Sol-Gel Deposited Porogen Based Porous Low-k Thin Films for Interlayer Dielectric Application in ULSI Circuits

Porous SiO2 low-k thin films with low dielectric constant were successfully deposited by sol-gel spin-coating technique. The films were deposited by using Tertaethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as a precursor solution and HF was used as an acid catalyst solution. The Tween80 with different volumetric concentrations i.e. 0.0 ml, 0.5 ml and 0.7 ml was used as a pore generator to lower the dielectric constant of the films by introducing the porosity in the films matrix. The thickness and refractive index (RI) of low-k thin films have been measured by Ellipsometer. The refractive index and thickness of the films observed to be decreasing with increase in Tween80 concentration. The chemical bonding structures of films were analyzed by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectroscopy and the stretching, bending and rocking peaks appear at 1077 cm – 1, 967 cm – 1, 447 cm – 1 respectively confirm the formation of Si-O-Si network. The RIs of the films deposited at 0 ml, 0.5 ml and at 0.7 ml of Tween80 concentration are found to be 1.34, 1.26, and 1.20 respectively. Based on RI values of the films, the porosity percentage, density and dielectric constant have been calculated by standard formulation method. The increase in porosity percentage of films from 3 % to 55 % with increase in Tween80 concentration reveals that, the most of the hydroxyl group and porogen get evaporated and form more voids in the films. This increase in porosity percentage causes to lower the dielectric constant of films and was found to be 2.26 at the 0.7 ml of Tween80 concentration. Such porogen based low dialectic constant thin films can be suitable for interlayer dielectric (ILD) applications in ULSI circuits. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/2959

Deposition And Surface Modification Of Low-K Thin Films For Ild Application In Ulsi Circuits

The low-k thin films have been deposited successfully by sol gel technique using tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) precursor and the surface of deposited thin films have been modified by wet chemical treatment using trimethylcholorsilane (TMCS) and hexane solution with 15 % volume ratio to remove the hydroxyl groups from the surface of deposited low-k thin films. The characterization of the as deposited and surface modified low-k thin films has been carried out by Ellipsometer, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, and contact angle meter. For the determination of the dielectric constant of the deposited thin film the metal –insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structure was formed by depositing the Aluminium (Al) metal on the low-k thin film. Further the capacitance-voltage curve of the MIS structure has been obtained at 1 MHz frequency. The dielectric constant of the as deposited thin film is found to be 2.15. The lowering of O-H peaks and appearance of CH3 peaks in FTIR spectra confirms the surface modification of SiO2 films. The contact angle of the deposited thin film is changed from 83.3° to 104° after surface modification that validates the transformation of thin film surface from hydrophilic to hydrophobic after the surface modification treatment. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/950

Synthesis of Cerium Dioxide High-k Thin Films as a Gate Dielectric in MOS Capacitor

In the present study, the Al/CeO2 / p-Si MOS capacitor was fabricated by depositing the Aluminium (Al) metal layer by thermal evaporation technique on sol-gel derived CeO2 high-k thin films on p-Si substrate. The deposited CeO2 films were characterized by Ellipsometer to study the refractive index that is determined to be 3.62. The FTIR analysis was carried out to obtain chemical bonding characteristics. Capacitance-voltage measurements of Al/CeO2 /p-Si MOS capacitor were carried out to determine the dielectric constant, equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) and flat band shift (VFB) for the deposited CeO2 film of 16.22, 1.62 nm and 0.7 V respectively. The conductance voltage curve was used to determine the interface trap density (Dit) at the CeO2 / p-Si interface that is calculated to be 1.29 × 1013 cm – 2 eV – 1 for measurement frequency of 500 kHz. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3192

Surface Passivation of Germanium Using NH3 Ambient in RTP for High Mobility MOS Structure

Ge CMOS is very striking for the post Si-CMOS technology. However, we have to attempt a number of challenges with regard to materials and their interface control. In this paper we have investigated the control of the interfacial properties of SiO2 / Ge gate stack structures by the thermal nitridation technique. Structural and electrical properties of SiO2 gate-dielectric metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors deposited by sputtering on germanium are studied. The structural characterization confirmed that the thin film was free of physical defects and smooth surface of the films after PDA at 500 °C in N2 ambient. The smooth surface SiO2 thin films were used for Pt / SiO2 / GeON / Ge MOS structures fabrication. The MOS structure yields a low leakage current density of 9.16 × 10 – 6Acm – 2 at 1 V. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3100

