Monte Carlo simulations of pattern-dependent charging during interlevel dielectric ~ILD! deposition in high-density plasmas reveal that the initial conformality of the ILD film plays a crucial role in metal line charging up and the subsequent degradation to the buried gate oxide to which the metal line is connected. Line charging occurs when the top dielectric is thick enough to prevent tunneli...

Whether electrons or ions are involved in triboelectric charging of insulators remains elusive. In keeping with the multidisciplinary nature of the problem, we designed polymers whose surface compositions (determined by XPS) differed from the bulk. Charging against insulators related to their topmost surface compositions, but against metals related to their bulk compositions. We propose the hyp...

This review article summarizes the main results of recent fundamental research on the electrical charging of nanometer-sized aerosol particles (particle diameter below 10 nm, Knudsen number above about 15, kinetic regime). It covers topics of great relevance to aerosol processing and measurement, such as the effect of the presence of a number of ions on the surface of a nanoparticle on its elec...

The substrate-mediated magnetic interactions between substitutional Co and Fe impurities at the Cu(111) surface have been theoretically investigated as a function of external surface charging. The modification of the interactions as a result of the metallic screening and charge rearrangements are determined self-consistently from first principles by using the Green’s-function Korringa-Kohn-Rost...

We consider settings where electric vehicle drivers participate in a market mechanism to charge their vehicles. Existing work typically assumes that participants are fully rational and can report their charging preferences accurately. However, this may not be reasonable in settings with non-experts. To explore this, we design a novel game called Bid2Charge and compare a fully expressive interfa...

We studied electrostatic charging of ice films induced by the impact of 1−200-keV Ar+ ions and their subsequent discharging postirradiation. We derived the positive surface electrostatic potential from the kinetic energy of sputtered molecular ions and with a Kelvin probe. Measurements were performed as a function of film thickness, temperature, and ion energy. Charging requires that the projec...

We demonstrate that if charging caused by electron irradiation of an insulator is controlled by a defocused flux of soft-landing positive ions, secondary electron ~SE! images can contain contrast due to lateral variations in ~i! changes in the SE yield caused by subsurface trapped charge and ~ii! the SE-ion recombination rate. Both contrast mechanisms can provide information on microscopic vari...

Introduction: The surface of the Moon, like any object in a plasma, charges to an electrostatic potential that minimizes the total incident current [1]. The charging currents come from four main sources: photoemission of electrons (Jph), plasma electrons (Je), plasma ions (Ji), and secondary electrons (Jsec). (Jsec arises primarily from surface ionization by plasma electrons.) The lunar dayside...

[i] We present elementary analytic models for a fast-spinning, dielectric-coated, spherical spacecraft charging in sunlight. The models are based on a multipole expansion of Laplacian potentials external to the spacecraft surface. We assume azimuthal symmetry about the spin axis, and the spin period must be short compared with surface differential charging times. There are three parameters in t...