Stable incremental deformation of a strip to high strain

This paper presents the effect of combined stretching and bending on the achieved strain in\ud incremental sheet forming ISF. A simple two dimensional model of strip undergoing stretching and\ud travelling three point bending in cyclic form is used. The numerical model presents the effect of the\ud ratio of stretching velocity to roll-set speed on the achieved strain and its distributio

Wrinkling prediction with adaptive mesh refinement

An adaptive mesh refinement procedure for wrinkling prediction analyses is presented. First the\ud critical values are determined using Hutchinson’s bifurcation functional. A wrinkling risk factor is then\ud defined and used to determined areas of potential wrinkling risk. Finally, a mesh refinement is operate

On adaptive mesh refinement in wrinkling prediction analysis

Hutchinson approach has been successfully used by a number of researchers in thin sheet metal forming processes for wrinkling prediction. However, Hutchinson approach is limited to regions of the sheet that are free of any contact. Therefore, a new wrinkling indicator that can be used in the contact areas is proposed. Discretisation error indicators are also used to present a comprehensive approach to wrinkling prediction analysis

Metal contacts to lowly doped Si and ultra thin SOI

We present our investigations on the fabrication of ohmic and Schottky contacts of several metals on lowly doped bulk Si and SOI wafers. Through this paper we evaluate the fabrication of rectifying devices in which no doping is intentionally introduced

Low-temperature process steps for realization of non-volatile memory devices

In this work, the low-temperature process steps required for the realization of nano-crystal non-volatile memory cells are discussed. An amorphous silicon film, crystallized using a diode pumped solid state green laser irradiating at 532 nm, is proposed as an active layer. The deposition of the subsequent functional layers (e.g., gate oxide) can be done using CVD and ALD reactors in a cluster tool. We show that a high nanocrystal density (Si-NC), required for a good functionality of the memory device, can be obtained by using disilane (Si2H6) or trisilane (Si3H8, known as Silcore®) as precursors for LPCVD instead of silane, at a deposition temperature of 325 °C. The nanocrystals are encapsulated with an ALD-Al2O3 layer (deposited at 300 °C), which serves as oxidation barrier. The passivation of the realized structure is done with an ALD-TiN layer deposited at 425 °C. In this work, we realized Al/TiN/Al2O3/Si-NC/SiO2/Si(100) multilayer floating-gate structures, where the crystallized amorphous silicon film was for the time being replaced by a mono-crystalline silicon wafer, and the gate oxide was thermally grown instead of a low-temperature PECVD oxide. The structures were characterized in terms of their performance as memory cells. In addition, the feasibility to use laser crystallization for improving the amorphous silicon films (prior to the gate oxide deposition) was explored

Improvements in FE-analysis of real-life sheet metal forming

An overview will be presented of recent developments concerning the application\ud and development of computer codes for numerical simulation of sheet metal forming\ud processes. In this paper attention is paid to some strategies which are followed to improve the\ud accuracy and to reduce the computation time of a finite element simulation. Special attention\ud will be paid to the mathematical modeling of the material deformation and friction, and the\ud effect of these models on the results of simulations. An equivalent drawbead model is\ud developed which avoids a drastic increase of computation time without significant loss of\ud accuracy. The real geometry of the drawbead is replaced by a line on the tool surface. When\ud an element of the sheet metal passes this drawbead line an additional drawbead restraining\ud force, lift force and a plastic strain are added to that element. A commonly used yield\ud criterion for anisotropic plastic deformation is the Hill yield criterion. This description is not\ud always sufficient to accurately describe the material behavior. This is due to the\ud determination of material parameters by uni-axial tests only. A new yield criterion is\ud proposed, which directly uses the experimental results at multi-axial stress states. The yield\ud criterion is based on the pure shear point, the uni-axial point, the plane strain point and the\ud equi-biaxial point

Inhomogeneous superconductivity induced in a weak ferromagnet

Under certain conditions, the order parameter induced by a superconductor (S) in a ferromagnet (F) can be inhomogeneous and oscillating, which results e.g. in the so-called pi-coupling in S/F/S junctions. In principle, the inhomogeneous state can be induced at T_c as function of the F-layer thickness d_F in S/F bilayers and multilayers, which should result in a dip-like characteristic of T_c(d_F). We show the results of measurements on the S/F system Nb/Cu_{1-x}Ni_x, for Ni-concentrations in the range x = 0.5-0.7, where such effects might be expected. We find that the critical thickness for the occurrence of superconductivity is still relatively high, even for these weak ferromagnets. The resulting dip then is intrinsically shallow and difficult to observe, which explains the lack of a clear signature in the T_c(d_F) data.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To be publishedin Physica C (proceedings of the Second Euroconference on Vortex Matter in Superconductors, Crete, 2001

Proximity effects in the superconductor / heavy fermion bilayer system Nb / CeCu_6

We have investigated the proximity effect between a superconductor (Nb) and a 'Heavy Fermion' system (CeCu_6) by measuring critical temperatures $T_c$ and parallel critical fields H_{c2}^{\parallel}(T) of Nb films with varying thickness deposited on 75 nm thick films of CeCu_6, and comparing the results with the behavior of similar films deposited on the normal metal Cu. For Nb on CeCu_6 we find a strong decrease of T_c with decreasing Nb thickness and a finite critical thickness of the order of 10 nm. Also, dimensional crossovers in H_{c2}^{\parallel}(T) are completely absent, in strong contrast with Nb/Cu. Analysis of the data by a proximity effect model based on the Takahashi-Tachiki theory shows that the data can be explained by taking into account both the high effective mass (or low electronic diffusion constant), {\it and} the large density of states at the Fermi energy which characterize the Heavy Fermion metal.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure. Manuscript has been submitted to a refereed journa