As semiconductor manufacturing moves towards smaller logic devices and thinner gate oxides, there is serious concern that pattern-dependent charging during plasma etching will impede progress by distorting etch profiles and by causing oxide breakdown. Simulations of the final overetch predict that the use of ultrathin oxides (<5 nm), combined with a low substrate potential, will actually elimin...

Photogenerated charging properties of single Si nanorods (Si NRs) are investigated by electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) combined with laser irradiation. Under laser irradiation, Si NRs are positively charged. The amount of the charges trapped in single NRs as well as the contact potential difference between the tip and NRs' surface is achieved from an analytical fitting of the phase shift - ...

Although the most familiar consequences of specimen charging in transmission electron microscopy can be eliminated by evaporating a thin conducting film (such as a carbon film) onto an insulating specimen or by preparing samples directly on such a conducting film to begin with, a more subtle charging effect still remains. We argue here that specimen charging is in this case likely to produce a ...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have been touted as a transportation technology with lower fuel costs and emissions impacts than other vehicle types. Most analyses of PHEVs assume that the power system operator can either directly or indirectly control PHEV charging to coordinate it with power system operations. This paper examines the incentives of individual drivers making charging d...

Using atomistic pseudopotential wave functions we calculate the electron and hole charging energies of InAs quantum dots. We find that the charging energies depend strongly on the dielectric constant ǫout of the surrounding material, and that when the latter is smaller than the dielectric constant of the dot (weak external screening) the electron-electron and hole-hole interactions are dominate...

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and scanning ion microscope (SIM) observations were performed to investigate the charging effect and the related contrast variation for images of conductive and non-conductive specimens under electron and Gaþ ion beam irradiations. The contrast variation in the specimens was investigated by changing the coating conditions. It was found that the contrast in con...

Second harmonic generation (SHG) spectroscopy was used to characterize the pH-dependent electrostatic charging behavior of (0001) and (102) crystallographic surfaces of corundum (alpha-Al2O3) single-crystal substrates. The pH value of the point of zero charge (pH(pzc)) for each surface was determined by monitoring the SH response during three consecutive pH titrations conducted with 1, 10, and ...

The formation of small gold clusters at the initial stage of the metal growth on a thin film of the conjugated organic semiconductor diindenoperylene (DIP) leads to charging during ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS) investigations. Additional irradiation of the sample with visible light was successfully applied to re-establish charge neutrality on the sample surface. By varying the li...

Differential charging effects observed in the electron data of the University of California, San Diego, auroral particles experiment on Applied Technology Satellite 6 are described and analyzed. An electrostatic barrier around the environmental measurements experiment (EME) package on ATS 6 is shown to be the natural result of dielectrics around the spacecraft which are more negatively charged ...