Influence of Si/SiO2 interface properties on electrical performance and breakdown characteristics of ultrathin stacked oxide/nitride dielectric films

In this work, the influence of Si/SiO₂ interface properties, interface nitridation and remote-plasma-assisted oxidation (RPAO) thickness (<1 nm), on electrical performance and TDDB characteristics of sub-2 nm stacked oxide/nitride gate dielectrics has been investigated using a constant voltage stress (CVS). It is demonstrated that interfacial plasma nitridation improves the breakdown and electrical characteristics. In the case of PMOSFETs stressed in accumulation, interface nitridation suppresses the hole traps at the Si/SiO₂ interface evidenced by less negative V_t shifts. Interface nitridation also retards hole tunneling between the gate and drain, resulting in reduced off-state drain leakage. In addition, the RPAO thickness of stacked gate dielectrics shows a profound effect in device performance and TDDB reliability. Also, it is demonstrated that TDDB characteristics are improved for both PMOS and NMOS devices with the 0.6 nm-RPAO layer using Weibull analysis. The maximum operating voltage is projected to be improved by 0.3 V difference for a 10-year lifetime. However, physical breakdown mechanism and effective defect radius during stress appear to be independent of RPAO thickness from the observation of the Weibull slopes. A correlation between trap generation and dielectric thickness changes based on the C-V distortion and oxide thinning model is presented to clarify the trapping behavior in the RPAO and bulk nitride layer during CVS stress.     

Silver fractal networks for surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates

Based on diffusion-limited aggregation process, a convenient nanotechnique is demonstrated to obtain large silver fractal networks for a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active substrate. The silver fractal networks are of high SERS enhancement factor, large dynamical range. The observed SERS efficiency can be explained in terms of strongly localized plasmon modes relative to the single particle plasmon resonance.     

Pressure-driven transient flows of Newtonian fluids through microtubes with slip boundary

Recent advances in microscale experiments and molecular simulations confirm that slip of fluid on solid surface occurs at small scale, and thus the traditional no-slip boundary condition in fluid mechanics cannot be applied to flow in micrometer and nanometer scale tubes and channels. On the other hand, there is an urgent need to understand fluid flow in micrometer scale due to the emergence of biochemical lab-on-the-chip system and micro-electromechanical system fabrication technologies. In this paper, we study the pressure driven transient flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid in microtubes with a Navier slip boundary condition. An exact solution is derived and is shown to include some existing known results as special cases. Through analysis of the derived solution, it is found that the influences of boundary slip on the flow behaviour are qualitatively different for different types of pressure fields driving the flow. For pressure fields with a constant pressure gradient, the boundary slip does not alter the interior material deformation and stress field; while, for pressure fields with a wave form pressure gradient, the boundary slip causes the change of interior material deformation and consequently the velocity profile and stress field. We also derive asymptotic expressions for the exact solution through which a parameter is identified to dominate the behaviour of the flow driven by the wave form pressure gradient, and an explicit formulae for the critical slip parameter leading to the maximum transient flow rate is established.     

Determination of Orientations in Deformed U--U Collisions at 0.52GeV/u

The ART model is applied to study the deformed UU collision at HIRFL-CSR energy area corresponding to the high baryon density region in the QCD phase diagram. The time evolution of central baryon (energy) densities in central collisions at E_b =0.52GeV/u shows that different orientation collisions will lead to different lifetimes of high density, especially tip--tip UU collisions which have an extend lifetime for the high density phase by almost a factor of 2 compared to the body--body orientation collisions. In order to pick out the interesting tip--tip like events from a mass of random orientation collisions, we study the relation between stopping power R and impact parameter b in different orientation collisions and find that it can enhance the purity of tip--tip like events when R increases. Therefore, the high density and long lifetime events can be effectively distinguished by R selection.     

Influences of decoherence on the generation of a macroscopic superposition state using weak cross-Kerr effect

Considering a system in which a single photon and a coherent field propagate through a Kerr medium, when the weak cross-Kerr interaction between the coherent state and the single photon under decoherence is involved, this paper derives analytically a macroscopic superposition state by the superoperator method and investigates the influences of decoherence on the coherence properties of the obtained state. It finds that the macroscopic superposition state will experience evolution from a pure superposition state to a mixed state in a dissipative environment and the Kerr effect makes the field display a periodic revival from decoherence for a short time.     

Flexural vibration band gaps in a thin plate containing a periodic array of hemmed discs

Using a periodic expansion by means of the Bloch theorem, the flexural vibration band gaps are studied in a thin plate with two-dimensional ternary locally resonant structures, i.e. a thin epoxy plate containing a periodic square array of lead discs hemmed around by rubber. The full band gaps of flexural vibration in the thin plate are obtained within which sound and vibration will be forbidden. The numerical results are used to show how the width of the first full band gap depends on the radius ratio of lead disc to hemmed disc, filling fraction, lattice constant (distance between the centers of the nearest lead discs) and thickness of the thin plate. It is observed that the gap width can be changed a lot by modulating these physical parameters.     

Optical properties of Er:SrMoO4 single crystal

Er³⁺:SrMoO₄ crystal of high optical quality was grown by the Czochralski method. The room temperature polarized absorption and emission spectra together with the lifetime decay curve were measured. Based on the Judd-Ofelt theory, three intensity parameters, radiative transition rates, radiative lifetimes and fluorescent branching ratios, were obtained. Emission cross-section and gain cross-section around 1.54 μm were also obtained.