This book discusses reliability applications for power systems, renewable energy and smart grids and highlights trends in reliable communication, fault-tolerant systems, VLSI system design and embedded systems. Further, it includes chapters on software reliability and other computer engineering and software management-related disciplines, and also examines areas such as big data analytics and ubiquitous computing. Outlining novel, innovative concepts in applied areas of reliability in electrical, electronics and computer engineering disciplines, it is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners of reliability theory in circuit-based engineering domains.

Polycrystalline Silicon for Integrated Circuits and Displays, Second Edition presents much of the available knowledge about polysilicon. It represents an effort to interrelate the deposition, properties, and applications of polysilicon. By properly understanding the properties of polycrystalline silicon and their relation to the deposition conditions, polysilicon can be designed to ensure optimum device and integrated-circuit performance. Polycrystalline silicon has played an important role in integrated-circuit technology for two decades. It was first used in self-aligned, silicon-gate, MOS ICs to reduce capacitance and improve circuit speed. In addition to this dominant use, polysilicon is now also included in virtually all modern bipolar ICs, where it improves the basic physics of device operation. The compatibility of polycrystalline silicon with subsequent high-temperature processing allows its efficient integration into advanced IC processes. This compatibility also permits polysilicon to be used early in the fabrication process for trench isolation and dynamic random-access-memory (DRAM) storage capacitors. In addition to its integrated-circuit applications, polysilicon is becoming vital as the active layer in the channel of thin-film transistors in place of amorphous silicon. When polysilicon thin-film transistors are used in advanced active-matrix displays, the peripheral circuitry can be integrated into the same substrate as the pixel transistors. Recently, polysilicon has been used in the emerging field of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), especially for microsensors and microactuators. In these devices, the mechanical properties, especially the stress in the polysilicon film, are critical to successful device fabrication. Polycrystalline Silicon for Integrated Circuits and Displays, Second Edition is an invaluable reference for professionals and technicians working with polycrystalline silicon in the integrated circuit and display industries.

This Springer Handbook comprehensively covers the topic of semiconductor devices, embracing all aspects from theoretical background to fabrication, modeling, and applications. Nearly 100 leading scientists from industry and academia were selected to write the handbook's chapters, which were conceived for professionals and practitioners, material scientists, physicists and electrical engineers working at universities, industrial R&D, and manufacturers. Starting from the description of the relevant technological aspects and fabrication steps, the handbook proceeds with a section fully devoted to the main conventional semiconductor devices like, e.g., bipolar transistors and MOS capacitors and transistors, used in the production of the standard integrated circuits, and the corresponding physical models. In the subsequent chapters, the scaling issues of the semiconductor-device technology are addressed, followed by the description of novel concept-based semiconductor devices. The last section illustrates the numerical simulation methods ranging from the fabrication processes to the device performances. Each chapter is self-contained, and refers to related topics treated in other chapters when necessary, so that the reader interested in a specific subject can easily identify a personal reading path through the vast contents of the handbook.