Doping Dependence of Thermal Oxidation on n-type 4H-SiC

The doping dependence of dry thermal oxidation rates in n-type 4H-SiC was investigated. The oxidation was performed in the temperature range 1000C to 1200C for samples with nitrogen doping in the range of 6.5e15/cm3 to 9.3e18/cm3, showing a clear doping dependence. Samples with higher doping concentrations displayed higher oxidation rates. The results were interpreted using a modified Deal-Grove model. Linear and parabolic rate constants and activation energies were extracted. Increasing nitrogen led to an increase in linear rate constant pre-exponential factor from 10-6m/s to 10-2m/s and the parabolic rate constant pre-exponential factor from 10e9m2/s to 10e6m2/s. The increase in linear rate constant was attributed to defects from doping-induced lattice mismatch, which tend to be more reactive than bulk crystal regions. The increase in the diffusion-limited parabolic rate constant was attributed to degradation in oxide quality originating from the doping-induced lattice mismatch. This degradation was confirmed by the observation of a decrease in optical density of the grown oxide films from 1.4 to 1.24. The linear activation energy varied from 1.6eV to 2.8eV, while the parabolic activation energy varied from 2.7eV to 3.3eV, increasing with doping concentration. These increased activation energies were attributed to higher nitrogen content, leading to an increase in effective bond energy stemming from the difference in C-Si (2.82eV) and Si-N (4.26eV) binding energies. This work provides crucial information in the engineering of SiO2 dielectrics for SiC MOS structures, which typically involve regions of very different doping concentrations, and suggests that thermal oxidation at high doping concentrations in SiC may be defect mediated.Comment: 13 pages. 9 figures, accepted as a transiction in IEEE electron device. TED MS#8035

Pressure-Induced Simultaneous Metal-Insulator and Structural-Phase Transitions in LiH: a Quasiparticle Study

A pressure-induced simultaneous metal-insulator transition (MIT) and structural-phase transformation in lithium hydride with about 1% volume collapse has been predicted by means of the local density approximation (LDA) in conjunction with an all-electron GW approximation method. The LDA wrongly predicts that the MIT occurs before the structural phase transition. As a byproduct, it is shown that only the use of the generalized-gradient approximation together with the zero-point vibration produces an equilibrium lattice parameter, bulk modulus, and an equation of state that are in excellent agreement with experimental results.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter

Quantum temporal correlations and entanglement via adiabatic control of vector solitons

It is shown that optical pulses with a mean position accuracy beyond the standard quantum limit can be produced by adiabatically expanding an optical vector soliton followed by classical dispersion management. The proposed scheme is also capable of entangling positions of optical pulses and can potentially be used for general continuous-variable quantum information processing.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, v2: accepted by Physical Review Letters, v3: minor editing and shortening, v4: included the submitted erratu

Genetic diversity analysis of stress tolerant rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Fourteen rice genotypes, composed of six salt tolerant, three submergence tolerant, two drought tolerant genotypes along with three high yielding genotypes, released from Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) were used for genetic diversity analysis using 40 simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. All of the used SSR markers were found polymorphic among the 14 rice genotypes. The amplicon size ranged from 75 bp (RM436) to 330 bp (RM26360). A total of 168 alleles were detected, the number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 (RM252, S03120) to 6 (RM570, S12055, S11033) with an average of 4.2 alleles per locus. Polymorphic information content (PIC) value varied from 0.21 (RM252) to 0.76 (S07024) with an average of 0.57. From genetic distance co-efficient, the highest and lowest genetic distant varieties were found for BRRI dhan28 vs. BRRI dhan43 (0.82%) and BRRI dhan40 vs. BRRI dhan44 (0.37%) respectively. Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA)-cluster analysis divided the rice genotypes into four distinct clusters. The information obtained from this study would be useful for planning the breeding program to develop stress tolerant rice variety with high yielding ability and fine grain quality.Key words: Genetic diversity, simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers, stress tolerant, rice

Magnetic excitations in the S = 1/2 antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic chain compound BaCu2V2O8 at zero and finite temperature

