Impurity gettering

Transition metal impurities are well known to cause detrimental effects when present in the active regions of Si devices. Their presence degrades minority carrier lifetime, provides recombination-generation centers, increases junction leakage current and reduces gate oxide integrity. Thus, gettering processes are used to reduce the available metal impurities from the active region of microelectronic circuits. Gettering processes are usually divided into intrinsic (or internal) and extrinsic (or external) categories. Intrinsic refers to processing the Si wafer in a way to make available internal gettering sites, whereas extrinsic implies externally introduced gettering sites. Special concerns have been raised for intrinsic gettering. Not only will the formation of the precipitated oxide and denuded zone be difficult to achieve with the lower thermal budgets, but another inherent limit may set in. In this or any process which relies on the precipitation of metal silicides the impurity concentration can only be reduced as low as the solid solubility limit. However, the solubilities of transition metals relative to silicide formation are typically found to be {approx_gt}10{sup 12}/cm{sup 3} at temperatures of 800 C and above, and thus inadequate to getter to the needed concentration levels. It is thus anticipated that future microelectronic device processing will require one or more of the following advances in gettering technology: (1) new and more effective gettering mechanisms; (2) quantitative models of gettering to allow process optimization at low process thermal budgets and metal impurity concentrations, and/or (3) development of front side gettering methods to allow for more efficient gettering close to device regions. These trend-driven needs provide a driving force for qualitatively new approaches to gettering and provide possible new opportunities for the use of ion implantation in microelectronics processing

Strain distributionand electronic property modifications in Si/Ge axial nanowires hetrostructures

Molecular dynamics simulations were carried out for Si/Ge axial nanowire heterostructures using modified effective atom method (MEAM) potentials. A Si–Ge MEAM interatomic cross potential was developed based on available experimental data and was used for these studies. The atomic distortions and strain distributions near the Si/Ge interfaces are predicted for nanowires with their axes oriented along the [111] direction. The cases of 10 and 25 nm diameter Si/Ge biwires and of 25 nm diameter Si/Ge/Si axial heterostructures with the Ge disk 1 nm thick were studied. Substantial distortions in the height of the atoms adjacent to the interface were found for the biwires but not for the Ge disks. Strains as high as 3.5% were found for the Ge disk and values of 2%–2.5% were found at the Si and Ge interfacial layers in the biwires. Deformation potential theory was used to estimate the influence of the strains on the band gap, and reductions in band gap to as small as 40% of bulk values are predicted for the Ge disks. The localized regions of increased strain and resulting energy minima were also found within the Si/Ge biwire interfaces with the larger effects on the Ge side of the interface. The regions of strain maxima near and within the interfaces are anticipated to be useful for tailoring band gaps and producing quantum confinement of carriers. These results suggest that nanowire heterostructures provide greater design flexibility in band structure modification than is possible with planar layer growth

Possible implications of the channeling effect in NaI(Tl) crystals

The channeling effect of low energy ions along the crystallographic axes and planes of NaI(Tl) crystals is discussed in the framework of corollary investigations on WIMP Dark Matter candidates. In fact, the modeling of this existing effect implies a more complex evaluation of the luminosity yield for low energy recoiling Na and I ions. In the present paper related phenomenological arguments are developed and possible implications are discussed at some extent.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, preprint ROM2F/2007/15, submitted for publicatio

National Needs Drivers for Nanotechnology

Societal needs related to demographics, resources, and human behavior will drive technological advances over the next 20 years. Nanotechnology is anticipated to be an important enabler of these advances, and thus maybe anticipated to have significant influence on new systems approaches to solving societal problems as well as on extending current science and technology-based applications. To examine the potential implications of nanotechnology a societal needs-driven approach is taken. Thus the methodology is to present the definition of the problem, and then examine system concepts, technology issues, and promising future directions. We approach the problem definition from a national and global security perspective and identify three key areas involving the condition of the planet, the human condition, and global security. In anticipating societal issues in the context of revolutionary technologies, such as maybe enabled by nanoscience, the importance of working on the entire life cycle of any technological solution is stressed

Energetic ion beams in semiconductor processing: Summary of a DOE panel study

The trend toward smaller dimensions in integrated circuit technology presents severe physical and engineering challenges for ion implantation. These challenges, together with the need for physically-based models at exceedingly small dimensions, are leading to a new level of understanding of fundamental defect science in silicon. Recently the DOE Council on Materials requested that our panel examine the current status and future research opportunities in the area of ion beams in semiconductor processing. Particularly interesting are the emerging approaches to defect and dopant distribution modeling, transient enhanced diffusion, high energy implantation and defect accumulation, and metal impurity gettering. These topics were explored both from the perspective of emerging science issues and technology challenges

Saturation and isotopic replacement of deuterium in low-Z material

The saturation and replacement of hydrogen isotopes implanted into TiC, TiB/sub 2/, VB/sub 2/, B/sub 4/C, B, Si, and C has been examined experimentally and modeled theoretically. The deuterium saturation concentrations for these materials varied from .16 to .57. A new isotopic replacement model is presented which predicts isotopic trapping and exchange on the basis of the depth dependence of the implanted ions and the experimentally determined hydrogen saturation concentration. Our results indicate that, for these materials used as coatings on components in a D-T fueled tokamak, T recovery by ion induced replacement with H or D should be feasible and that T buildup will be at tolerable levels