Silicon Oxide Passivation of Single-Crystalline CVD Diamond Evaluated by the Time-of-Flight Technique

The excellent material properties of diamond make it highly desirable for many extreme electronic applications that are out of reach of conventional electronic materials. For commercial diamond devices to become a reality, it is necessary to have an effective surface passivation since the passivation determines the ability of the device to withstand high surface electric fields. In this paper we present data from lateral Time-of-Flight studies on SiO2-passivated intrinsic single-crystalline CVD diamond. The SiO2 films were deposited using three different techniques. The influence of the passivation on hole transport was studied, which resulted in the increase of hole mobilities. The results from the three different passivations are compared

Influence of phosphorus doping on hydrogen content and optical losses in PECVD silicon oxynitride

PECVD Phosphorus-doped silicon oxynitride layers (n=1.5) were deposited from N2O, 2%SiH4/N2, NH3 and 5%PH3/Ar gaseous mixtures. Chemical bonds were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. N–H bond concentration of the layers decreased from 3.29×10-21 to 0.45×10-21 cm−3, as the 5%PH3/Ar flow rate increased from 0 to 60 sccm. A simultaneous decrease of O–H related bonds was also observed within the same phosphine flow range. The optical loss of slab-type waveguides at λ=1505 nm was found to decrease from 14.1 to 6.2 dB/cm as the 5%PH3/Ar flow rate increased from 0 to 30 sccm, respectively. Moreover, the optical loss values around λ=1400 and 1550 nm were found to decrease from 4.7 to below 0.2 dB/cm and from 1.8 to 1.0 dB/cm respectively. These preliminary results are very promising for applications in low-loss integrated optical devices

Silicon nitride and silica quarter-wave stacks for low-thermal-noise mirror coatings

This study investigates a multilayer high reflector with new coating materials for next-generation laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors operated at cryogenic temperatures. We use the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition method to deposit amorphous silicon nitride and silica quarter-wave high-reflector stacks and studied the properties pertinent to the coating thermal noise. Room- and cryogenic-temperature mechanical loss angles of the silicon nitride and silica quarter-wave bilayers are measured using the cantilever ring-down method. We show, for the first time, that the bulk and shear loss angles of the coatings can be obtained from the cantilever ring-down measurement, and we use the bulk and shear losses to calculate the coating thermal noise of silicon nitride and silica high-reflector coatings. The mechanical loss angle of the silicon nitride and silica bilayer is dispersive with a linear weakly positive frequency dependence, and, hence, the coating thermal noise of the high reflectors show a weakly positive frequency dependence in addition to the normal 1/ vf dependence. The coating thermal noise of the silicon nitride and silica high-reflector stack is compared to the lower limit of the coating thermal noise of the end test mirrors of ET-LF, KAGRA, LIGO Voyager, and the directly measured coating thermal noise of the current coatings of Advanced LIGO. The optical absorption of the silicon nitride and silica high reflector at 1550 nm is 45.9 ppm. Using a multimaterial system composed of seven pairs of ion-beam-sputter deposited Ti∶Ta2O5 and silica and nine pairs of silicon nitride and silica on a silicon substrate, the optical absorption can be reduced to 2 ppm, which meets the specification of LIGO Voyager

Low-loss singlemode PECVD silicon nitride photonic wire waveguides for 532-900 nm wavelength window fabricated within a CMOS pilot line

PECVD silicon nitride photonic wire waveguides have been fabricated in a CMOS pilot line. Both clad and unclad single mode wire waveguides were measured at lambda = 532, 780, and 900 nm, respectively. The dependence of loss on wire width, wavelength, and cladding is discussed in detail. Cladded multimode and singlemode waveguides show a loss well below 1 dB/cm in the 532-900 nm wavelength range. For singlemode unclad waveguides, losses < 1 dB/cm were achieved at lambda = 900 nm, whereas losses were measured in the range of 1-3 dB/cm for lambda = 780 and 532 nm, respectively

Nanomechanical optical devices fabricated with aligned wafer bonding

This paper reports on a new method for making some types of integrated optical nanomechanical devices. Intensity modulators as well as phase modulators were fabricated using several silicon micromachining techniques, including chemical mechanical polishing and aligned wafer bonding. This new method enables batch fabrication of the nanomechanical optical devices, and enhances their performance

Self-aligned 0-level sealing of MEMS devices by a two layer thin film reflow process

Many micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) require a vacuum or controlled atmosphere encapsulation in order to ensure either a good performance or an acceptable lifetime of operation. Two approaches for wafer-scale zero-level packaging exist. The most popular approach is based on wafer bonding. Alternatively, encapsulation can be done by the fabrication and sealing of perforated surface micromachined membranes. In this paper, a sealing method is proposed for zero-level packaging using a thin film reflow technique. This sealing method can be done at arbitrary ambient and pressure. Also, it is self-aligned and it can be used for sealing openings directly above the MEMS device. It thus allows for a smaller die area for the sealing ring reducing in this way the device dimensions and costs. The sealing method has been demonstrated with reflowed aluminium, germanium, and boron phosphorous silica glass. This allows for conducting as well as non-conducting sealing layers and for a variety of allowable thermal budgets. The proposed technique is therefore very versatile

Reduction of hydrogen-induced optical losses of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon oxynitride by phosphorus doping and heat treatment

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition phosphoros-doped silicon oxynitride (SiON) layers with a refractive index of 1.505 were deposited from $N_{2}O$, 2% $SiH_{4}/N_{2}$, and 5% $PH_{3}/Ar$ gaseous mixtures. The $PH_{3}/Ar$ flow rate was varied to investigate the effect of the dopant to the layer properties. We studied the compositions and the chemical environment of phosphorus, silicon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen in these layers by using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The number of N-H and O-H bonds, which are responsible for optical losses around 1.55 and 1.3 μm, decreases in the as-deposited layers with increasing phosphorus concentration. Furthermore, the bonded hyrogen in all P-doped layers has been eliminated after annealing at a temperature significantly lower than required for undoped silicon oxynitride layers, that is so to say 1000°C instead of 1150°C. The resulting optical loss in the entire third telecommunication window was well below 0.2dB/cm, making P-doped SiON an attractive material for demanding integrated optics applications

Nanopores of carbon nanotubes as practical hydrogen storage media

We report on hydrogen desorption mechanisms in the nanopores of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The as-grown MWCNTs show continuous walls that do not provide sites for hydrogen storage under ambient conditions. However, after treating the nanotubes with oxygen plasma to create nanopores in the MWCNTs, we observed the appearance of a new hydrogen desorption peak in the 300–350 K range. Furthermore, the calculations of density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations confirmed that this peak could be attributed to the hydrogen that is physically adsorbed inside nanopores whose diameter is approximately 1 nm. Thus, we demonstrated that 1 nm nanopores in MWCNTs offer a promising route to hydrogen storage media for onboard practical applications