Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• Give the student an appreciation of the scientific understanding, electronic materials, processing technilogy, and the design of the transistors, displays and storage devices inside a modern personal computer.

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• Understand the concepts of electronic motion in metals and semiconductors and doping in semiconductors.
• Understand the concepts in the design of a field effect transistor.
• Understand the relationship between switching speed and dimensions in transistor design.
• Give an overview of the technology of processing materials and the impact on transistor design.
• Give an overview of lithography techniques and the impact on transistor design.
• Understand the technological implications of increased speed and reduced dimensions of transistors
• Give a vision of potential future developments where transistors have atomic scales.
• Have an appreciation of the different technologies which can be used for flat panel displays.
• Have a basic understanding of liquid crystal displays and active matrix liquid crystal displays.
• Have a basic understanding of how a magnetic storage hard disk drive works, and materials used.

Content

Ubiquity of Semiconductor Devices (1L)

Semiconductor devices are hugely common in modern life,in cell-phones,computers,TVs,solar cells, lighting (light emitting diodes). How do they work inside?

Electronic devices in computers - Switches, logic, storage, DRAM, SRAM, idea of Moore's law

What is a Semiconductor (1L)

• Bonding in metals and semiconductors. Band gaps. Perodic table, Doping.
• The electron as a particle, a pin-ball model for conduction. Mobility, saturated velocity. Worked examples.

The MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) (4L)

• Operating concepts of MOSFETs. Transit time. Switching speed. Gate control.
• MESFETs vs MOSFETs. Why Si not GaAs.
• Elementary discussion of Scaling and Moore's law.

Technological Challenges (5L)

• Material preparation, lithography - comparison of U.V., electron beam, X-ray.
• Oxidation of silicon
• Etching - wet and dry processes.
• Doping - diffusion, ion implantation, reduction/process limits, metallisation.
• Worked examples.

Magnetic storage technology (1L)

• Elementary principles of magnetic storage - BH loops, bits, writing, reading.
• The mechanical design of a modern hard disk drive.
• The material in a disk and read head.

Displays (3L)

• Display technologies - electricity into light.
• What are Liquid crystals.
• Active matrix liquid crystal displays.

Towards the Future (1L)

• How device dimensions and voltages reduce to give even smaller and faster transistors, towards and atomic scale.

This syllabus contributes to the following areas of the UK-SPEC standard:

Toggle display of UK-SPEC areas.

 
Last modified: 21/05/2018 07:48

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• Give the student an appreciation of the scientific understanding, electronic materials, processing technilogy, and the design of the transistors, displays and storage devices inside a modern personal computer.

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• Understand the concepts of electronic motion in metals and semiconductors and doping in semiconductors.
• Understand the concepts in the design of a field effect transistor.
• Understand the relationship between switching speed and dimensions in transistor design.
• Give an overview of the technology of processing materials and the impact on transistor design.
• Give an overview of lithography techniques and the impact on transistor design.
• Understand the technological implications of increased speed and reduced dimensions of transistors
• Give a vision of potential future developments where transistors have atomic scales.
• Have an appreciation of the different technologies which can be used for flat panel displays.
• Have a basic understanding of liquid crystal displays and active matrix liquid crystal displays.
• Have a basic understanding of how a magnetic storage hard disk drive works, and materials used.

Content

Ubiquity of Semiconductor Devices (1L)

Semiconductor devices are hugely common in modern life,in cell-phones,computers,TVs,solar cells, lighting (light emitting diodes). How do they work inside?

Electronic devices in computers - Switches, logic, storage, DRAM, SRAM, idea of Moore's law

What is a Semiconductor (1L)

• Bonding in metals and semiconductors. Band gaps. Perodic table, Doping.
• The electron as a particle, a pin-ball model for conduction. Mobility, saturated velocity. Worked examples.

The MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) (4L)

• Operating concepts of MOSFETs. Transit time. Switching speed. Gate control.
• MESFETs vs MOSFETs. Why Si not GaAs.
• Elementary discussion of Scaling and Moore's law.

Displays (3L)

• Display technologies - electricity into light.
• What are Liquid crystals.
• Active matrix liquid crystal displays.

Fabricating Devices (4L)

• Production of silicon and related materials
• Metallisation
• Patterning
• Etching

Magnetic storage technology (1L)

• Elementary principles of magnetic storage - BH loops, bits, writing, reading.
• The mechanical design of a modern hard disk drive.
• The material in a disk and read head.

Towards the Future (1L)

• How MOSFET device dimensions and voltages reduce to give even smaller and faster transistors, towards an atomic scale with  gate-all-around geometries.
• Memristors as new devices for emerging neuromorphic computing.

This syllabus contributes to the following areas of the UK-SPEC standard:

Toggle display of UK-SPEC areas.

 
Last modified: 24/05/2022 14:09

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• To teach students about image processing within the context of photo editing software and image search engines (such as Image Google).

Content

There will be quite as strong emphasis on statistical techniques (histograms) and spatial domain filtering methods which will follow on naturally from the material in paper 6 and 7.

A: Photo Editing - Lectures 1-5 (J. Lasenby)

Part A of the course will discuss basic digital image handling techniques and will cover the following topics:

• Cropping, resizing, rotation and morphing - involving basic ideas of interpolation and filtering for shifting/resampling purposes.
• Colour - conversion between different colour spaces (e.g. RGB, YUV and HSV) and adjustment for colour lighting effects such as colour-cast correction and white balancing.
• Histograms - their use in analysis and correction of lighting intensity problems, such as over/under exposure and shadows.
• Segmentation - for purposes such as red-eye correction and independent contrast correction in areas of shadows, mid-tones and highlights.
• Correcting focus problems - sharpening (debluring) filters and problems of noise amplification.
• Correcting noise problems - smoothing filters, problems of blurring, and the use of spatially adaptive filters to optimise sharpening and denoising tradeoffs.
• These will be illustrated with the development of Matlab solutions to a range of common photo editing functions such as found in widely used packages like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Digital Image Suite.

