Amorphous metallic films in silicon metallization systems

The general objective was to determine the potential of amorphous metallic thin films as a means of improving the stability of metallic contacts to a silicon substrate. The specific objective pursued was to determine the role of nitrogen in the formation and the resulting properties of amorphous thin-film diffusion barriers. Amorphous metallic films are attractive as diffusion barriers because of the low atomic diffusivity in these materials. Previous investigations revealed that in meeting this condition alone, good diffusion barriers are not necessarily obtained, because amorphous films can react with an adjacent medium (e.g., Si, Al) before they recrystallize. In the case of a silicon single-crystalline substrate, correlation exists between the temperature at which an amorphous metallic binary thin film reacts and the temperatures at which the films made of the same two metallic elements react individually. Amorphous binary films made of Zr and W were investigated. Both react with Si individually only at elevated temperatures. It was confirmed that such films react with Si only above 700 C when annealed in vacuum for 30 min. Amorphous W-N films were also investigated. They are more stable as barriers between Al and Si than polycrystalline W. Nitrogen effectively prevents the W-Al reaction that sets in at 500 C with polycrystalline W

Symmetry and Z_2-Orbifolding Approach in Five-dimensional Lattice Gauge Theory

In a lattice gauge-Higgs unification scenario using a Z_2-orbifolded extra-dimension, we find a new global symmetry in a case of SU(2) bulk gauge symmetry. It is a global symmetry on sites in a fixed point with respect to Z_2-orbifolding, independent of the bulk gauge symmetry. It is shown that the vacuum expectation value of a Z_2-projected Polyakov loop is a good order parameter of the new symmetry. The effective theory on lattice is also discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; refined the explanation