Wafer-to-wafer process reproducibility during plasma etching often depends on the conditioning of the inside surfaces of the reactor. Passivation of reactor surfaces by plasma generated species, often called seasoning, can change the reactive sticking coefficients of radicals, thereby changing the composition of the radical and ion fluxes to the wafer. Ion bombardment of the walls may influence...

Amorphous Ta-oxide and Sn-nitride thin films were prepared by reactive sputter deposition on smooth float glass substrates and investigated ex situ using reflection mode XAFS. The absorption coefficient mu and its fine structure were extracted from the measured reflection mode XAFS spectra with a method based on the Kramers-Kronig transform. Bond distances, coordination numbers and Debye-Waller...

A differential sputter yield measurement technique is described, which consists of a quartz crystal monitor that is swept at constant radial distance from a small target region where a high current density xenon ion beam is aimed. This apparatus has been used to characterize the sputtering behavior of various forms of carbon including polycrystalline graphite, pyrolytic graphite, and PVD-infilt...

This project is a fundamental study into the development of low-cost, thin film solar cells. It explores the fabrication of semiconductor nanocomposites for photovoltaics using nanostructured inorganic materials and atomic layer deposition (ALD). In thin film technologies, there exists a common problem with conversion efficiency due to poor materials quality: the photogenerated electrons and ho...

Porous silicon samples were prepared by electrochemical etching method for different etching times. The structural properties of porous silicon (PS) samples were determined from the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) measurements. The surface mean root square roughness (σ rms) changes as function of porosity were studied, and the influence of etching time on porosity and roughness was studied too. U...

This paper shows that the reflectance in silicon nanowires (SiNWs) can be optimized as a function of the area of silicon substrate where the nanostructure growth. SiNWs were fabricated over four different areas of silicon substrates to study the size effects using electroless etching technique. Three different etching solution concentrations of silver nitrate (AgNO3) and hydroflu...

The authors report a new, important phenomenon: photo-assisted etching of p-type Si in chlorinecontaining plasmas. This mechanism was discovered in mostly Ar plasmas with a few percent added Cl2, but was found to be even more important in pure Cl2 plasmas. Nearly monoenergetic ion energy distributions (IEDs) were obtained by applying a synchronous dc bias on a “boundary electrode” during the af...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the (1) bond strength of a etch-and-rinse and self-etching adhesive systems to cavosurface enamel, (2) influence of the previous acid etching with phosphoric acid 35% to the self-etching adhesive application on bond strength values, and (3) analysis of the cavosurface enamel morphology submitted to different types of conditioning, with the use of...

in this paper, we have studied the electrical properties of the randomly distributed metallic (co and fe) nano/ micro wires on silicon substrate. deposition was carried out potentiostatically into the pores of the track-etch polycarbonate membrane spin coated onto the si substrate. spin coated films were irradiated with 150mev ni (+11) ions at a fluence of 8e7 ions/cm2, followed by uv irradiati...

AIMS These were to firstly evaluate the shear bond strength of a composite resin to primary dental enamel treated with a standard adhesive system but with varying phosphoric acid etching times along with a self-etching prime, secondly to analyse the etching patterns using SEM. METHODS Forty primary molars were used. In the first three groups, following acid etching, a layer of Prime & Bond NT...