Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition of silver thin films for future interconnects by direct liquid injection system

Deposition of Ag films by direct liquid injection-metal organic chemical vapor deposition (DLI-MOCVD) was chosen because this preparation method allows precise control of precursor flow and prevents early decomposition of the precursor as compared to the bubbler-delivery. Silver(I)-2,2-dimethyl-6,6,7,7,8,8,8-heptafluoro-3,5-octanedionato-triethylphosphine [Ag(fod)(PEt₃)] as the precursor for Ag CVD was studied, which is liquid at 30 °C. Ag films were grown on different substrates of SiO₂/Si and TiN/Si. Argon and nitrogen/hydrogen carrier gas was used in a cold wall reactor at a pressure of 50–500 Pa with deposition temperature ranging between 220 °C and 350 °C. Ag films deposited on a TiN/Si diffusion barrier layer have favorable properties over films deposited on SiO₂/Si substrate. At lower temperature (220 °C), film growth is essentially reaction-limited on SiO₂ substrate. Significant dependence of the surface morphology on the deposition conditions exists in our experiments. According to XPS analysis pure Ag films are deposited by DLI-MOCVD at 250 °C by using argon as carrier gas.     

State of polarization changes: Classification and measurement

We propose a standardization procedure that provides a convenient, quantitative and reproducible laboratory-based method for measuring the state of polarization (SOP) fluctuations produced by polarization varying devices. This method is based on the SOP distributions generated by commercial polarization scramblers. We show that these devices generate distributions of the maximum change of the SOP (in a given sample time) that follow Rayleigh statistics, which scale linearly with scrambling frequency and the sample time. We use this procedure to measure the SOP fluctuations in a short length of coiled fiber subject to mechanical perturbations.     

A birth-process approach to Moranda's geometric software-reliability model

To alleviate some of the objections to the basic Jelinski Moranda (JM) model for software failures, Moranda proposed a geometric de-eutrophication model. This model assumes that the times between failures are statistically-independent exponential random variables with given failure rates. In this model the failure rates decrease geometrically with the detection of a fault. Using an intuitive approach, Musa, Iannino, Okumoto , see also Farr , derived expressions for the mean and the intensity functions of the process N (t) which counts the number of faults detected in the time interval [O, t] for the Moranda geometric de-eutrophication model. N (t) is studied as a pure birth stochastic process; its probability generating function is derived, as well as its mean, intensity and reliability functions. The expressions for the mean and intensity functions derived by MIO are only approximations and can be quite different from the true functions for certain choices of the failure rates. The exact expressions for the mean function and the intensity function of N (t) are used to find the optimum release time of software based on a cost structure for Moranda's geometric de-eutrophication model.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">FCC/BCC</Emphasis> competition and enhancement of saturation magnetization in nanocrystalline Co-Ni-Fe films

The structure, chemical composition, and magnetic properties of electrochemically deposited nanocrystalline Co-Ni-Fe films were investigated using a number of techniques. A high saturation magnetic induction up to B _s = 21 kG was attained. An enhancement of the saturation magnetization compared to the ideal anticipated one was revealed, which correlated with the nonlinear behavior of the structural phase composition and lattice parameters with the change of the composition. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Phase state stabilization of ammonium nitrate for creating an oxidizing agent for smokeless gas-generating formulations yielding no toxic combustion products

Methods for phase stabilization of ammonium nitrate were sought for in order to considerably expand the application area of this oxidizing agent in various-purpose self-combustible formulations, including that in a new generation of gas-generating formulations for automobile air bags. New methods for stabilization of ammonium nitrate were studied and, in particular, a search was made for organic compounds that can stabilize ammonium nitrate even at their low content. The mechanism of phase state stabilization of ammonium nitrate by compounds of this kind was examined.     

Equilibrium analysis of cellular neural networks

Cellular neural networks (CNNs) are dynamical systems, described by a large set of coupled nonlinear differential equations. The equilibrium-point analysis is an important step for understanding the global dynamics and for providing design rules. We yield a set of sufficient conditions (and a simple algorithm for checking them) ensuring the existence of at least one stable equilibrium point. Such conditions give rise to simple constraints, that extend the class of CNNs, for which the existence of a stable equilibrium point is rigorously proved. In addition, they are suitable for design and easy to check, because they are directly expressed in term of the template elements.     

Randomized scheduling algorithms for high-aggregate bandwidth switches

The aggregate bandwidth of a switch is its port count multiplied by its operating line rate. We consider switches with high-aggregate bandwidths; for example, a 30-port switch operating at 40 Gb/s or a 1000-port switch operating at 1 Gb/s. Designing high-performance schedulers for such switches with input queues is a challenging problem for the following reasons: (1) high performance requires finding good matchings; (2) good matchings take time to find; and (3) in high-aggregate bandwidth switches there is either too little time (due to high line rates) or there is too much work to do (due to a high port count). We exploit the following features of the switching problem to devise simple-to-implement, high-performance schedulers for high-aggregate bandwidth switches: (1) the state of the switch (carried in the lengths of its queues) changes slowly with time, implying that heavy matchings will likely stay heavy over a period of time and (2) observing arriving packets will convey useful information about the state of the switch. The above features are exploited using hardware parallelism and randomization to yield three scheduling algorithms - APSARA, LAURA, and SERENA. These algorithms are shown to achieve 100% throughput and simulations show that their delay performance is quite close to that of the maximum weight matching, even when the traffic is correlated. We also consider the stability property of these algorithms under generic admissible traffic using the fluid-model technique. The main contribution of this paper is a suite of simple to implement, high-performance scheduling algorithms for input-queued switches. We exploit a novel operation, called MERGE, which combines the edges of two matchings to produce a heavier match, and study of the properties of this operation via simulations and theory. The stability proof of the randomized algorithms we present involves a derandomization procedure and uses methods which may have wider applicability.     

Lateral ion implant straggle and mask proximity effect

Lateral scattering of retrograde well implants is shown to have an effect on the threshold voltage of nearby devices. The threshold voltage of both NMOSFETs and PMOSFETs increases in magnitude for conventional retrograde wells, but for triple-well isolated NMOSFETs the threshold voltage decreases for narrow devices near the edge of the well. Electrical data, SIMS, and SUPREM4 simulations are shown that elucidate the phenomenon.     

Dispersion-tolerant 10-gb/s duobinary system employing heterodyne detection and MLSE

We experimentally demonstrate a 10.7-Gb/s duobinary transmission system operating over a chromatic-dispersion range of /spl sim/12 000 ps/nm. Heterodyne detection and maximum-likelihood sequence estimation are employed to achieve this result.     

Unified Systolic-Like Architecture for DCT and DST Using Distributed Arithmetic

A common computing-core representation of the discrete cosine transform and discrete sine transform is derived and a reduced-complexity algorithm is developed for computation of the proposed computing-core. A parallel architecture based on the principle of distributed arithmetic is designed further for the computation of these transforms using the common-core algorithm. The proposed scheme not only leads to a systolic-like regular and modular hardware for computing these transforms, but also offers significant improvement in area-time efficiency over the existing structures. The structure proposed here is devoid of complicated input/output mapping and does not involve any complex control. Unlike the convolution-based structures, it does not restrict the transform length to be a prime or multiple of prime and can be utilized as a reusable core for cost-effective, memory-efficient, high-throughput implementation of either of these transforms