The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 19, 2006
Filed:
Dec. 23, 2002
Ruth Elizabeth Harper, Rowstock, GB;
Ruth Elizabeth Harper, Rowstock, GB;
Plasma Antennas Ltd, Yarnton, GB;
Abstract
A solid state electronically steerable antenna can be generated from a sheet of semiconductor material by forming a pattern of localised plasma regions in the sheet, either by injecting carriers into, or by generating carriers in, those localised regions. A suitable solid state plasma antenna can be made from a silicon wafer () by first thermally oxidising the surfaces and subjecting the wafer () to a high temperature stabilisation process to improve the stoichiometry at the silicon/silica interface, and optionally also performing a low-temperature bake in a gas mixture including hydrogen. This produces a wafer () with a long minority carrier lifetime. Regions of the wafer () in which plasma may be generated are then defined by reticulation to form isolated regions with high minority carrier lifetime. The resulting discrete regions may be of a size less than 1 mm, for example 0.3 mm.