Interfaces between silicon and oxides are of great fundamental and technological interest. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, the SiO2-based gate oxide in metal-oxide-semiconductor MOS transistors used in computer processors should be replaced by a higher-K value dielectric material starting in 2008.1 Presently, off-state gate tunneling is increasing power con...

A hot wall Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) flow reactor equipped with a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) has been used for the deposition of HfO2 thin films with tetrakis (dimethylamino) hafnium (TDMAH) and H2O as precursors. HfO2 films were deposited on Hterminated Si and SC1 chemical oxide starting surfaces. Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and QCM measurements confirm linear growth of the film...

Quantitative measurements of the diffusion of adsorbed mixed Ge-Si dimers on the Si(100) surface have been made as a function of temperature using atom-tracking scanning tunneling microscopy. These mixed dimers are distinguishable from pure Si-Si dimers by their characteristic kinetics-a 180 degrees rotation between two highly buckled configurations. At temperatures at which the mixed dimers di...

This work presents two easy ways for preparing nanostructured mesoporous composites by interconnecting and combining SBA-15 with mixed oxides derived from a calcined Mg-Al hydrotalcite. Two different Mg-Al hydrotalcite addition procedures were implemented, either after or during the SBA-15 synthesis (in situ method). The first procedure, i.e., the post-synthesis method, produces a composite mat...

Mesoporous transition metal nitrides are interesting materials for energy conversion and storage applications due to their conductivity and durability. We present ordered mixed titanium-niobium (8:2, 1:1) nitrides with gyroidal network structures synthesized from triblock terpolymer structure-directed mixed oxides. The materials retain both macroscopic integrity and mesoscale ordering despite h...

Wide bandgap conductors such as In₂O₃ and ZnO are used as transparent conducting oxides (TCOs). To date, TCOs are realized using post transition metal cations with largely spread s-orbitals such as In³⁺, Sn⁴⁺, Zn²⁺ and Cd²⁺. On the other hand, no good electronic conductor has been realized in oxides of Al, Si and Ge. Here we report the conversion of an oxide of Ge into a good electronic conduct...

Monolayer islands of pentacene deposited on silicon substrates with thermally grown oxides were studied by electric force microscopy (EFM) and scanning Kelvin probe microscopy (SKPM) in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) after prior 10 min exposure to atmospheric ambient. On 25-nm-thick oxides, the pentacene islands are 0.5 V higher in electrostatic potential than the silicon dioxide background because of ...

Inversion-layer mobility in MOSFETs is quantitatively examined by taking MOSFETs with oxynitride and ultra-thin gate oxides as examples. It was shown that additional Coulomb scattering due to charged impurities in poly-Si gate and due to fixed charges in oxynitride gate oxides is responsible for the mobility degradation in low effective electric field region for ultra-thin gate oxides and oxyni...

Defects in gate oxides/insulators have been characterized by many techniques, e.g., electrical, electron beam, ion beam, X-rays, neutron activation analysis, electron spin resonance, and others. These methods played a crucial role during the early MOS development to determine the origin of oxide/interface charges that led to unstable MOS devices. Thermally-grown oxides on silicon are now quite ...