56 results about "Device degradation" patented technology

Degradation of a battery is prevented or the degree of the degradation is reduced, and charge and discharge performance of the battery is maximized and maintained for a long time. A reaction product, which is formed on an electrode surface and causes various malfunctions and degradation of a battery such as a lithium-ion secondary battery, is dissolved by application of electrical stimulus, specifically, by applying a signal to supply a current reverse to a current with which the reaction product is formed (reverse pulse current).

A technique is provided that allows the formation of contact etch stop layers having different intrinsic stress for different transistors, while substantially avoiding any device degradation owing to the partial removal of the contact etch stop layer. Hereby, an additional thin etch stop layer is provided prior to the formation of the contact etch stop layers, thereby substantially maintaining the integrity of metal silicide regions, when a portion of an initially deposited contact etch stop layer is removed.

The present invention is directed to a number of improvements in methods for reliability simulations in aged circuits whose operation has been degraded through hot-carrier or other effects. A plurality of different circuit stress times can be simulated within a single run. Different aging criteria may be used for different circuit blocks, circuit block types, devices, device models and device types. The user may specify the degradation of selected circuit blocks, circuit block types, devices, device models and device types independently of the simulation. Device degradation can be characterized in tables. Continuous degradation levels can be quantized. Techniques are also described for representing the aged device in the netlist as the fresh device augmented with a plurality of independent current sources connected between its terminals to mimic the effects of aging in the device. The use of device model cards with age parameters is also described. To further improve the circuit reliability simulation, a gradual or multi-step aging is used instead of the standard one step aging process. Many of these features can be embedded within the circuit simulator. A user data interface is also presented to implement these techniques and further allow users to enter their device models not presented in the simulator. For example, a proprietary model of, say, the substrate current in an NMOS could used be with a SPICE simulator employing a different model to simulate the aging of the circuit.

A method is provided for monitoring an emission device coupled to an engine. In one example approach, the method comprises: following a deceleration fuel shut-off duration, indicating degradation of the emission device based on an amount of rich products required to cause a sensor to become richer than a threshold. The amount of rich products required may be correlated to an amount of oxygen stored in the emission device. The indication of emission device degradation may be further based on air mass and temperature during delivery of the required rich products.

An Impact Ionization Field-Effect Transistor (I-MOS) device in which device degradation caused by hot carrier injection into a gate oxide is prevented. The device includes source, drain, and gate contacts, and a channel between the source and the drain. The channel has a dimension normal to the direction of a charge carrier transport in the channel such that the energy separation of the first two sub-bands equals or exceeds the effective energy band gap of the channel material.

The present invention is directed to a number of improvements in methods for hot-carrier device degradation modeling and extraction. Several improvements are presented for the improvement of building device degradation models, including allowing the user to select a device parameter used to build the device degradation model independent of the device parameter selected. The user can also select the functional relation between stress time and degradation level. To further improve accuracy, multiple acceleration parameters can be used to account for different regions of the degradation process. Analytical functions may be used to represent aged device model parameters, either directly or by fitting measured device parameters versus device age values, allowing devices with different age values to share the same device model. The concept of binning is extended to include device degradation. In addition to a binning based on device width and length, age is added. In an exemplary embodiment, only devices with minimum channel length have degraded models constructed. The present invention also allows the degradation of one device parameter to be determined based on an age value derived from another parameter. In yet another aspect, a degraded device is modeled as a fresh device with a voltage source connected to a terminal.

Apparatuses, systems, and methods are disclosed for implementing a cache policy. A method may include determining a risk of data loss on a cache device. The cache device may comprise a non-volatile storage device configured to perform cache functions for a backing store. The cache device may implement a cache policy. A method may include determining that a risk of data loss on the cache devices exceeds a threshold risk level. A method may include implementing a modified cache policy for the cache device in response to the risk of data loss exceeding the threshold risk level. The modified cache policy may reduce the risk of data loss below the threshold level.

A method and apparatus for determining the cause of degradation in a product or device. A reference time is established and recorded, then a process or function of the device or product is enabled. As anomalous events occur, a user actuates an actuator that causes the recordation of an event time with respect to the reference time. Events may be repetitive or non-repetitive. At completion of the function, the recorded times are compared to a table of known product or device cycle function times, and a correlation is made to determine the most likely cycle function related to the events recorded. This information can then be correlated to parts previously known to operate at such times thereby providing a diagnostic tool useful in maintenance or repair of the device or product.

An apparatus operable with a host and a data storage component for detecting a storage device susceptible to failure under I / O workload is provided. The apparatus includes a selector component for selecting a pair of storage devices in the data storage component. A data migration control component is provided for initiating migration of data from a first to a second storage device of the pair of storage devices. An I / O workload mirroring component is provided for mirroring an I / O workload from a first of the pair of storage devices to a second of the pair of storage devices. A storage device failure detecting component for detecting failure of one of the pair of storage devices is also included. The selector component further comprises a timer component for periodically initiating the selecting.

A method is provided for monitoring an emission device coupled to an engine. In one example approach, the method comprises: following a deceleration fuel shut-off duration, indicating degradation of the emission device based on an amount of rich products required to cause a sensor to become richer than a threshold. The amount of rich products required may be correlated to an amount of oxygen stored in the emission device. The indication of emission device degradation may be further based on air mass and temperature during delivery of the required rich products.

The device degradation of integrated circuits may be compensated for by appropriately adapting the duty cycle of the clock signal. For this purpose, a correlation between the duty cycle and the overall performance characteristics of the integrated circuit may be established and may be used during the normal field operation of the device in order to modify the duty cycle. Hence, an efficient control strategy may be implemented since the duty cycle may be efficiently controlled, while at the same time a change of clock signal frequency and / or an increase of supply voltage may not be required.

The device degradation of integrated circuits may be compensated for by appropriately adapting the duty cycle of the clock signal. For this purpose, a correlation between the duty cycle and the overall performance characteristics of the integrated circuit may be established and may be used during the normal field operation of the device in order to modify the duty cycle. Hence, an efficient control strategy may be implemented since the duty cycle may be efficiently controlled, while at the same time a change of clock signal frequency and / or an increase of supply voltage may not be required.

A knowledge-based driver is provided for powering a solid-state light source with a constant current, including a memory that stores lumens per amp and volts per amp performance characterizations of the light source over time, and a controller that operates in a test mode to estimate the light source degradation based on voltage feedback obtained at a predetermined test current value, and to adjust the drive current in normal operating mode according to the estimated device degradation to implement constant lumens control without external optical feedback components.

Systems and methods of estimating and managing storage device degradation are disclosed. Degradation of the data storage device is estimated during which a degradation rate and a probability of failure of the data storage device are determined. When the probability is greater than a given threshold, a corrupted sector of the data storage device is identified by scanning a surface of the data storage device. Based on the analysis of at least metadata of the data, a value level (i.e., the value of the protected data to the user) is determined for at least the data in the sector near the corrupted sector to determine that the data may be lost, and a copy is established based on the value level of the data and the degradation rate of the data storage device.