Evaluating of Adhesion Property of ULSI Interconnect Films by the Surface Acoustic Waves

The technique of surface acoustic waves （SAWs） is a very promising method for determining film properties such as Young＇s modulus, density and film thickness nondestructively and accurately. The dispersion property of SAWs is also affected largely from the adhesion property of films, which is revealed by the bonding spring assumption described. This SAW method could offer a quantitative evaluation of the film adhesion from the curvature of SAW dispersion lines affected by the normal and shear spring constants. The method is applied to numerically characterize the adhesion property of the typical ultra-large-scale integrated circuit interconnect layered structure of a thin Cu film deposited on the Si substrate as well as a SiO2 thin film on a Si
substrate.     

Raman scattering of polycrystalline GaSb thin films grownby co-evapouration process

<正>This paper reports that GaSb thin films have been co-deposited on soda-lime glass substrates.The GaSb thin film structural properties are characterized by Raman spectroscopy.The Sb-A_1g/GaSb-TO ratio decreases rapidly with the increase of substrate temperature,which suggests a small amount of crystalline Sb in the GaSb thin film and suggests that Sb atoms in the thin film decrease.In Raman spectra,the transverse optical（TO） mode intensity is stronger than that of the longitudinal optical（LO） mode,which indicates that all the samples are disordered.The LO/TO intensity ratio increases with increasing substrate temperature which suggests the improved polycrystalline quality of the GaSb thin film.A downshift of the TO and LO frequencies of the polycrystalline GaSb thin film to single crystalline bulk GaSb Raman spectra is also observed.The uniaxial stress in GaSb thin film is calculated and the value is around 1.0 GPa.The uniaxial stress decreases with increasing substrate temperature.These results suggest that a higher substrate temperature is beneficial in relaxing the stress in GaSb thin film.     

Growth Related Carrier Mobility Enhancement of Pentacene Thin-Film Transistors with High-k Oxide Gate Dielectric

Carrier mobifity enhancement from 0.09 to 0.59cm2/Vs is achieved for pentacene-based thin-film transistors （TFTs） by modifying the Hf02 gate dielectric with a polystyrene （PS） thin film. The improvement of the transistor＇s performance is found to be strongly related to the initial film morphologies of pentacene on the dielectrics. In contrast to the three-dimensional island-like growth mode on the HI02 surface, the Stranski- Krastanov growth mode on the smooth and nonpolar PS/HfO2 surface is believed to be the origin of the excellent carrier mobility of the TFTs. A large well-connected first monolayer with fewer boundaries is formed via the Stranski-Krastanov growth mode, which facilitates a charge transport parallel to the substrate and promotes higher carrier mobility.     

Near-Field Birefringence Response of Liquid Crystal Molecules in Thickness Direction of Liquid Crystal Thin Film Orientated by Shear Force

Information of molecular orientation in nematic liquid crystal （LC） is attractive and important for applications in the field of display devices. We demonstrate a novel method using a birefringence scanning near-field optical microscope （Bi-SNOM） with a probe which is inserted into the LC thin film to detect the molecular orientation from its birefringence responses in the thickness direction of the LC thin film. The probe is laterally vibrated when going forward into the LC thin film, and the retardation and azimuth angle are recorded as the probe going down. Firstly, the thickness of the LC thin film is measured by the shear force detection. Since the shear force acts as a stimulation to reorientate the LC molecules above the substrate surface, we can detect the molecular orientation caused by a polyimide alignment substrate and the effect to molecular orientation caused by vibration of fibre probe. As a result, the orientation profiling of the LC film in depth direction is obtained in both the cases that the direction of probe vibrating is vertical/parallel to the rubbing direction of the alignment film. Furthermore, the thickness of completely orientated layers just above the substrate surface can also be obtained by either vibrating probe or no-vibrating probe. Ultimately, the LC thin film can be modelled in thickness direction from all the results using this method.     

Refractive index inhomogeneity of LaF3 film at deep ultraviolet wavelength

It is well known that the optical property of an optical thin film can be influenced by even small inho- mogeneity of refractive index （RI）. In order to investigate the RI inhomogeneity of LaF3 single layer in deep ultraviolet （DUV） range, single-layer LaF3 samples deposited on fused silica and CaF2 substrates are prepared by resistive heating evaporation at different deposition temperatures. The reflectance and transmittance spectra of LaF3 film samples are measured with a spectrophotometer, and used to calculate the RI inhomogeneity. The experimental results show that no RI inhomogeneity of LaF3 film is observed when deposited on CaF2 substrate, while negative RI inhomogeneity is presented when deposited on fused silica substrate. The level of inhomogeneity is affected by the substrate temperature, which decreases with the increasing substrate temperature from 250 to 400 ℃.     

