Wafers composition

Undeniably, one of the most important teclmological achievements in the last half of this century is the microelectronics industry, the computer being one of its outstanding products. Essential to current and fiiture advances is the quality of the semiconductor materials used to construct vital electronic components. For example, ultra-clean silicon wafers are needed. Raman spectroscopy contributes to this task as a monitor, in real time, of the composition of the standard SC-1 cleaning solution (a mixture of water, H2O2 and NH OH) [175] that is essential to preparing the ultra-clean wafers. 

In Total Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis (TXRF), the sutface of a solid specimen is exposed to an X-ray beam in grazing geometry. The angle of incidence is kept below the critical angle for total reflection, which is determined by the electron density in the specimen surface layer, and is on the order of mrad. With total reflection, only a few nm of the surface layer are penetrated by the X rays, and the surface is excited to emit characteristic X-ray fluorescence radiation. The energy spectrum recorded by the detector contains quantitative information about the elemental composition and, especially, the trace impurity content of the surface, e.g., semiconductor wafers. TXRF requires a specular surface of the specimen with regard to the primary X-ray light. 

A composite film of SiC and diamond was produced from tetramethylsilane, hydrogen, and methane in a microwave plasma on single-crystal silicon wafers. Volume fraction of the components can be adjusted by varying the gas composition. 

Graf, D., Schnegg, A., Schmolke, R. et al., Morphology and Chemical Composition of Polishing Silicon Wafer Surfaces, Electrochemical Society Proceedings, Vol. 96-22,2000, pp. 186-196. 

On the other hand, Xiao et al. [215] reported that smooth, dense, and erystalline PbTe films with nearly stoichiometric composition could be obtained by an optimized electrodeposition process from highly acidic (pH 0) tellurite solutions of uncomplexed Pb(II), on Au-coated silicon wafers. The results from electroanalyti-cal studies on Te, Pb, and PbTe deposition with a Pt rde at various temperatures and solution compositions supported the induced co-deposition scheme. The microstructure and preferred orientation of PbTe films was found to change significantly with the deposition potential and electrolyte concentration. At -0.12 V vs. Ag/AgCl(sat. KCl), the film was granular and oriented preferentially in the [100] direction. At potentials more negative than -0.15 V, the film was dendritic and oriented preferentially in the [211] direction (Pig. 3.13). 

Figure 3 shows the amount of Bronsted sites, as measured by the surface of the characteristic IR peak at 1540 cm after outgassing at 523 K, as a function of the composition of the mechanical mixtures. The dashed lines represent the addition of the contribution of the pure phases, calculated as in Equation 3. An enhancement of the amount of Bronsted sites on the mixtures, when compared to the theoretical values, is observed. This effect is not very clear in SA6 series, but it is more evident in SA12 and SA60 series. The reproducibility of the experiments has been checked the variation between different wafers of the same sample was always inferior to 10%. 

This has been used, for instance, to follow the formation of palladium silicide in a silicon wafer for thicknesses up to 6nm [Vanleerdam et al., 1990]. More recently, investigation of the tails in LEIS has been used as a tool for high resolution nondestructive in-depth composition analysis of ultrathin layers [Brongersma et al., 2003] and shallow interfaces [Janssen et al., 2004]. 

In the framework of CUORICINO [41] and CUORE [42] experiments (see Section 16.5), Ge crystal wafers of natural isotopic composition have been doped by neutron irradiation, and the heavy doping led to materials close to the metal insulator transition. Several series of NTD wafers with different doping have been produced [43], After an implantation and metallization process on both sides of the wafers, thermistors of different sizes can be obtained by cutting the wafers and providing electrical contacts. 

Micro/nanostructures generated using these and related top-down approaches are geometrically and electrically homogeneous, with layouts that can be controlled over a wide range to realize not only ribbons and wires but also bars, platelets, membranes, and other structures. The main limitations of the top-down approach are as follows (1) The composition of the fabricated objects is limited to materials that are readily available in wafer or thin-film forms, (2) the etching processes can lead to some level of roughness on the surfaces of the structures, and (3) dimensions of less than 20 nm, for other than the thickness, are difficult to obtain reliably. 

There is no axial variation of gas-phase composition in the interwafer region between any two consecutive wafers because the interwafer spacing is small. 

The copyrolysis of 1 wt% dibromotetrafluoro-p-xylylene with commercially available hexafluoro-p-xylene (Aldrich) with metals was examined and it was found that it was indeed possible to prepare films that were spectroscopically indistinguishable from those deposited from dimer. The PA-F films obtained are of excellent quality, having dielectric constants of2.2-2.3 at 1 MHz and dissociation temperatures up to 530°C in N2. A uniformity of better than 10% can be routinely achieved with a 0.5-gm-thick film on a 5-in. silicon wafer with no measurable impurities as determined by XPS. During a typical deposition, the precursor was maintained at 50°C, the reaction zone (a ceramic tube packed with Cu or Ni) was kept at 375-550°C, and the substrate was cooled to -10 to -20°C. The deposited film had an atomic composition, C F 0 = 66 33 1 3 as determined by XPS. Except for 0, no impurities were detected. Within instrumental error, the film is stoichiometric. Poly(tetrafluoro-p-xylylene) has a theoretical composition ofC F = 2 1. Figure 18.2 illustrates the XPS ofthe binding energy... 

Degussa will develop composites with nanoparticles to produce wafer-thin plastic film that could be used for light emitting diodes, decorative applications, or to improve the surface properties of skis. 

The challenge for modeling the water balance in CCL is to link the composite, porous morphology properly with liquid water accumulation, transport phenomena, electrochemical kinetics, and performance. At the materials level, this task requires relations between composihon, porous structure, liquid water accumulation, and effective properhes. Relevant properties include proton conductivity, gas diffusivihes, liquid permeability, electrochemical source term, and vaporizahon source term. Discussions of functional relationships between effective properties and structure can be found in fhe liferafure. Because fhe liquid wafer saturation, 5,(2)/ is a spatially varying function at/o > 0, these effective properties also vary spatially in an operating cell, warranting a self-consistent solution for effective properties and performance. 

Perhaps more important than cost is the solution to the crucial problem of interfacial contacts that always plagues homogeneous GPE films prepared from traditional approaches. Since both cathode and anode composite materials are coated on their substrates with the same PVdF—HEP copolymer as the binder, the in situ gellification following the electrolyte activation effectively fuses the three cell components into an integrated multilayer wafer without physical boundaries, so that the interfaces between anode and electrolyte or cathode and electrolyte are well extended into the porous structures of these electrodes, with close similarity to the interfaces that a liquid electrolyte would access. 

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