Recent studies have shown that the Cu/cap layer interface is the dominant diffusion path for electromigration (EM) in Cu interconnects, making it important to develop effective methods to evaluate the effect of passivation layer on interfacial mass transport and EM lifetime for Cu interconnects. This work shows that a set of isothermal stress relaxation tests together with appropriate modeling ...

The matched asymptotic (singular perturbation) treatment of the nucleation equation [V. A. Shneidman, Sov. Phys. Tech. Phys. 32, 76 (1987); 33, 1338 (1988)] is modified to include finite heating rate effects, which follow the isothermal transient stage. Despite the complicated mathematical structure of the discrete Becker-Doring equation, the obtained analytical solution is shown to be accurate...

Glasses in a wide range of chemical composition were thermally poled and the stability of the second-order optical nonlinearity induced was studied through isothermal annealing experiments. Enhanced stability was found in aluminosilicate and aluminoborosilicate with respect to silica ~at least a five order of magnitude increase in lifetime!. Such dramatic enhancement was explained by the strong...

Fiber Bragg gratings with greatly enhanced thermal stability have been fabricated by the use of femtosecond laser pulse irradiation on optical fibers with relaxed residual stress, through using high temperature annealing treatment. The grating reflectivity and resonant wavelength can be maintained for periods up to 20 hours using isothermal measurements and temperatures up to 1200 degrees C. No...

An curvature measurement technique was used to characterize the stress evolution during reaction of a Ni film and a silicon substrate to form nickel silicide. Stress changes were measured at each stage of the silicide growth. When the nickel films were subjected to longtime isothermal annealing, stresses that developed during silicide formation gradually relaxed. Fitting the experimental result...

Indium tin oxide (ITO) is widely applied as a transparent conductive oxide coating. A standard and successful industrial route of production is its deposition by magnetron sputtering from a compound (oxide) target [1]. To increase cost efficiency, it would be preferable to sputter reactively from a metal target at sufficiently high partial pressure of oxygen. However, under this condition, a sa...

The effect of the thermal history on microstructural changes in aluminized and Pt-aluminized Ni-based single-crystal superalloys was investigated. The superalloy substrates were first electropolished to get rid of the residual surface strain. Then, Pt was electrodeposited and vacuum annealing was conducted for some of the substrates, and aluminized and Pt-aluminized specimens were prepared usin...