Silicon implantation in GaAs

The electrical properties of room-temperature Si implants in GaAs have been studied. The implantations were done at 300 keV with doses ranging from 1.7×10^13 to 1.7×10^15 cm^–2. The implanted samples were annealed with silicon nitride encapsulants in H2 atmosphere for 30 min at temperatures ranging from 800 to 900°C to electrically activate the implanted ions. Results show that the implanted layers are n type, which implies that the Si ions preferentially go into Ga sites substitutionally. For low-dose implants, high (~90%) electrical activation of the implanted ions is achieved and the depth distribution of the free-electron concentration in the implanted layer roughly follows a Gaussian. However, for high-dose implants, the activation is poor (<15% for a 900 °C anneal) and the electron concentration profile is flat and deeper than the expected range

Studying the Imaging Characteristics of Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) through Numerical Simulations

Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) is one of the five payloads aboard the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)'s ASTROSAT space mission. The science objectives of UVIT are broad, extending from individual hot stars, star-forming regions to active galactic nuclei. Imaging performance of UVIT would depend on several factors in addition to the optics, e.g. resolution of the detectors, Satellite Drift and Jitter, image frame acquisition rate, sky background, source intensity etc. The use of intensified CMOS-imager based photon counting detectors in UVIT put their own complexity over reconstruction of the images. All these factors could lead to several systematic effects in the reconstructed images. A study has been done through numerical simulations with artificial point sources and archival image of a galaxy from GALEX data archive, to explore the effects of all the above mentioned parameters on the reconstructed images. In particular the issues of angular resolution, photometric accuracy and photometric-nonlinearity associated with the intensified CMOS-imager based photon counting detectors have been investigated. The photon events in image frames are detected by three different centroid algorithms with some energy thresholds. Our results show that in presence of bright sources, reconstructed images from UVIT would suffer from photometric distortion in a complex way and the presence of overlapping photon events could lead to complex patterns near the bright sources. Further the angular resolution, photometric accuracy and distortion would depend on the values of various thresholds chosen to detect photon events.Comment: Submitted to PASP, 16 Pages, 9 figure

Magnetically Recoverable Silica-Decorated Ferromagnetic-Nanoceria Nanocatalysts and Their Use with

Silica-decorated ferrite nanoparticles, a new kind, coated with ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN), have been prepared successfully by simple coprecipitation techniques. Powder X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (PXRD), Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), field emission-scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDX), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), inductive coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) techniques were used to characterize these nanoparticles. The catalysts are further studied for catalytic activity in solvent-free conditions. Importantly, these nanoparticles have been collected from the reaction mixture using an external magnet and recycled up to minimum of 15 cycles with no substantial loss of catalytic characteristics

Perfect Output Feedback in the Two-User Decentralized Interference Channel

In this paper, the $\eta$-Nash equilibrium ($\eta$-NE) region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel (IC) with perfect output feedback is approximated to within $1$ bit/s/Hz and $\eta$ arbitrarily close to $1$ bit/s/Hz. The relevance of the $\eta$-NE region is that it provides the set of rate-pairs that are achievable and stable in the IC when both transmitter-receiver pairs autonomously tune their own transmit-receive configurations seeking an $\eta$-optimal individual transmission rate. Therefore, any rate tuple outside the $\eta$-NE region is not stable as there always exists one link able to increase by at least $\eta$ bits/s/Hz its own transmission rate by updating its own transmit-receive configuration. The main insights that arise from this work are: $(i)$ The $\eta$-NE region achieved with feedback is larger than or equal to the $\eta$-NE region without feedback. More importantly, for each rate pair achievable at an $\eta$-NE without feedback, there exists at least one rate pair achievable at an $\eta$-NE with feedback that is weakly Pareto superior. $(ii)$ There always exists an $\eta$-NE transmit-receive configuration that achieves a rate pair that is at most $1$ bit/s/Hz per user away from the outer bound of the capacity region.Comment: Revised version (Aug. 2015

