International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Donald R Young

Donelli J DiMaria

Donald Wayne Coffland

Gary W Rubloff

Christine Mary Anderson

Zeev A Weinberg

Karl Hofmann

Hans P Wolf

Ruth L Young

Roger F DeKeersmaecker

Aaron R Ayers

David Scott Wright

A machine that vends a predetermined number of golf balls when activated by a coin or token-operated slide mechanism. A large plurality of golf balls are placed in a hopper and the balls are fed from the hopper, one at a time, into an elongate pipe that discharges into a bucket positioned in a chamber near the bottom of the machine. A motor rotates a turntable having golf ball receiving apertures formed in its outer periphery so that the balls fill each aperture as the turntable rotates. The upper end of the pipe is in the path of travel of and is in open communication with apertures formed in the turntable so that rotation of the turntable continuously fills the pipe as the apertures pass over its open end. Numerous structural features, including vibrating members, insure that the balls will not jam in the hopper and additional design features insure a jostling of the balls in the vicinity of the pipe's upper end to insure against jamming at that critical location.

Golf ball vending machine

A combination pet grooming brush and medication dispenser. A hand-holdable base member has a hollow upper chamber for the retention of liquid medication and air and has a solid lower portion having a passageway with plural branches formed therein. The passageway has a first end, confluent with the hollow chamber, that serves as a drain; the passageway splits into plural branches, each of which is confluent with a hypodermic tube. The tubes extend in parallelism with bristle members from a mounting plate releasably secured to the bottom of the base member. A rotationally mounted and axially displaceable spring-loaded valve member opens the passagway to fluid flow when properly rotated and depressed and closes the passageway when released. Air pressure provides the motive force for fluid flow and is supplied by a squeeze bulb confluent with the hollow chamber and separated therefrom by a check valve. A pressure relief valve formed in the hollow chamber ensures against over-pressurization.

Combination medication applicator and pet grooming

The insulating and stabiity characteristics of silicon dioxide gate oxide insulator for field effect transistors are enhanced by subjecting the silicon dioxide to an annealing in an ambient that contains a gaseous oxygen-containing species in an amount sufficient to provide a partial pressure from the oxygen-containing material of about 10.sup.-6 torr to about 10 torr during annealing temperatures of about 500.degree. C. to about 1200.degree. C. Such is carried out for a time sufficient to enhance the insulating and stability characteristics of the silicon dioxide insulator.

Post-oxidation anneal of silicon dioxide

A four layer charge storage structure comprising alternate layers of silicon-rich silicon dioxide and silicon dioxide with electrode layers on top and bottom. The upper and middle silicon-rich layers act as enhanced Fowler-Nordheim injectors and the middle silicon-rich layer also stores charges since the silicon particles act as deep traps. The charge storage structure is applicable to nonvolatile memories.

Charge storage structure for nonvolatile memories

Silicon dioxide insulating films for integrated circuits are provided with enhanced electronic properties, including enhanced dielectric breakdown of MOS insulating layers and reduced trapping of holes by exposing a metal oxide semiconductor wafer including an exposed silicon dioxide layer, in an ambient of flowing oxygen gas, to heating radiation from a halogen lamp for a duration on the order of 100 seconds to achieve annealing temperature on the order of 1000.degree. C. For reduced hole trapping, the ambient gas is oxygen and the annealing temperature is on the order of 1000.degree. C. for a duration on the order of 100 seconds, depending on the oxide thickness. Nitrogen, occurring at the silicon-silicon dioxide interface as a result of previous processing including a long anneal in nitrogen, increases the improvement of the silicon dioxide by the subsequent rapid thermal annealing in oxygen.

Rapid thermal annealing of silicon dioxide for reduced hole trapping

New non-volatile memory devices fabricated from graded or stepped energy band gap insulator MIM or MIS structures are described. With the graded or stepped insulator, electrons or holes can be injected from the gate electrode at low to moderate applied fields. The carriers flow under the applied field into a wide energy band gap insulator having a prescribed charge trapping layer. This layer captures and stores electrons (write operation) or holes (erase operation) with 100% efficiency.

Non-volatile memory devices fabricated from graded or stepped energy

A high field capacitor structure includes an insulating layer having a carrier trapping region between two electrodes. The trapping region improves electric breakdown characteristics of the capacitor structure and is particularly useful in avoiding the low breakdown voltages and high leakage currents normally encountered in structures with asperities, such as SiO.sub.2 over poly Si. The trapping region can be formed by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, by evaporation or by ion implantation. The trapping region is close to the Si, but far enough away to eliminate the possibility of reverse tunneling from discharging the traps in the absence of an applied voltage.

High field capacitor structure employing a carrier trapping region

A graded oxide MIM or MIS structure employs band gap grading of the insulator oxide so that holes or electrons (depending on voltage bias) can be injected into the insulator oxide under moderate electric field conditions from the contact at one interface. Electron or hole injection from the opposite interface is blocked due to the larger insulator band gap near this interface. A graded oxide metal-silicon dioxide-silicon (MGOS) semiconductor structure may be fabricated by forming several pyrolytic or CVD SiO.sub.2 layers over a relatively thick thermal SiO.sub.2 layer, with the pyrolytic SiO.sub.2 layers having sequentially increasing excess Si content. This structure may also be fabricated by controlled Si ion implantation in the thermal SiO.sub.2 layer.

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Ossining, NY, United States of America

Donald R Young