Angular momenta creation in relativistic electron-positron plasma

Creation of angular momentum in a relativistic electron-positron plasma is explored. It is shown that a chain of angular momentum carrying vortices is a robust asymptotic state sustained by the generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation characteristic to the system. The results may suggest a possible electromagnetic origin of angular momenta when it is applied to the MeV epoch of the early Universe.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

A new strategy for enhancing imputation quality of rare variants from next-generation sequencing data via combining SNP and exome chip data

Background: Rare variants have gathered increasing attention as a possible alternative source of missing heritability. Since next generation sequencing technology is not yet cost-effective for large-scale genomic studies, a widely used alternative approach is imputation. However, the imputation approach may be limited by the low accuracy of the imputed rare variants. To improve imputation accuracy of rare variants, various approaches have been suggested, including increasing the sample size of the reference panel, using sequencing data from study-specific samples (i.e., specific populations), and using local reference panels by genotyping or sequencing a subset of study samples. While these approaches mainly utilize reference panels, imputation accuracy of rare variants can also be increased by using exome chips containing rare variants. The exome chip contains 250 K rare variants selected from the discovered variants of about 12,000 sequenced samples. If exome chip data are available for previously genotyped samples, the combined approach using a genotype panel of merged data, including exome chips and SNP chips, should increase the imputation accuracy of rare variants. Results: In this study, we describe a combined imputation which uses both exome chip and SNP chip data simultaneously as a genotype panel. The effectiveness and performance of the combined approach was demonstrated using a reference panel of 848 samples constructed using exome sequencing data from the T2D-GENES consortium and 5,349 sample genotype panels consisting of an exome chip and SNP chip. As a result, the combined approach increased imputation quality up to 11 %, and genomic coverage for rare variants up to 117.7 % (MAF < 1 %), compared to imputation using the SNP chip alone. Also, we investigated the systematic effect of reference panels on imputation quality using five reference panels and three genotype panels. The best performing approach was the combination of the study specific reference panel and the genotype panel of combined data. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that combined datasets, including SNP chips and exome chips, enhances both the imputation quality and genomic coverage of rare variants

Identification of type 2 diabetes loci in 433,540 East Asian individuals

Meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 240 loci that are associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D)1,2; however, most of these loci have been identified in analyses of individuals with European ancestry. Here, to examine T2D risk in East Asian individuals, we carried out a meta-analysis of GWAS data from 77,418 individuals with T2D and 356,122 healthy control individuals. In the main analysis, we identified 301 distinct association signals at 183 loci, and across T2D association models with and without consideration of body mass index and sex, we identified 61 loci that are newly implicated in predisposition to T2D. Common variants associated with T2D in both East Asian and European populations exhibited strongly correlated effect sizes. Previously undescribed associations include signals in or near GDAP1, PTF1A, SIX3, ALDH2, a microRNA cluster, and genes that affect the differentiation of muscle and adipose cells3. At another locus, expression quantitative trait loci at two overlapping T2D signals affect two genes—NKX6-3 and ANK1—in different tissues4–6. Association studies in diverse populations identify additional loci and elucidate disease-associated genes, biology, and pathways

A clause-based heuristic for SAT solvers

Abstract. We propose a new decision heuristic for DPLL-based propositional SAT solvers. Its essence is that both the initial and the conflict clauses are arranged in a list and the next decision variable is chosen from the top-most unsatisfied clause. Various methods of initially organizing the list and moving the clauses within it are studied. Our approach is an extension of one used in Berkmin, and adopted by other modern solvers, according to which only conflict clauses are organized in a list, and a literal-scoring-based secondary heuristic is used when there are no more unsatisfied conflict clauses. Our approach, implemented in the 2004 version of zChaff solver and in a generic Chaff-based SAT solver, results in a significant performance boost on hard industrial benchmarks.