Highly conductive Sb-doped layers in strained Si

The ability to create stable, highly conductive ultrashallow doped regions is a key requirement for future silicon-based devices. It is shown that biaxial tensile strain reduces the sheet resistance of highly doped n-type layers created by Sb or As implantation. The improvement is stronger with Sb, leading to a reversal in the relative doping efficiency of these n-type impurities. For Sb, the primary effect is a strong enhancement of activation as a function of tensile strain. At low processing temperatures, 0.7% strain more than doubles Sb activation, while enabling the formation of stable, ~10-nm-deep junctions. This makes Sb an interesting alternative to As for ultrashallow junctions in strain-engineered complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor device

An effective electrical isolation scheme by iron implantation at different substrate temperatures

High-energy implantation of iron in n-type doped InP epilayers at different substrate temperatures: 77K, room temperature (RT), 100degreesC and 200degreesC was investigated to study the electrical isolation of n-type InP. Iron isolation implants were performed at 1MeV with a fluence of 5 x 10(14) /cm(2). This isolation scheme was chosen to place most of the iron atoms well inside the n-type doped layer. The sheet resistivity (R,), sheet carrier concentration (n(S)) and sheet mobility (p) were measured as a function of substrate temperature and post-implantation annealing temperature (100 - 800degreesC). Samples implanted at 77K, RT and 100degreesC show more or less the same trend of postimplant annealing characteristics. A maximum sheet resistivity of similar to1 x 10(7) Omega/rectangle was achieved for samples implanted at 77K, RT and 100degreesC after annealing at 400degreesC. A lower resistivity of similar to1 x 10(6) Omega/rectangle was obtained for a 200degreesC implant after annealing at 4000C. Lower damage accumulation due to enhanced dynamic annealing is observed for the highest implantation temperature. For 200degreesC substrate temperature, annealing above 4000C resulted in a gradual decrease in sheet resistivity to a value close to that of the starting material. But this is not the case for the lower substrate temperatures. The sheet resistivity was increased again for 77K, RT and 100()C implant after annealing at 600degreesC. We infer that for 77K, RT and 100degreesC implantation temperatures, the electrical isolation is due to a product of both damage related centers and defects related to the presence of Fe whereas for 200degreesC substrate temperature, we infer that only damage induced compensation removes the carriers. These results show the importance of iron implants as a device isolation scheme.</p

Board gender diversity and firm performance: the UK evidence

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.open access articleThis paper examines the relationship between gender diversity, selected female attributes and financial performance of FTSE 100 firms in the UK. Drawing on critical mass theory by measuring gender diversity as levels of female representation in the boardroom, this study finds a positive and significant relationship between gender diversity and firm performance. However, the results become highly significant and unequivocal when three or more females are appointed to the board compared to the appointment of two or less females. Further analysis reveals that post-appointment financial performance is positively related to female age, level of education and where female board members also hold executive director positions. The results remain unchanged after accounting for endogeneity concerns and employing alternative measures of firm performance, namely, return on assets and Tobin’s Q

'If you had only listened carefully...':the discursive construction of emerging leadership in a UK all-women management team

Increasingly, feminist linguistic research has adopted a discursive perspective to learn how women and men 'do' leadership in gendered ways. 'Women' as a social category is made relevant to this study by virtue of the lack of female senior leaders in UK businesses (Sealy and Vinnicombe, 2013). Much previous research has analysed leadership discourse in mixed gender groups, relying on theories that imply comparisons between men and women. Using an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, this study aims to learn more about how women perform leadership in the absence of men by analysing the spoken interactions of a women-only team who were engaged in a competitive leadership task. The analysis reveals that the women accomplish leadership in multiple and complex ways that defy binary gendered classifications. Nonetheless, there is a distinctive gendered dynamic to the team's interactions which, it is argued, might be disadvantageous to women aspiring to senior positions

A novel role for p120 catenin in E-cadherin function

Îndirect evidence suggests that p120-catenin (p120) can both positively and negatively affect cadherin adhesiveness. Here we show that the p120 gene is mutated in SW48 cells, and that the cadherin adhesion system is impaired as a direct consequence of p120 insufficiency. Restoring normal levels of p120 caused a striking reversion from poorly differentiated to cobblestone-like epithelial morphology, indicating a crucial role for p120 in reactivation of E-cadherin function. The rescue efficiency was enhanced by increased levels of p120, and reduced by the presence of the phosphorylation domain, a region previously postulated to confer negative regulation. Surprisingly, the rescue was associated with substantially increased levels of E-cadherin. E-cadherin mRNA levels were unaffected by p120 expression, but E-cadherin half-life was more than doubled. Direct p120–E-cadherin interaction was crucial, as p120 deletion analysis revealed a perfect correlation between E-cadherin binding and rescue of epithelial morphology. Interestingly, the epithelial morphology could also be rescued by forced expression of either WT E-cadherin or a p120-uncoupled mutant. Thus, the effects of uncoupling p120 from E-cadherin can be at least partially overcome by artificially maintaining high levels of cadherin expression. These data reveal a cooperative interaction between p120 and E-cadherin and a novel role for p120 that is likely indispensable in normal cells