Silicon on insulator thermodiode with extremely wide working temperature range

This paper presents for the first time the performance of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) p-n thermodiode, which can operate in an extremely wide temperature range of 200°C to 700°C while maintaining its linearity. The thermodiode is embedded in a thin dielectric membrane underneath a tungsten microheater, which allows the diode characterization at very high temperature (> 800°C). The effect of the junction area (Aj) on the thermodiode linearity, sensitivity and self-heating is experimentally and theoretically investigated. Results on the long-term diode stability at high temperature are also reported. © 2013 IEEE.

Factorial comparison of working memory models.

Three questions have been prominent in the study of visual working memory limitations: (a) What is the nature of mnemonic precision (e.g., quantized or continuous)? (b) How many items are remembered? (c) To what extent do spatial binding errors account for working memory failures? Modeling studies have typically focused on comparing possible answers to a single one of these questions, even though the result of such a comparison might depend on the assumed answers to both others. Here, we consider every possible combination of previously proposed answers to the individual questions. Each model is then a point in a 3-factor model space containing a total of 32 models, of which only 6 have been tested previously. We compare all models on data from 10 delayed-estimation experiments from 6 laboratories (for a total of 164 subjects and 131,452 trials). Consistently across experiments, we find that (a) mnemonic precision is not quantized but continuous and not equal but variable across items and trials; (b) the number of remembered items is likely to be variable across trials, with a mean of 6.4 in the best model (median across subjects); (c) spatial binding errors occur but explain only a small fraction of responses (16.5% at set size 8 in the best model). We find strong evidence against all 6 documented models. Our results demonstrate the value of factorial model comparison in working memory.