Strained and Relaxed Semiconducting Silicide Layers Heteroepitaxially Grown on Silicon

The semiconducting silicide ß-FeSi2, which can be grown epitaxially on silicon, is potentially an interesting material for integrated optoelectronic devices. Its semiconducting state stabilised by a solid state Jahn Teller effect is very unusual. Indeed the epitaxial growth of FeSi2 on silicon (111) in a Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) chamber has revealed the existence of a metallic strained FeSi2 phase which is the result of a simultaneous electronic and structural transition. The stability and the relaxation of this strained phase which is specifically due to the epitaxy of FeSi2 on the silicon (111) face will be detailed in this paper. Furthermore, depending on the kinetics of the growth, we shall show that it is possible to epitaxially grow, on silicon, any silicide existing at low temperature (bcc Fe, FeSi, ß-FeSi2) and to observe dynamical transitions from the strained FeSi2 phase toward epitaxial ß-FeSi2 and FeSi

Rippled area formed by surface plasmon polaritons upon femtosecond laser double-pulse irradiation of silicon: the role of carrier generation and relaxation processes

The formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS, ripples) upon irradiation of silicon with multiple irradiation sequences consisting of femtosecond laser pulse pairs (pulse duration 150 fs, central wavelength 800 nm) is studied numerically using a rate equation system along with a two-temperature model accounting for one- and two-photon absorption and subsequent carrier diffusion and Auger recombination processes. The temporal delay between the individual equal-energy fs-laser pulses was varied between $0$ and $\sim 4$ ps for quantification of the transient carrier densities in the conduction band of the laser-excited silicon. The results of the numerical analysis reveal the importance of carrier generation and relaxation processes in fs-LIPSS formation on silicon and quantitatively explain the two time constants of the delay dependent decrease of the Low-Spatial-Frequency LIPSS (LSFL) area observed experimentally. The role of carrier generation, diffusion and recombination are quantified individually.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Conference On Laser Ablation (COLA) 2013. The final publication is available at http://link.springer.com. Accepted for publication in Applied Physics

Possible surface plasmon polariton excitation under femtosecond laser irradiation of silicon

The mechanisms of ripple formation on silicon surface by femtosecond laser pulses are investigated. We demonstrate the transient evolution of the density of the excited free-carriers. As a result, the experimental conditions required for the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons are revealed. The periods of the resulting structures are then investigated as a function of laser parameters, such as the angle of incidence, laser fluence, and polarization. The obtained dependencies provide a way of better control over the properties of the periodic structures induced by femtosecond laser on the surface of a semiconductor material.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Journal of Applied Physic

Faster algorithms for 1-mappability of a sequence

In the k-mappability problem, we are given a string x of length n and integers m and k, and we are asked to count, for each length-m factor y of x, the number of other factors of length m of x that are at Hamming distance at most k from y. We focus here on the version of the problem where k = 1. The fastest known algorithm for k = 1 requires time O(mn log n/ log log n) and space O(n). We present two algorithms that require worst-case time O(mn) and O(n log^2 n), respectively, and space O(n), thus greatly improving the state of the art. Moreover, we present an algorithm that requires average-case time and space O(n) for integer alphabets if m = {\Omega}(log n/ log {\sigma}), where {\sigma} is the alphabet size

Rippled area formed by surface plasmon polaritons upon femtosecond laser double-pulse irradiation of silicon

International audienceThe formation of near-wavelength laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on silicon upon irradiation with sequences of Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser pulse pairs (pulse duration 150 fs, central wavelength 800 nm) is studied theoretically. For this purpose, the nonlin-ear generation of conduction band electrons in silicon and their relaxation is numerically calculated using a two-temperature model approach including intrapulse changes of optical properties, transport, diffusion and recombina-tion effects. Following the idea that surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) can be excited when the material turns from semiconducting to metallic state, the "SPP active area" is calculated as function of fluence and double-pulse de-lay up to several picoseconds and compared to the experimentally observed rippled surface areas. Evidence is presented that multi-photon absorption explains the large increase of the rippled area for temporally overlapping pulses. For longer double-pulse delays, relevant relaxation processes are identified. The results demonstrate that femtosecond LIPSS on silicon are caused by the excitation of SPP and can be controlled by temporal pulse shaping. ©2013 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (050.6624) Subwavelength structures; (140.3390) Laser materials processing; (160.6000) Semiconductor materials; (240.5420) Polaritons

Evaluation of Luminosity Reduction in the ILC Head-on Scheme from Parasitic Collisions

online : http://cern.ch/AccelConf/p07/PAPERS/THPMN008.PDFInternational audienceAn interaction region with head-on collisions is being developed for the ILC as an alternative to the base line 14 mrad crossing angle design, motivated by simpler beam manipulations upstream of the interaction point (IP) and a more favourable configuration for the detector and physics analysis. The design of the post-collision beam line in this scheme involves however a number of technological challenges, one of which is the strength requirement for the electrostatic separators (ES) placed immediately after the final doublet to extract the spent beam. In this paper, we examine in detail the main mechanism behind this requirement, the multi-beam kink instability, which results from the long-range beam-beam forces at the parasitic crossings after the bunches have been extracted. Our analysis uses realistic bunch distributions, the Guinea-Pig program to treat beam-beam effects at the interaction point and the DIMAD program to track the disrupted beam distributions in the postcollision beam line

The origins, evolution, and functional potential of alternative splicing in vertebrates.

Alternative splicing (AS) has the potential to greatly expand the functional repertoire of mammalian transcriptomes. However, few variant transcripts have been characterized functionally, making it difficult to assess the contribution of AS to the generation of phenotypic complexity and to study the evolution of splicing patterns. We have compared the AS of 309 protein-coding genes in the human ENCODE pilot regions against their mouse orthologs in unprecedented detail, utilizing traditional transcriptomic and RNAseq data. The conservation status of every transcript has been investigated, and each functionally categorized as coding (separated into coding sequence [CDS] or nonsense-mediated decay [NMD] linked) or noncoding. In total, 36.7% of human and 19.3% of mouse coding transcripts are species specific, and we observe a 3.6 times excess of human NMD transcripts compared with mouse; in contrast to previous studies, the majority of species-specific AS is unlinked to transposable elements. We observe one conserved CDS variant and one conserved NMD variant per 2.3 and 11.4 genes, respectively. Subsequently, we identify and characterize equivalent AS patterns for 22.9% of these CDS or NMD-linked events in nonmammalian vertebrate genomes, and our data indicate that functional NMD-linked AS is more widespread and ancient than previously thought. Furthermore, although we observe an association between conserved AS and elevated sequence conservation, as previously reported, we emphasize that 30% of conserved AS exons display sequence conservation below the average score for constitutive exons. In conclusion, we demonstrate the value of detailed comparative annotation in generating a comprehensive set of AS transcripts, increasing our understanding of AS evolution in vertebrates. Our data supports a model whereby the acquisition of functional AS has occurred throughout vertebrate evolution and is considered alongside amino acid change as a key mechanism in gene evolution