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India rankings released by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) since 2016, plays a vital role in the assessment of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the country. While the NIRF rankings aim to enhance transparency and accountability, the present study has identified several inconsistencies, thus raising concerns about their reliability. These include huge fluctuations in the rankings, overemphasis on bibliometrics neglecting non-traditional research outputs, subjective nature of perception rankings that introduces biases, challenges in the regional diversity metric, overlooking teaching quality, inadequate transparency in methodology, questions about data integrity and limited global benchmarking. This study emphasizes on dialogue, refinement and increased transparency to ensure that the NIRF rankings evolve into a reliable benchmark for the diverse landscape of Indian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of an off-stoichiometry thiol–ene–epoxy (OSTE+) based functional polymer has paramount importance for smart photonic sensor integrated lab-on-chip device applications. A modest attempt has been made to develop a semiconducting OSTE+ polymer material with ferroelectric behavior by tuning the stoichiometry ratio of the moieties for optoelectronic device applications in the visible region. The structural and optical properties of this material have been investigated in the thin film. The planar-type metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) structure has been fabricated on interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) and the current–voltage characteristic of this MSM configuration shows the Schottky barrier formation at the metal–polymer interfaces. This MSM device generates photocurrent when it is exposed to visible light, which is attributed to the semi-crystalline nature of this polymer thin film. In addition, this polymer device exhibited ferroelectric polarization similar to the behavior shown by the conventional polar semi-crystalline polymers. Moreover, various characteristic parameters of this device have been extracted from the incident power-dependent photocurrent and established the fabricated MSM device as a new semiconducting polymer photodetector. This study thus established the thiol–ene–epoxy as a promising candidate for the development of semiconducting functional polymers along with the ferroelectric characteristics which have potential use in single polymer-based field-effect transistors and functional photonic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several theoretical, as well as experimental studies are conducted to explain the optimization of the process of hot-carrier injection (HCI) in germanium-on-silicon pMOSFETs. The results demonstrate that the lifetime of the transistors can be easily improved by increasing the Si-passivation thickness.

An enhancement of an existing approximation to the solution of a key transcendental equation in symmetric double-gate metal-organic field-effect transistors (DGFETs) is described. The enhancement has increased the numerical robustness of the original approximation of surface potential while causing no loss in computational efficiency.

We demonstrate a novel photoplastic nanoelectro-mechanical device that includes an encapsulated polysilicon piezoresistor. The temperature limitation that typically prevents deposition of polysilicon films on polymers was overcome by employing a hotwire CVD process. In this paper, we report the use of this process to fabricate and characterize a novel polymeric cantilever with an embedded piezoresistor. This device exploits the low Young's modulus of organic polymers and the high gauge factor of polysilicon. The fabricated device fits into the cantilever holder of an atomic force microscope (AFM) and can be used in conjunction with the AFM's liquid cell for detecting the adsorption of biochemicals. It enables differential measurement while preventing biochemicals from interfering with measurements using the piezoresistor. The mechanical and electromechanical characterization of the device is also reported in this paper. [2008-0108] Index Terms--Affinity cantilevers, bio-microeleetromechanical system (bio-MEMS), hotwire CVD (HWCVD), piezoresistive sensing, polymeric cantilevers, surface stress.

A novel and robust approach is described for common mode feedback (CMFB) for a differential amplifier by using independently driven double gate (IDDG) FinFET technology. The inherent symmetry in the front and back gates of IDDG transistors could be fully exploited to improve the performance of CMFB circuits.

A drain current model is developed for a symmetrically driven undoped symmetric double-gate MOSFET (SDGFET) under the drift-diffusion transport mechanism, with velocity saturation effects being included as an integral part of the model derivation. Gummel symmetry compliance of this model is shown.

The optimization aspects of bulk FinFET structures are discussed. Results suggest bulk FinFETs as a promising alternative to the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) FinFETs after careful optimization for future low-power high-performance applications.

The effects of double-halo (DH) and single-halo or lateral asymmetric channel (LAC) doping on the subthreshold analog performance of 100-nm CMOS devices are investigated. The results have shown that the CMOS amplifiers made with the halo implanted devices have higher voltage gain over their conventional counterpart and the voltage gain has improved even when LAS doping is made on both the p- and n-channel devices of the amplifier.