Experimental evidence of a relationship between monomer plasma residence time and carboxyl group retention in acrylic acid plasma polymers

Decreasing carboxyl retention in deposits from the glow region of an acrylic acid plasma was measured by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and chemical derivatisation as the collection distance from the monomer vapour inlet was increased. Volatilisation of plasma polymerised acrylic acid was detected after trifluoroethanol derivatisation; this is correlated with evaporation of low molecular weight components observed previously.     

Profiling Voids Embedded in a Slab by a Non-Linear Model

In this paper, by applying a non linear model for the electromagnetic inverse scattering, a technique for the dielectric profiling of a planarly layered medium is investigated and applied to void localization and diagnostics inside a homogeneous lossless slab (one-dimensional geometry). Data are collected under plane wave multifrequency normal incidence. Suitable finite dimensional representations for the unknown functions are introduced and their influence on the model is discussed. The resulting functional equation is solved by the method of weighted residuals and the solution algorithm amounts to minimizing a non quadratic function, where particular attention is devoted to reduce the occurrence of local minima. Finally, the inversion algorithm is validated by applications to both simulated and experimental data.     

A Built-in Self-Test Scheme with Diagnostics Support for Embedded SRAM

In this paper we propose a novel built-in self-test (BIST) design for embedded SRAM cores. Our contribution includes a compact and efficient BIST circuit with diagnosis support and an automatic diagnostic system. The diagnosis module of our BIST circuit can capture the error syndromes as well as fault locations for the purposes of repair and fault/failure analysis. In addition, our design provides programmability for custom March algorithms with lower hardware cost. The combination of the on-line programming mode and diagnostic system dramatically reduces the effort in design debugging and yield enhancement. We have designed and implemented test chips with our BIST design. Experimental results show that the area overhead of the proposed BIST design is only 2.4% for a 128 KB SRAM, and 0.65% for a 2 MB one.     

The Influence of Ir and Pt Addition on the Synthesis of Fullerenes at Atmospheric Pressure

The addition of metallic Ir and Pt to a fullerene-forming, atmospheric-pressure plasma reactor was found to influence the generation of carbonaceous products. It was observed that the added metals were efficiently dispersed into the plasma and that their presence increased the yield of fullerenes. The addition of Ir led to a noticeable shift in the fullerene distribution towards C₆₀, whereas the addition of Pt increased the proportion of C₆₀ oxides and decreased the proportion of higher fullerenes. Addition of Ir also caused a reduction of the soot particle size and the formation of a considerable quantity of carbon nanotubes.     

Effect of gas mixing ratio on gas-phase composition and etch rate in an inductively coupled CF4/Ar plasma

In this work, we carried out investigations aimed at understanding the effect of gas mixing ratio on plasma parameters, gas phase composition and etch rate in CF₄/Ar inductively coupled plasma. For this purpose, a combination of experimental methods and modelling was used. Experiments showed that electron temperature and electron density are not very sensitive to variations of Ar content in CF₄/Ar plasma. From a zero-dimensional plasma model, the densities of both neutral and charged particles change monotonically. The analysis of surface kinetics based on an ion-assisted etching mechanism showed the possibility of non-monotonic etch rate behaviour due to a concurrence of chemical and physical etching pathways.     

The Role of Plasma Science in Graduate Education

In many academic institutions plasma science is currently viewed as a basic physics discipline encompassing a broad range of applications including fusion, astrophysics, space physics, low temperature plasma physics for the semiconductor industry, and environmental remediation of nuclear and chemical waste. Although the applications are broad, it is accurate to state that the major development of the field has been driven by the scientific needs of a single program, fusion. As such, plasma science and engineering has played an important role in graduate education since the early days of the fusion program, late 50's, early 60's.     

Diagnostics and monitoring of complex production processes using measurement of vibration-acoustic signals

A vibration-acoustic method for diagnostics and monitoring of production processes such as cutting metals makes it possible compared with other methods to reduce the requirement for measuring equipment and it provides a computer representation of the results observed. The set of equipment suggested has low cost and it exhibits considerable flexibility compared with existing equipment. __________ Translated from Izmeritel’naya Tekhnika, No. 7, pp. 30–34, July, 2006.     

A comparative study on the effect of VUV radiation in plasma SiOx-coated polyimide and polypropylene films

Wettability of polyimide (PI) and polypropylene (PP) films have been improved using SiO_x-like thin layers deposited from a mixture of hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) and oxygen in a microwave distributed electron cyclotron resonance plasma reactor. The films wettability evolution behaviors were evaluated through the results of contact angle measurements, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The plasma depositions of SiO_x thin layers in presence of VUV radiation induce a contact angle decrease to about 7° and 35° for PI and PP films, respectively. XPS data showed that such difference in wettability is attributed to the increase of hydrophilic group's proportion at the surface of coated PI films due to VUV irradiation. AFM images showed that the PI surface topography remains relatively smooth when coated in presence of VUV radiation. However, in the case of PP films, AFM images revealed the growth of irregular structure due to a substrate etching effect supported by VUV radiation. For polymers coated without VUV irradiation, the deconvolution of the C1s peaks showed a significant decrease of CO bonds for both PI and PP substrates.     

Use of a neural network to link AFM etch patterns to plasma parameters

Plasmas play a critical role in depositing thin films or etching fine patterns while manufacturing integrated circuits. A new model for plasma diagnosis is presented. This was accomplished by linking atomic force microscopy (AFM) to plasma parameters using a neural network. Experimental AFM data were collected during the etching of silicon oxynitride films in C₂F₆ inductively coupled plasma. Surface roughness of etched patterns was characterized by means of discrete wavelet transformation. This led to the construction of three vertical (type I), diagonal (type II), and horizontal (type III) wavelet coefficient-based models. The performance of diagnosis models was evaluated in terms of the prediction and recognition accuracies. Both accuracies were optimized as a function of the number of hidden neurons. Comparisons revealed that the type I model yielded the largest recognition and the smallest prediction error. This was demonstrated even under stricter monitoring conditions. More improved diagnosis is expected by enhancing AFM resolution.     

Electron acceleration by single and double laser beams

The longitudinal electric field of single and double Gaussian laser beams are used to accelerate electrons. The longitudinal field of the single beam is concentrated on the axis and is favourable for acceleration. A set of two beams is considered. Beams run parallel, collinearly, overlap partially and have a phase difference iπ in between. As a result, the transverse components of fields cancel each other while the longitudinal components are double-fold. In both schemes, the electrons are accelerated in lengths of the Rayleigh range, which is common to the plasma-based accelerators.