NB: All filters will be based on separable 1D Gaussian lowpass filters, with combinations of these to produce bandpass and highpass filters. These can be analysed in the spatial domain, so the 2D Fourier and Z transforms will not be taught.

B: Image Features and Matching - Lecturers 6-10 (R. Cipolla)

Part B will include material on feature and texture descriptors and efficient shift-invariant and rotation-invariant matching techniques using these descriptors. It will cover the following topics:

• Convolution with gaussians and derivatives of gaussians to provide directional bandpass filters.
• Edge detection using directional filters.
• Interest point detection using edge measurement and image autocorrelation measurement.
• Texture descriptors, based on filters or on principle components analysis (PCA) of images
• The SIFT feature descriptor for matching image features
• A case study of a real-time industrial system to match a photograph from a mobile phone to images in a database, and applications of such systems

C: Image Searching and Modelling Using Machine Learning - Lecturers 11-14 (R. Cipolla and M. Johnson)

Part C of the course will focus on the application of modern pattern recognition and statistical machine learning methods applied to image retrieval and related problems. Although all examples will focus on applications to images, the ideas are generally applicable to other domains. We will cover the following topics:

• Representing images as feature vectors
• Image classification using nearest neighbours
• Introduction to Deep Learning: Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)
• Network architectures (number of layers, non-linear elements, pooling) and estimation of parameters (training under supervised learning) using back-propagation and stochastic gradient descent.
• A case study of a state-of-the-art image classification and retrieval system.

This syllabus contributes to the following areas of the UK-SPEC standard:

Toggle display of UK-SPEC areas.

 
Last modified: 31/05/2017 10:02

Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• Act as a shop window for the techniques and technologies of civil engineering seen as a practical and scientific discipline.
• Create interest in the design and construction of underground facilities, with illustrations from recent schemes, and in so doing highlight the role of the professional.
• Introduce the materials of underground construction: soil, and reinforced concrete.
• Introduce the principles of soil mechanics, and to demonstrate their application to the design of structures underground.

Objectives

As specific objectives, by the end of the course students should be able to:

• Select a method of underground construction which will be appropriate to some specified set of ground conditions.
• Relate soil voids ratio to its bulk density, and calculate vertical stresses.
• Interpret tests to determine the strength of soils, so as to obtain appropriate "undrained" (single-phase) or "drained" (dual-phase) parameters.
• Use Mohr circles of stress to calculate the possible bounds to the lateral earth pressure: "active" (minimal) and "passive" (maximal).
• Use active and passive pressures to dimension satisfactory earth retaining walls, and calculate shear forces and bending moments.
• Calculate the design flexural strength of reinforced concrete sections, using appropriate material properties.
• Outline the internal stress-distribution in reinforced concrete walls, and make proposals for shear reinforcement.
• Discuss the detailing of reinforced concrete retaining walls constructed in various ways.
• Discuss the factors influencing design and construction of bored tunnels in urban areas.
• Illustrate the handling of uncertainty and risk in construction underground.

Content

Granular Materials (3L)

References: (1) 1-26, 63-79, 93-96; (2) 1-30, 46-64, 165-170

• 1.1. Geology, rock, soil
• 1.2. Pores & water, density, geostatic stresses
• 1.3. Effective stress and pore water pressure
• 1.4. Strength in shear and compression
• 1.5. Effective internal friction, dilatancy, critical state
• 1.6. Tests for the shear strength of soils: shear box, triaxal

Earth Pressures (3L)

References: (1) 272-284, 295-307; (2) 243-250

• 2.1. Earth pressure and thrust on retaining walls
• 2.2. Coulomb's kinematical method using wedge mechanisms
• 2.3. Rankine's statical method using Mohr's circles of stress
• 2.4. Active and passive limits to possible earth pressures
• 2.5. The influence of water in sands and clays
• 2.6. Drained and undrained soil behaviour

Geotechnical Design of Underground Space (3L)

References (1) 357-376, 409-430; (2) 233-242, 269-271, 341-375

• 3.1. Site investigation and ground characterisation
• 3.2. Permissible soil strength, design earth pressures
• 3.3. Designing a retaining wall: stability and equilibrium, factors of safety
• 3.4. Cut and cover, and top-down construction of reinforced concrete, case histories.
• 3.5. Tunnelling: design and construction
• 3.6. Tunnelling: stability, ground movements, case histories.

Reinforced Concrete (3L)

References: (3) 1-2, 18-28, 85-119

• 4.1. Simple theory for the bending of a concrete beam
• 4.2. Shear force and bending moment distribution in walls.
• 4.3. Longitudinal and shear reinforcement
• 4.4. Design, detailing and construction of reinforced concrete
• 4.5. Analysis and design of underground structures

Design and Construction of Underground Space (2L)

REFERENCES

1) BOLTON, M. GUIDE TO SOIL MECHANICS
(2) POWRIE, W. SOIL MECHANICS - CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS
(3) KONG, F.K. & EVANS, R.H. REINFORCED AND PRE-STRESSED CONCRETE

This syllabus contributes to the following areas of the UK-SPEC standard:

Toggle display of UK-SPEC areas.

 
Last modified: 16/05/2019 12:33