THE EFFECT OF PASSIVATION OF BORON DOPANTS BY HYDROGEN IN NANO-CRYSTALLINE AND MICROCRYSTALLINE SILICON FILMS

It is well known that the value of room-temperature conductivity sigma(RT) of boron-doped silicon films is one order lower than that of phosphorus-doped silicon films, when they are deposited in an identical plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition system. We use surface acoustic wave and secondary-ion mass spectrometry techniques to measure the concentration of total and electrically active boron atoms. It is shown that only 0.7% of the total amount of incorporated boron is electrically active. This is evidence that hydrogen atoms can passivate substitutional B-Si bonds by forming the neutral B-H-Si complex. By irradiating the boron-doped samples with a low-energy electron beam, the neutral B-H-Si complex converts into electrically active B-Si bonds and the conductivity can be increased by about one order of magnitude, up to the same level as that of phosphorus-doped samples.

An All-E-Beam Lithography Process for the Patterning of 2D Photonic Crystal Waveguide Devices

We present an all-e-beam lithography (EBL) process for the patterning of photonic crystal waveguides.The whole device structures are exposed in two steps. Holes constituting the photonic crystal lattice and defects are first exposed with a small exposure step size (less than 10nm). With the introduction of the additional proximity effect to compensate the original proximity effect, the shape, size, and position of the holes can be well controlled.The second step is the exposure of the access waveguides at a larger step size (about 30nm) to improve the scan speed of the EBL. The influence of write-field stitching error can be alleviated by replacing the original waveguides with tapered waveguides at the joint of adjacent write-fields. It is found experimentally that a higher exposure efficiency is achieved with a larger step size;however,a larger step size requires a higher dose.

Nano-layer structure of silicon-on-insulator materials

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) has been recognized as a promising semiconductor starting material for ICs where high speed and low power consumption are desirable, in addition to its unique applications in radiation-hardened circuits. In the present paper, three novel SOI nano-layer structures have been demonstrated. ULTRA-THIN SOI has been fabricated by separation by implantation of oxygen (SIMOX) technique at low oxygen ion energy of 45 keV and implantation dosage of 1.81017/cm2. The formed SOI layer is uniform with thickness of only 60 nm. This layer is of crystalline quality. and the interface between this layer and the buried oxide layer is very sharp, PATTERNED SOI nanostructure is illustrated by source and drain on insulator (DSOI) MOSFETs. The DSOI structure has been formed by selective oxygen ion implantation in SIMOX process. With the patterned SOI technology, the floating-body effect and self-heating effect, which occur in the conventional SOI devices, are significantly suppressed. In order to improve the total-dose irradiation hardness of SOI devices, SILICON ON INSULATING MULTILAYERS (SOIM) nano-structure is proposed. The buried insulating multilayers, which are composed of SiOx and SiNy layers, have been realized by implantation of nitride and oxygen ions into silicon in turn at different ion energies, followed by two steps of high temperature annealing process, respectively, Electric property investigation shows that the hardness to the total-dose irradiation of SOIM is remarkably superior to those of the conventional SIMOX SOI and the Bond-and-Etch-Back SOI.

The main factor influencing the tensile properties of surface nano-crystallized graded materials

The improved mechanical properties of surface nano-crystallized graded materials produced by surface severe plastic deformation ((SPD)-P-2) are generally owing to the effects of the refined structure, work-hardened region and compressive residual stress. However, during the (SPD)-P-2 process, residual stress is produced simultaneously with work-hardened region, the individual contribution of these two factors to the improved mechanical properties remains unclear. Numerical simulations are carried out in order to answer this question. It is found that work hardening predominates in improving the yield strength and the ultimate tensile strength of the surface nano-crystallized graded materials, while the influence of the residual stress mainly emerges at the initial stage of deformation and decreases the apparent elastic modulus of the surface nano-crystallized graded materials, which agrees well with the experimental results. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Peeling behavior of a bio-inspired nano-film on a substrate

A peeling model is proposed to analyze the peeling properties of bio-mimetic nano-films using the finite element method (FEM) and theoretical approach. The influences of the nano-film's adhesion length, thickness, elastic modulus, roughness and peeling angle on the peeling force were considered as well as the effect of the viscoelastic behavior. It has been found that the effective adhesion length, at which the peeling force attained maximum, was much smaller than the real length of nano-films; and the shear force dominated in the case of smaller peeling angles, whereas, the normal force dominated at larger peeling angles. The total peeling force decreased with an increasing peeling angle. Two limiting values of the peeling-off force can be found in the viscoelastic model, which corresponds to the smaller and larger loading rate cases. The effects of nano-film thickness and Young's modulus on peeling behaviors were also discussed. The results obtained are helpful for understanding the micro-adhesion mechanisms of biological systems, such as geckos. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dislocation nucleation governed softening and maximum strength in nano-twinned metals

In conventional metals, there is plenty of space for dislocations-line defects whose motion results in permanent material deformation-to multiply, so that the metal strengths are controlled by dislocation interactions with grain boundaries(1,2) and other obstacles(3,4). For nano-structured materials, in contrast, dislocation multiplication is severely confined by the nanometre-scale geometries so that continued plasticity can be expected to be source-controlled. Nano-grained polycrystalline materials were found to be strong but brittle(5-9), because both nucleation and motion of dislocations are effectively suppressed by the nanoscale crystallites. Here we report a dislocation-nucleation-controlled mechanism in nano-twinned metals(10,11) in which there are plenty of dislocation nucleation sites but dislocation motion is not confined. We show that dislocation nucleation governs the strength of such materials, resulting in their softening below a critical twin thickness. Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and a kinetic theory of dislocation nucleation in nano-twinned metals show that there exists a transition in deformation mechanism, occurring at a critical twin-boundary spacing for which strength is maximized. At this point, the classical Hall-Petch type of strengthening due to dislocation pile-up and cutting through twin planes switches to a dislocation-nucleation-controlled softening mechanism with twin-boundary migration resulting from nucleation and motion of partial dislocations parallel to the twin planes. Most previous studies(12,13) did not consider a sufficient range of twin thickness and therefore missed this strength-softening regime. The simulations indicate that the critical twin-boundary spacing for the onset of softening in nano-twinned copper and the maximum strength depend on the grain size: the smaller the grain size, the smaller the critical twin-boundary spacing, and the higher the maximum strength of the material.