X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy process optimization for characterization of trace contamination elements for extreme ultraviolet resist outgassing study

X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is used for elemental identification and quantification in a number of fields, and the optimization of XPS performance can help in making better use of the limited XPS tool availability. In the field of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, one of the requirements is having a clean vacuum environment to minimize contamination of the EUV optics. EUV resist outgassing is viewed as one of the main issues that could affect the vacuum environment. There is a program underway to measure the relative contamination rates from different resists following the ASML (provider of lithography systems) approved protocols for witness plate testing. One of the key steps is the XPS measurement of residue on the optics after cleaning. The role of XPS in quantification of species that adhere to the ruthenium‐coated silicon witness plate sample is discussed. The various XPS tool parameters like the pass energy and source setting were optimized for our application of witness plate analysis. The statistics of our XPS tool were studied, and combined with the fundamental XPS equations, a simple mathematical model was developed to optimize the number of scans for the various elements of interest in our witness plate study. Using the optimized number of scans, the acquisition time to measure the contaminant elements to a precision better than 0.1 at.% was minimized. The model devised in the paper can be adapted to other XPS measurements requiring different levels of precision. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Facile Fabrication of Zirconia Modified Screen‐Printed Carbon Electrodes for Electrochemical Sensing of Phosphate

We report here a facile method to immobilize zirconia nanoparticles on a disposable screen‐printed carbon electrode (designated as ZrO₂‐SPCE) for phosphate sensor application. Simply by ultrasonicating a bare SPCE in a ZrO₂ slurry, ZrO₂ nanoparticles can be immobilized effectively on the electrode surface as verified by surface characterization evidences. Using ferricyanide as a redox probe, an increase in the charge transfer resistance (R_ct) of ferricyanide upon adsorption of phosphate on ZrO₂ is used for the determination of phosphate. This ZrO₂‐SPCE phosphate sensor shows a wide linear range up to 1 mM and a detection limit of 1.69 µM (S/N=3). Practical applicability of the ZrO₂‐SPCE is demonstrated by detecting phosphate content in human blood samples.     

Transport Polymerization of Gaseous Intermediates and Polymer Crystals Growth

Man is always enchanted with discoveries of new and better ways of making things. Even after more than a hundred years of synthetic chemistry, scientists are today still as enthusiastic as ever looking for “novel” reactions and “novel” syntheses. One of the great achievements of the last decade was the development and usage of “intermediates” for syntheses. Knowing the extensive applications [1-4] of these intermediates in modern synthetic chemistry, it is, however, surprising to find that only few groups of these intermediates have been used in polymer syntheses. For instance [5], even though there are radical polymerizations and polymerizations involving carbanions and carbonium ions, there are practically no polymer syntheses using benzynes [2], carbenes [3], or nitrenes [4].     

Synthesis,Crystal Structure,Photophysical and Electrochemical Properties of rac‐6,13‐Dihydro‐6,13‐methanopentacene

The title compound, rac‐6,13‐dihydro‐6,13‐methanopentacene ( 1 ), has been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, FT‐IR, ¹H NMR, UV‐Vis, HRMS spectra, cyclic voltammetry and single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction. The crystal belongs to orthorhombic, space group P2₁2₁2₁, with Z = 4 and cell dimensions a = 6.0185(4), b = 8.1914(6), c = 31.4080(19) Å. In the crystal structure, two types of intermolecular C–H···π hydrogen bonds are observed, and further stabilize the crystal structure. Its photophysical and electrochemical properties and complementary density functional theory (DFT) calculations are reported.     

Overcoming Symmetry Mismatch in Vaccine Nanoassembly through Spontaneous Amidation

Matching of symmetry at interfaces is a fundamental obstacle in molecular assembly. Virus‐like particles (VLPs) are important vaccine platforms against pathogenic threats, including Covid‐19. However, symmetry mismatch can prohibit vaccine nanoassembly. We established an approach for coupling VLPs to diverse antigen symmetries. SpyCatcher003 enabled efficient VLP conjugation and extreme thermal resilience. Many people had pre‐existing antibodies to SpyTag:SpyCatcher but less to the 003 variants. We coupled the computer‐designed VLP not only to monomers (SARS‐CoV‐2) but also to cyclic dimers (Newcastle disease, Lyme disease), trimers (influenza hemagglutinins), and tetramers (influenza neuraminidases). Even an antigen with dihedral symmetry could be displayed. For the global challenge of influenza, SpyTag‐mediated display of trimer and tetramer antigens strongly induced neutralizing antibodies. SpyCatcher003 conjugation enables nanodisplay of diverse symmetries towards generation of potent vaccines.     

Upgrade of beamline BL08B at Taiwan Light Source from a photon‐BPM to a double‐grating SGM beamline

During the last 20 years, beamline BL08B has been upgraded step by step from a photon beam‐position monitor (BPM) to a testing beamline and a single‐grating beamline that enables experiments to record X‐ray photo‐emission spectra (XPS) and X‐ray absorption spectra (XAS) for research in solar physics, organic semiconductor materials and spinel oxides, with soft X‐ray photon energies in the range 300–1000 eV. Demands for photon energy to extend to the extreme ultraviolet region for applications in nano‐fabrication and topological thin films are increasing. The basic spherical‐grating monochromator beamline was again upgraded by adding a second grating that delivers photons of energy from 80 to 420 eV. Four end‐stations were designed for experiments with XPS, XAS, interstellar photoprocess systems (IPS) and extreme‐ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) in the scheduled beam time. The data from these experiments show a large count rate in core levels probed and excellent statistics on background normalization in the L‐edge adsorption spectrum.     

Optimum step-stress accelerated degradation test for Wiener degradation process under constraints

To assess a product's reliability for subsequent managerial decisions such as designing an extended warranty policy and developing a maintenance schedule, Accelerated Degradation Test (ADT) has been used to obtain reliability information in a timely manner. In particular, Step-Stress ADT (SSADT) is one of the most commonly used stress loadings for shortening test duration and reducing the required sample size. Although it was demonstrated in many previous studies that the optimum SSADT plan is actually a simple SSADT plan using only two stress levels, most of these results were obtained numerically on a case-by-case basis. In this paper, we formally prove that, under the Wiener degradation model with a drift parameter being a linear function of the (transformed) stress level, a multi-level SSADT plan will degenerate to a simple SSADT plan under many commonly used optimization criteria and some practical constraints. We also show that, under our model assumptions, any SSADT plan with more than two distinct stress levels cannot be optimal. These results are useful for searching for an optimum SSADT plan, since one needs to focus only on simple SSADTs. A numerical example is presented to compare the efficiency of the proposed optimum simple SSADT plans and a SSADT plan proposed by a previous study. In addition, a simulation study is conducted for investigating the efficiency of the proposed SSADT plans when the sample size is small.