High resolution photoemission study of SiOx/Si(111) interface disruption following in situ HfO₂deposition

We report on an in situ high resolution core level photoemission study of the early stages of interface formation between an ultrathin SiOx layer ( ∼ 0.3 nm) grown on the atomically clean Si(111) surface and a HfO2 dielectric layer. Si 2p core level spectra acquired at 130 eV photon energy reveal evidence of a chemically shifted component on the lower binding energy side of the substrate peak which is attributed to interface defect states resulting from the incorporation of silicon atoms from the substrate into the interfacial oxide at room temperature. This evidence of Si/SiOx interface disruption would be expected to increase charge carrier scattering mechanisms in the silicon and contribute to the generally observed mobility degradation in high-k stacks with ultrathin silicon oxide interface layers

The student practitioner: developing skills through the marketing research consultancy project

This paper examines the perceptions of a group of undergraduate students undertaking marketing research consultancy projects for employers. The projects are informed by action learning. The author’s intention is to demonstrate that this method of learning facilitates a level of student skill development that more traditional marketing courses find difficult to achieve. Design/methodology/approach The study is underpinned by an interpretivist approach. Research involved students taking part in two focus groups during the consultancy and the completion of pre consultancy and post consultancy open ended questionnaires. Findings Findings suggest that the marketing consultancy project represents a way to help develop the general skills required by novice marketers. Students show an understanding of the importance of acquiring communicative, interpersonal, creative and team based skills. These assist them in developing a practical knowledge neglected by much existing marketing teaching. Research limitations/implications The findings although based on a small sample, indicate that marketing education if based on action learning, positively engages learners. The emphasis on practice suggests that experience, work place socialisation and tacit knowledge, are essential components of learning about marketing that often get overlooked in more traditional marketing courses. Originality/value This paper suggests that much established marketing education does not take sufficient account of experiential based learning and instead, is wedded to a model of teaching that sees marketing as being mainly about the transmission of administratively based knowledge. This paper argues that relying overly on the latter will not provide tomorrows marketers with an appropriate skill set for employment

Surface and interface characterisation of high-k dielectric materials on silicon and III-V semiconductor substrates

Interface formation between high-k dielectric oxide materials and semiconductor surfaces is of critical importance to the development of the next generation of high speed semiconductor devices. This thesis investigates the deposition and characterisation of a range of candidate high-k materials on both silicon and III-V (InGaAs and InP) semiconductor substrates, with the focus on interface formation.The primary characterisation techniques used to study the interface chemistry were x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and synchrotron radiation based photoemission, while atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used in some experiments for surface roughness measurements. The first part of the study evaluates a range of surface preparation methods prior to dielectric deposition aimed at removing the native oxides and passivating the surfaces while keeping surface roughness to a minimum. Methods investigated for silicon surface preparation included flash cleaning, hydrofluoric acid (HF) etching and the growth of self limiting ultra-thin oxides. For InGaAs the optimisation of the ammonium sulphide (NH4)2S and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) passivation treatments was investigated and an in-depth study of atomic hydrogen cleaning was undertaken. For InP surfaces, an (NH4)2S based treatment was compared to an alternative acid based etch. The dielectric/substrate systems investigated included the reactive deposition of magnesium oxide (MgO) on Si studied by XPS and synchrotron radiation photoemission and aluminium oxide (Al2O3) deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) on indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) also studied by XPS. Electron beam deposition studies of HfO2 were also carried out on InP after various surface treatments, followed by XPS and electrical characterisation to determine the effect of the surface treatments in terms of native oxide and defect generation

Hawaiʻi’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources : celebrating the first 100 years

These histories are taken from the 2008 publication entitled Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources -- Celebrating the First 100 Years

Superselective splenic artery embolization for the management of splenic laceration following colonoscopy

Splenic injury is a rare complication following colonoscopy with fewer than 100 reported cases worldwide to date. We describe a case of splenic laceration presenting 5 days following diagnostic colonoscopy. Although hemodynamically stable, active contrast extravasation on contrast-enhanced multidetector computed tomography predicted likely failure of conservative management. Splenic artery angiography confirmed active extravasation from the lower splenic pole and the patient was successfully treated with super selective coil embolization of a lower pole splenic artery branch. This is the eighth reported case of endovascular treatment of splenic injury following colonoscopy. To our knowledge, however, superselective splenic artery embolization has not been previously reported to treat this rare endoscopic complication

The Open Navigation Surface Project

Many hydrographic and oceanographic agencies have moved or are moving towards gridded bathymetric products. However, there is no accepted format to allow these grids to be exchanged while maintaining data and metadata integrity. This paper describes the Open Navigation Surface (ONS) Project, which aims to fill this gap. The ONS Project is an open-source software project designed to provide a freely available, portable source-code library to encapsulate gridded bathymetric surfaces with associated uncertainty values. The data file format is called a Bathymetric Attributed Grid (BAG). The BAG is developed and maintained by the ONS Working Group (ONSWG), and the source code is available via the ONS websit

A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness

A comparison is made between the frequency of local minima in the analytic power (AP) of intracranial EEG (ECoG) from waking and unconscious human subjects and the frequency of putative frames of consciousness reported in earlier psychological literature. In ECoG from unconscious subjects, the frequency of deep minima in AP is found to be a linear function of bandwidth. In contrast, in ECoG from conscious subjects, the bandwidth/minima-frequency curve saturates or plateaus at minima frequencies similar to the frequencies of previously reported frames of consciousness. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that local minima in AP may act as the shutter in a cinematographic model of consciousness. The fact that artificially generated samples of black noise with power spectra similar to ECoG data give similar results in the analyses above suggests that the discontinuous nature of consciousness is not due to some specifically biological factor, but is simply a consequence of the physical properties of the 1/f (aka power law) oscillations that are widely found in nature

Automated murmurs: the social mobile tourist application

The popularity of mobile devices and their increased computing power has given rise to surge in mobile computing technologies. Users are increasingly turning to mobile devices for information relating to their activities and location while on the move. Independent of this, the world has seen a huge uptake in the social web, which has fueled the production of applications where users are the sole providers of valuable information. In this work we present a mobile platform which leverages the popularity of mobile and social computing to produce a location sensitive messaging system which delivers user generated content to the public in the context of their physical location