INTRODUCTION Septic infection of a lumbar intervertebral disc is a serious disorder which is often difficult to diagnose and appropriately treat because of the rarity of the disease, the varied presentation of symptoms, and the frequency of low-back pain within the overall population. Its etiology can be pyogenic, granulomatous, fungal, or parasitic; its incidence is rising due to increased pat...

The band structure of strained Si ~4–10 ML! on ~001! GaAs, band lineups of the strained Si/~001!GaAs heterojunction, and confined energy levels of the Si3N4 /Si/GaAs quantum well have been calculated via a pseudopotential method. It has been found that in this technically important Si3N4 /Si/~001!GaAs structure, strained Si has a very narrow band gap ~0.34 eV! at the D' point in the Brillouin z...

Bu çalışmada, Ni/W-Si3N4 kompozitleri kesikli akım elektrobiriktirme (KEB) yöntemiyle üretilmiştir. Ni/W alaşımlarının saf nikelden çok daha iyi mekanik özelliklere sahip olmasından dolayı alaşım matrisli Si3N4 partikül takviyeli kompozitler KEB tekniği ile geliştirilmiştir. Banyo çözeltisi içerisindeki dört farklı silisyum nitrür (Si3N4) konsantrasyonunun üretilen kompozitlerin mikroyapısı, mi...

An integrated and new interface circuit with temperature compensation has been developed to enhance the ISFET readout circuit stability. The bridge-type floating source circuit suitable for sensor array processing has been proposed to maintain reliable constant drain–source voltage and constant drain current (CVCC) conditions for measuring the threshold voltage variation of ISFET due to the cor...

An optimized graded-refractive-index (GRIN) antireflection (AR) coating with broadband and omnidirectional characteristics--as desired for solar cell applications--designed by a genetic algorithm is presented. The optimized three-layer GRIN AR coating consists of a dense TiO2 and two nanoporous SiO2 layers fabricated using oblique-angle deposition. The normal incidence reflectance of the three-...

Rajiv K. Kalia, Aiichiro Nakano, Andrey Omeltchenko, Kenji Tsuruta, and Priya Vashishta Concurrent Computing Laboratory for Materials Simulations, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Computer Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803 (Received 4 November 1996) Using 106-atom molecular-dynamics simulations, we investigate dynamic fracture in nanophase Si...

Currently, the need for high performance heaters industrial application is increasing, and repeated wear, rapid temperature change, uneven can cause deteriorating quality reduced productivity. The ceramic heater in this study consists of a substrate, an electrode layer, protective low-melting glass frit was used all layers to allow low-temperature processing. As substrate heater, Si3N4, which t...

We have investigated the influence of a contact etch-stop layer ~ESL! on the local mechanical stress in a deep sub-micrometer complementary metal oxide semiconductor ~CMOS! field-effect transistor using convergent-beam electron diffraction with nanoscale resolution. By introducing a thin buffer layer of SiOxNy underneath the Si3N4 contact ESL, we have shown that the compressive channel strain c...

A comprehensive study of the intrinsic reliability of a 1.4-nm (equivalent oxide thickness) JVD Si3N4 gate dielectric subjected to constant-voltage stress has been conducted. The stress leads to the generation of defects in the dielectric. As the result, the degradation in the threshold voltage, subthreshold swing, gate leakage current, and channel mobility has been observed. The change in each...