Interfacial strain in AlxGa1–xAs layers on GaAs

Detailed analysis of x-ray rocking curves was used to determine the depth profile of strain and composition in a 2500-Å-thick layer of AlxGa1–xAs grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition on 100 GaAs. The x value and layer thickness were in good agreement with the values expected from growth parameters. The presence of a transition region, 280 Å thick, was detected by the rocking curve. In this region, the Al concentration varies smoothly from 0 to 0.87. Measurement and control of the sharpness of such interfaces has important implications for heterojunction devices

Renormalization Group theory outperforms other approaches in statistical comparison between upscaling techniques for porous media

Determining the pressure differential required to achieve a desired flow rate in a porous medium requires solving Darcy's law, a Laplace-like equation, with a spatially varying tensor permeability. In various scenarios, the permeability coefficient is sampled at high spatial resolution, which makes solving Darcy's equation numerically prohibitively expensive. As a consequence, much effort has gone into creating upscaled or low-resolution effective models of the coefficient while ensuring that the estimated flow rate is well reproduced, bringing to fore the classic tradeoff between computational cost and numerical accuracy. Here we perform a statistical study to characterize the relative success of upscaling methods on a large sample of permeability coefficients that are above the percolation threshold. We introduce a new technique based on Mode-Elimination Renormalization-Group theory (MG) to build coarse-scale permeability coefficients. Comparing the results with coefficients upscaled using other methods, we find that MG is consistently more accurate, particularly so due to its ability to address the tensorial nature of the coefficients. MG places a low computational demand, in the manner that we have implemented it, and accurate flow-rate estimates are obtained when using MG-upscaled permeabilities that approach or are beyond the percolation threshold.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, Physical Review

Pulsed electron beam induced recrystallization and damage in GaAs

Single-pulse electron-beam irradiations of 300-keV 10^(15)Kr+/cm^2 or 300-keV 3×10^(12)Se+/cm^2 implanted layers in unencapsulated GaAs are studied as a function of the electron beam fluence. The electron beam pulse had a mean electron energy of ~-20 keV and a time duration of ~-10^(–7) s. Analyses by means of MeV He + channeling and TEM show the existence of narrow fluence window (0.4–0.7 J/cm^2) within which amorphous layers can be sucessfully recrystallized, presumably in the liquid phase regime. Too high a fluence produces extensive deep damage and loss of As

Sequential nature of damage annealing and activation in implanted GaAs

Rapid thermal processing of implanted GaAs reveals a definitive sequence in the damage annealing and the electrical activation of ions. Removal of implantation-induced damage and restoration of GaAs crystallinity occurs first. Irrespective of implanted species, at this stage the GaAs is n-type and highly resistive with almost ideal values of electron mobility. Electrical activation is achieved next when, in a narrow anneal temperature window, the material becomes n- or p-type, or remains semi-insulating, commensurate to the chemical nature of the implanted ion. Such a two-step sequence in the electrical doping of GaAs by ion implantation may be unique of GaAs and other compound semiconductors

Steady-state thermally annealed GaAs with room-temperature-implanted Si

Semi-insulating Cr-doped single-crystal GaAs samples were implanted at room temperature with 300-keV Si ions in the dose range of (0.17–2.0)×1015 cm–2 and were subsequently steady-state annealed at 900 and 950°C for 30 min in a H2 ambient with a Si3N4 coating. Differential Hall measurements showed that an upper threshold of about 2×1018/cm3 exists for the free-electron concentration. The as-implanted atomic-Si profile measured by SIMS follows the theoretical prediction, but is altered during annealing. The Cr distribution also changes, and a band of dislocation loops ~2–3 kÅ wide is revealed by cross-sectional TEM at a mean depth of Rp~3 kÅ. Incomplete electrical activation of the Si is shown to be the primary cause for the effect