Laser writing techniques for photomask fabrication using a femtosecond laser

Photomasks are the backbone of microfabrication industries. Currently they are fabricated by a lithographic process, which is very expensive and time consuming since it is a multi-step process. These issues can be addressed by fabricating photomasks by direct femtosecond laser writing, which is a single-step process and comparatively cheaper and faster than lithography. In this paper we discuss our investigations on the effect of two types of laser writing techniques, namely front- and rear-side laser writing, with regard to the feature size and the edge quality of a feature. It is proved conclusively that for the patterning of masks, front-side laser writing is a better technique than rear-side laser writing with regard to smaller feature size and better edge quality. Moreover the energy required for front-side laser writing is considerably lower than that for rear-side laser writing. Received: 22 May 2001 / Accepted: 14 September 2001 / Published online: 17 October 2001     

Estimation of dynamic properties of attractors observed in hollow copper electrode atmospheric pressure arc plasma system

Understanding of the basic nature of arc root fluctuation is still one of the unsolved problems in thermal arc plasma physics. It has direct impact on myriads of thermal plasma applications being implemented at present. Recently, chaotic nature of arc root behavior has been reported through the analysis of voltages, acoustic and optical signals which are generated from a hollow copper electrode arc plasma torch. In this paper we present details of computations involved in the estimation process of various dynamic properties and show how they reflect chaotic behavior of arc root in the system.     

Shell model interaction between proton holes and between proton holes and neutron particles around 208Pb

An effective residual interaction between particles and holes for shell model calculations around ²⁰⁸Pb, derived from the interaction between free nucleons, is compared with the measured properties of proton-hole neutron states in ²⁰⁸Tl and the interaction between proton holes is adjusted to newly measured level energies in ²⁰⁶Hg. These interaction elements are particularly relevant for neutron-rich nuclei. The adjustment of two mixing elements reproduces the known γ-decay data in ²⁰⁸Tl. Received: 2 April 2002 / Accepted: 2 May 2002     

Crystal structure and magnetic ordering of RNi Si compounds

The element distributions and the magnetic ordering behaviour of compounds RNi₁₀Si₂ (R = Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm) have been studied by neutron powder diffraction down to temperatures of 1.6 K. The compounds crystallize in an ordered variant of the ThMn₁₂ structure type in the tetragonal space group P4/nmm. An ordered 1:1 distribution of Ni and Si on sites 4d and 4e, respectively, corresponds to a modulation vector [0, 0, 1] with respect to the space group I4/mmm of the ThMn₁₂ structure. TbNi₁₀Si₂ orders antiferromagnetically below T _N = 4.5 K with a magnetic propagation vector of [0, 0, 1/2]. The magnetic Tb moments, 8.97(2) /Tb atom at 1.6 K, are aligned along the c-axis. The Ni sites in TbNi₁₀Si₂ do not carry any ordered magnetic moments. The compounds with R = Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm are paramagnetic down to 1.6 K and 3.0 K, respectively. Received 10 July 2002 / Received in final form 12 September 2002 Published online 29 October 2002     

Higher-order <Emphasis Type="Bold">?</Emphasis> corrections in the semiclassical quantization of chaotic billiards

In the periodic orbit quantization of physical systems, usually only the leading-order ? contribution to the density of states is considered. Therefore, by construction, the eigenvalues following from semiclassical trace formulae generally agree with the exact quantum ones only to lowest order of ?. In different theoretical work the trace formulae have been extended to higher orders of ?. The problem remains, however, how to actually calculate eigenvalues from the extended trace formulae since, even with ? corrections included, the periodic orbit sums still do not converge in the physical domain. For lowest-order semiclassical trace formulae the convergence problem can be elegantly, and universally, circumvented by application of the technique of harmonic inversion. In this paper we show how, for general scaling chaotic systems, also higher-order ? corrections to the Gutzwiller formula can be included in the harmonic inversion scheme, and demonstrate that corrected semiclassical eigenvalues can be calculated despite the convergence problem. The method is applied to the open three-disk scattering system, as a prototype of a chaotic system. Received 10 September 2001 and Received in final form 3 January 2002     

Effect of amorphization on the electronic and lattice specific heat of an Ni2B alloy

The specific heats of the Ni₂B amorphous system and of its crystal analog were studied in the temperature range 3–270 K. The data obtained permitted us to isolate the contribution due to atomic vibrations from the experimentally measured specific heat, determine the electronic density of states at the Fermi level and the temperature dependence of the characteristic Debye parameter Θ, and to calculate some average frequencies (moments) of the vibrational spectrum. The electronic density of states at the Fermi level increases under amorphization. An analysis of the temperature dependence of the lattice specific heat showed that amorphization brings about a substantial growth in the density of vibrational states at low frequencies, whereas the spectrum-averaged and rms frequencies change very little, which is in good agreement with neutron diffraction measurements.     

Development of high-speed video cameras for Dynamic PIV

The most promising next generation Image Velocimtry (IV) is the high-speed Dynamic PIV. It requires the development of innovative high-speed video camera sensors. We started by specifying the required performance of these new sensors, for measurements in air and water flows. These criteria founded on the most recent developments in PIV algorithms and incorporate results from a large questionnaire survey of users of high-speed video cameras in Japan. The results suggest that the followings are required: (1) frame rate of 1,000,000 fps, (2) pixel count of 1,000,000 pixels, (3) frame storage capacity of 100–200 frames for tracing a single event and 10,000 frames for turbulent measurements, (4) gray levels of 4–8 bits for PTV; 12 bits for observation. Finally, we reviewed the state of the art of high-speed video-image sensors. Currently the standard parallel-readout sensors can operate at 1 Kfps with a pixel count of approximately 1 Kpixels. The In-situ Storage Image Sensor (ISIS) developed by the authors has recently achieved frame rates of 1 Mfps.     

Aspects of alpha-particle scattering and structure of the nuclear surface

The interaction of α particles above 5 MeV with a 2s-1d target is dominated by resonances. It cannot be described only in terms of a mean-field one-body potential. An analysis of the elastic α-particle scattering by ²⁸Si encourages the comprehension of the resonance states to be mainly fragments of a mixed-parity band. In the present article, the angular distributions of particles scattered by ³²S are analyzed in terms of such bands. The analysis of new data from an experiment made at Florida State University reveals the existence of states that do not belong to the above bands. This follows from a coupled-channel analysis of the elastic and inelastic (2⁺) cross sections. An α-particle structure at the nuclear surface is suggested.     

Thermal conductivity of GaS and GaSe layered semiconductors

This paper reports on the results of experimental investigations into the thermal conductivity of GaS and GaSe layered semiconductor crystals in directions parallel and perpendicular to the crystal layers in the temperature range 5–300 K. Specific features of the thermal conductivity of these crystals are analyzed.     

New Imperfect Conjugate Gradient Algorithm

We present a method which generates conjugate search directions and maintains the quadratic convergence property, when applied to a quadratic function, even when the line searches are not exact. The method is similar to that given by Dixon, but needs one less vector store. When the method is applied to a number of general functions of different dimensionality, results show the efficiency of the method.