Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

The Water Initative, LLC

Carl V Thompson

Henry Ignatius Smith

Eugene A Fitzgerald

Harry A Atwater

Thomas A Langdo

Ya-Hong Xie

Michael W Geis

Abdelkrim Tatah

Richard Renjilian

Tongjai Chookajorn

Water purification system comprising filtration media sized with respect to each other to allow a first contaminant in the water to saturate the first medium with a delay prior to saturation of the second medium with a second contaminant.

Water purification and enhancement systems

Embodiments of an on-chip interconnect having a multilevel reservoir are provided. In general, the on-chip interconnect is an interconnect within an integrated circuit and includes an interconnect segment and a multilevel reservoir. The interconnect segment has an anode end and a cathode end. The multilevel reservoir is adjacent to the cathode end of the interconnect segment and operates as a reservoir of metal atoms. As such, any electromigration-induced void begins forming in the multilevel reservoir rather than the cathode end of the interconnect segment. As a result, a reliability of the on-chip interconnect is substantially improved as compared to that of traditional on-chip interconnects. In addition, by utilizing multiple levels of the integrated circuit, a volume of the multilevel reservoir is substantially increased as compared to a volume of a corresponding single-level reservoir.

Multilevel reservoirs for integrated circuit interconnects

A method for simultaneously annealing a metal or dielectric line and cleaning metal debris deposited in the vicinity of the line by generating an ultraviolet laser beam, focusing the ultraviolet laser beam onto the line, and exposing the line to the ultraviolet laser beam for a period of time sufficient to melt and reflow the line and evaporate small particles of debris. The method may also be used to repair metal or dielectric lines. Laser ablation forward metal deposition may be used in combination with the UV laser annealing method in order to perform the repair.

UV laser annealing and cleaning of deposited metal and dielectric lines

A template having a surface relief structure contacts a thin crystalline film on a substrate to align the film in accordance with the surface relief structure.

Epitaxy with reusable template

A substrate is coated with a film to be recrystallized. A pattern of crystallization barriers is created in the film, for example, by etching voids in the film. An encapsulation layer is generally applied to protect the film, fill the voids and otherwise enhance a recrystallization process. Recrystallization is carried out such that certain orientations pass preferentially through the barrier, generally as a result of growth-velocity anisotropy. The result is a film of a specific predetermined crystallographic orientation, a range of orientations or a set of discrete orientations.

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Acton, MA, United States of America

Carl V Thompson