames and up to two future frames. The processing is effective notwithstanding that the noise signal is not ascertainable from its source.

Abstract: Noise reducing circuits for electronic receiving instruments, such as telephone receivers in headsets or handsets that are used in noisy locations, provide compensation of the set's receiver unit-to-error microphone transfer function to enhance the noise reduction. Further circuits provide pre-conditioning of the incoming voice signal to make the noise cancellation more effective. The tendency of these noise cancelling circuits to oscillate is substantially lessened by added circuitry which rapidly detects onset of oscillation and momentarily reduces the noise cancellation without interrupting the incoming speech path altogether.

Abstract: A passive fiber optic repeater bypass is provided which brings fault tolerance to repeatered fiber optic transmission systems. A fiber optic bypass provides an alternate signal path around failed repeaters. The bypass optical attenuation is set to ensure the bypass signal is sufficiently small so as not to interfere with the locally regenerated and transmitted signal, but sufficiently large to be received at the next repeater. In the event of a repeater failure, a repeater monitor disables the local laser transmitter allowing the bypass signal to be received at the next repeater.