Preparation and Microstructure of Tantalum Nitride Thin Film by Cathodic Arc Deposition

Tantalum nitride （TAN） thin films are achieved on Si（111） and SS317L substrates by cathodic vacuum arc technique, which is rarely reported in the literature. The crystal structure, composition and surface morphology of the films are characterized by x-ray diffraction （XRD）, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy （XPS）, auger electron spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The influence of substrate negative bias on crystal structure, composition, surface morphology of the TaN films is systematically studied. At the substrate bias of 0 V and -50 V, the amorphous TaN film is obtained. As the bias increases to -100 V, cubic TaN phase can be found. Stoichiometric TaN with hexagonal lattice preferred （300） orientation is prepared at a bias of -200 V. Combine the XRD and XPS results, the binding energy value of 23.6eV of Ta 4f（7/2） is contributed to hexagonal TaN. Compared to other techniques, TaN thin films fabricated by cathodic vacuum arc at various substrate biases show different microstructures.     

Controlling the surface buckling wrinkles by patterning the material system of hard-nano-film/soft-matter-substrate

Wrinkling and buckling of nano-films on the compliant substrate are always induced due to thermal deformation mismatch.This paper proposes effective means to control the surface wrinkling of thin film on the compliant substrate,which exploits the curvatures of the curve cracks designed on the stiff film.The procedures of the method are summarized as:1)curve patterns are fabricated on the surface of PDMS(Polydimethylsiloxane)substrate and then the aluminum film with the thickness of several hundred nano-meters is deposited on the substrate;2)the curve patterns are transferred onto the aluminum film and lead to cracking of the film along the curves.The cracking redistributes the stress in the compressed film on the substrate;3)on the concave side of the curve,the wrinkling of the film surface is suppressed to be identified as shielding effect and on the convex side the wrinkling of the film surface is induced to be identified as inductive effect.The shielding and inductive effects make the dis-ordered wrinkling and buckling controllable.This phenomenon provides a potential application in the fabrication of flexible electronic devices.     

Determination of optical constants in DUV/VUV

An approach for determining the optical constants of the weakly absorbing substrate is developed and applied to obtain the parameters of CaF2 and fused silica substrates in deep ultraviolet （DUV） and vacuum ultraviolet （VUV） range. A method for extracting the optical constants of thin films deposited on strongly absorbing substrate, which is based on the reflectance spectra measured at different angles of incidence, is also presented. The optical constants are determined by fitting the measured spectra to the theoretical models. The proposed method is applied to determine the refractive index and extinction coefficient （n, k） of MgF2 film deposited on silicon substrate by electron beam evaporation with substrate temperature 300 ℃ and deposition rate 0.2 nm/s. The determined n, k values at 193 nm are 1.433 and 9.1×10-4, respectively.     

Reversal transient laser-induced voltages in La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 films

This paper reports that the transient laser-induced voltages have been observed in La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 thin films on MgO （001） in the absence of an applied current. A peak voltage of - 0.15 V was detected in response to 0.015J pulse of 308 nm laser. It is demonstrated that the signal polarity is reversed when the films are irradiated through the substrate rather than at the air/film interface. Off-diagonal thermoelectricity may support the inversion of the signal when the irradiation direction is reversed.     

Improvement of Field Emission Characteristics of Copper Nitride Films with Increasing Copper Content

A copper nitride （Cu3N） thin film is deposited on a Si substrate by the reactive magnetron sputtering method. The XPS measurements of the composite film indicate that the Cu content in the film is increased to 80.82 at. % and the value of the Cu/N ratio to 4.2：1 by introducing 4% 112 into the reactive gas. X-ray diffraction measurements show that the film is composed of Cu3N crystallites with an anti-ReO3 structure. The effects of the increase of copper content on the field emission characteristics of the Cu3N thin film are investigated. Significant improvement in emission current density and emission repeatability could be attributed to the geometric field enhancement, caused by numerous surface nanotips, and the decrease of resistivity of the film.