Consumer electronics

Summary

Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually referred to as black goods due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered black goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver. Later products incl

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics

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Accelerometers are widely used in industrial applications and consumer electronics. We can find them in automotive crash detection or fitness trackers. The majority are based on piezoresistive or capacitive effect which are limited by their large size. This negatively influences their utility in emerging applications such as Internet of Things and biomedical applications. NEMS (Nanoelectromechanical systems) are presented as a possible solution for this problem. The accelerometers used in this project are made of a suspended graphene membrane and an attached silicon proof mass. They were fabricated by KTH researchers. We study the possibility of measuring accelerations by monitoring the changes in the device resonant frequency. If proven, to the best of our knowledge, they would be the first ultra-miniaturized and sensitive resonant accelerometer. To do so, we built a functioning model of the accelerometers by combining a theoretical framework and finite element simulations. The chip was placed on a piezo-shaker and measurements were conducted using a Laser Doppler Vibrometer. To complement the study, further measures were taken with an Atomic Force Microscope and a Digital Holographic Microscope. The results show a good match between theory and simulations. However, the acceleration measurements in the device show higher signals not related with accelerations. We proved they were related to displacements and theorized that they were caused by internal chip forces. Horizontal forces on the accelerometer frame could eclipse the effect of the accelerations on the resonant frequency. We suggest the use of a more rigid chip frame as a potential solution.

2020

Crystal Phase Engineering in III-V Semiconductor Films: from Epitaxy to Devices

Philipp Staudinger

Crystal phase engineering is an exciting pathway to enhance the properties of conventional semiconductors. Metastable SiGe presents a direct band gap well suited for optical devices whereas wurtzite (WZ) phosphide alloys enable efficient light emission in the green spectral range. Availability of these materials could profoundly impact electronics as well as solid-state lighting industries. However, their synthesis in high quality and beyond nanowire size constraints remained elusive, hampering both scientific and commercial exploitation. In this thesis, we develop new approaches for metastable film growth to enable a platform for robust material characterization and device fabrication. Metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy is used to grow pure WZ nanowires and fins. To obtain planar layers, we explore two extensions of this well-known technique. The first one is based on conformal epitaxy and enables the use of standard (001)-oriented substrates. In this way, we achieve the controlled concurrent epitaxy of stable and metastable InP. We further propose a variation of this approach by using a nanowire as seed. This establishes a clear route for the synthesis of a large range of materials as is exemplarily demonstrated for WZ GaAs films. For the second technique we explore a method to enforce epitaxial lateral overgrowth on (111)A-oriented substrates. This allows to deposit pure WZ InP layers on insulator exceeding areas of 100 µm2, the largest ever demonstrated. We conceive a nucleation-based model and argue on a fundamental size limitation of metastable film epitaxy. Further advancement of this process allows to directly grow metastable micro- and nanostructures, which are optically isolated from the substrate. The high quality and shape-control of these crystals enables room-temperature lasing in WZ InP microdisks. This thesis demonstrates the successful development of new concepts to synthesize metastable semiconductors with pure crystalline phase and dimensions tailored towards planar device fabrication. We expect our findings to significantly contribute to the realization of crystal phase engineered electronic and optoelectronic devices.

EPFL2020

Hybrid continuous-discrete-time multi-bit delta-sigma A/D converters with auto-ranging algorithm

Sergio Pesenti

In wireless portable applications, a large part of the signal processing is performed in the digital domain. Digital circuits show many advantages. The power consumption and fabrication costs are low even for high levels of complexity. A well established and highly automated design flow allows one to benefit from the constant progress in CMOS technologies. Moreover, digital circuits offer robust and programmable signal processing means and need no external components. Hence, the trend in consumer electronics is to further reduce the part of analog signal processing in the receiver chain of wireless transceivers. Consequently, analog-to-digital converters with higher resolutions and bandwidths are constantly required. The ultimate goal is the direct digitization of radio frequency signals, where the conversion would be performed immediately after the front-end amplifier. ΔΣ-modulation-based converters have proved to be the most suitable to achieve the required performance. Switched-capacitor implementations have been widely used over the last two decades. However, recent publications and books have shown that continuous-time architectures can achieve the same performance with lower power consumption. Most designs found throughout the literature use a single- or few-bit internal quantizer with a high-order modulation. As a result, in order to achieve the resolutions and bandwidths required today, the sampling frequency must exceed 100MHz. This approach leads to non-negligible power consumption in the clock generation. Moreover, the presence of such fast squared signals is not suitable for a system-on-chip comprising radio frequency receivers. In this thesis we propose a low-power strategy relying on a large number of internal levels rather than on a high sampling frequency or modulation order. Besides, a hybrid continuous-discrete-time approach is used to take advantage of the accuracy of switched-capacitor circuits and the low power consumption of continuous-time implementation. The sensitivity to clock jitter brought about by the continuous-time stage is reduced by the use of a large number of levels. An auto-ranging algorithm is developed in this thesis to overcome the limitation of a large-size quantizer under low-voltage supply. Finally, the strategy is applied to a design example addressing typical specifications for a Bluetooth receiver with direct conversion.

EPFL2007