Unlike most quantum systems which rapidly become incoherent as temperature is raised, strong correlations persist at elevated temperatures in $S=1/2$ dimer magnets, as revealed by the unusual asymmetric lineshape of their excitations at finite temperatures. Here we quantitatively explore and parameterize the strongly correlated magnetic excitations at finite temperatures using the high resolution inelastic neutron scattering on the model compound BaCu$_2$V$_2$O$_8$ which we show to be an alternating antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin$-1/2$ chain. Comparison to state of the art computational techniques shows excellent agreement over a wide temperature range. Our findings hence demonstrate the possibility to quantitatively predict coherent behavior at elevated temperatures in quantum magnets.Comment: 5 pages + 6 pages supplement; problems with list of references are fixe

Normal Mode Determination of Perovskite Crystal Structures with Octahedral Rotations: Theory and Applications

Nuclear site analysis methods are used to enumerate the normal modes of $ABX_{3}$ perovskite polymorphs with octahedral rotations. We provide the modes of the fourteen subgroups of the cubic aristotype describing the Glazer octahedral tilt patterns, which are obtained from rotations of the $BX_{6}$ octahedra with different sense and amplitude about high symmetry axes. We tabulate all normal modes of each tilt system and specify the contribution of each atomic species to the mode displacement pattern, elucidating the physical meaning of the symmetry unique modes. We have systematically generated 705 schematic atomic displacement patterns for the normal modes of all 15 (14 rotated + 1 unrotated) Glazer tilt systems. We show through some illustrative examples how to use these tables to identify the octahedral rotations, symmetric breathing, and first-order Jahn-Teller anti-symmetric breathing distortions of the $BX_{6}$ octahedra, and the associated Raman selection rules. We anticipate that these tables and schematics will be useful in understanding the lattice dynamics of bulk perovskites and would serve as reference point in elucidating the atomic origin of a wide range of physical properties in synthetic perovskite thin films and superlattices.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 17 tables. Supporting information accessed through link specified within manuscrip

Magnetic soft modes in the locally distorted triangular antiferromagnet alpha-CaCr2O4

In this paper we explore the phase diagram and excitations of a distorted triangular lattice antiferromagnet. The unique two-dimensional distortion considered here is very different from the 'isosceles'-type distortion that has been extensively investigated. We show that it is able to stabilize a 120{\deg} spin structure for a large range of exchange interaction values, while new structures are found for extreme distortions. A physical realization of this model is \alpha-CaCr2O4 which has 120{\deg} structure but lies very close to the phase boundary. This is verified by inelastic neutron scattering which reveals unusual roton-like minima at reciprocal space points different from those corresponding to the magnetic order.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and lots of spin-wave

Hydrology and Sediment Loading in a Degrading Natural Lake System in Malaysia

Hydrology and suspended sediment loading in the catchment of the natural Chini Lake (second largest natural lake in Malaysia) was investigated. Suspended sediment loads and discharge from seven selected feeder rivers were measured over a period of 1 year from January to December 2006. The river water flow rate during the sampling periods was relatively low, ranging from 0.001 to 1.31 m3/s or an average of 0.21 m3/s. The highest and lowest stream flow discharge rates were recorded from the Gumum and Cenahan River sub-catchment areas, respectively. The amount of sediment load ranged from 0.49 to 166.02 kg/km2/day or an average of 30.57 kg/km2/day in the study area. The highest sediment load was recorded in the wet season and the lowest in the dry season. Anthropogenic activities have significantly affected the hydrological functions and availability of the suspended sediments, and have thus influenced the variation in sediment output in the study area

Detection of crystal structure of chemically-deposited copper selenide thin films

A low cost Chemical Bath Deposition (CBD) system has been developed in our laboratory for the preparation of copper selenide thin film. Good quality thin films of smooth surface of copper selenide thin films of compositions Cu2-xSe (x = 0.1–0.5) and Cu3Se2 were deposited using sodium selenosulfate as a source of selenide ions. Crystal structure of copper selenide (Cu1.8Se and Cu3Se2) thin films has been identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. When the film is annealed at 250ºC in air, the phases of Cu1.8Se and Cu3Se2 become crystalline, with structures of cubic (berzelianite) and tetragonal, respectively, whereas the as-deposited film was found to be disorder. The crystallinity is very low in as-deposited samples, which improves on annealing in air at 250ºC. The grain size of the as-deposited samples was very small, which was increased about 30% owing to annealing in air at 250ºC.Author Affiliation: Al-Mamun, S H Firoz and A B M O Islam 1.Department of Physics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh 2.Institute of Glass and Ceramic Research and Testing Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), Dhaka-1205, Bangladesh E-mail : [email protected] of Physics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh 2.Institute of Glass and Ceramic Research and Testing Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), Dhaka-1205, Banglades