The AuGe-alloy source and drain (S/D) formed on SiO2/Si(100) by the lithography process was investigated for the scaling of the organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with bottom-contact geometry. The S/D was fabricated by the lift-off process utilizing the resist of OFPR. The OFETs with minimum channel length of 2.4 µm was successfully fabricated by the lift-off process. The fabrication yield of Au S/D was 57%, while it was increased to 93% and 100% in case of the Au-1%Ge and Au-7.4%Ge S/D, respectively. Although the mobility of the OFETs with Au-7.4%Ge S/D was decreased to 1.1×10-3 cm2/(Vs), it was able to be increased to 5.5×10-2 cm2/(Vs) by the surface cleaning utilizing H2SO4/H2O2 mixture solution (SPM) and post metallization annealing (PMA) after lift-off process, which was higher than that of OFET with Au S/D.

The Log-structured File System (LFS) transforms random writes to a huge sequential one to provide superior write performance on storage devices. However, LFS inherently suffers from overhead incurred by cleaning segments. Specifically, when file system utilization is high and the system is busy, write performance of LFS degenerates significantly due to high cleaning cost. Also, in the newer flash memory based SSD storage devices, cleaning leads to reduced SSD lifetime as it incurs more writes. In this paper, we propose an enhancement to the original LFS to alleviate the performance degeneration due to cleaning when the system is busy. The new scheme, which we call Slack Space Recycling (SSR), allows LFS to delay on-demand cleaning during busy hours such that cleaning may be done when the load is much lighter. Specifically, it writes modified data directly to invalid areas (slack space) of used segments instead of cleaning on-demand, pushing back cleaning for later. SSR also has the added benefit of increasing the lifetime of the now popular SSD storage devices. We implement the new SSR-LFS file system in Linux and perform a large set of experiments. The results of these experiments show that the SSR scheme significantly improves performance of LFS for a wide range of storage utilization settings and that the lifetime of SSDs is extended considerably.

Despite the improvement of the accuracy of RFID readers, there are still erroneous readings such as missed reads and ghost reads. In this letter, we propose two effective models, a Bayesian inference-based decision model and a path-based detection model, to increase the accuracy of RFID data cleaning in RFID based supply chain management. In addition, the maximum entropy model is introduced for determining the value of sliding window size. Experiment results validate the performance of the proposed method and show that it is able to clean raw RFID data with a higher accuracy.

We propose a new effective method of managing flash memory space for flash memory-specific file systems based on a log-structured file system. Flash memory has attractive features such as non-volatility and fast I/O speed, but it also suffers from inability to update in situ and from limited usage (erase) cycles. These drawbacks necessitate a number of changes to conventional storage (file) management techniques. Our focus is on lowering cleaning cost and evenly utilizing flash memory cells while maintaining a balance between these two often-conflicting goals. The proposed cleaning method performs well especially when storage utilization and the degree of locality are high. The cleaning efficiency is enhanced by dynamically separating cold data and non-cold data, which is called 'collection operation.' The second goal, that of cycle-leveling, is achieved to the degree that the maximum difference between erase cycles is below the error range of the hardware. Experimental results show that the proposed technique provides sufficient performance for reliable flash storage systems.

Surface discharge is widely used for industrial ozonizers and toxic gas treatments, and is noise source. In this paper, an experimental investigation from the point of view of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) has been conducted to evaluate the noise characteristics of surface discharge combustion flue gas cleaning systems. Mechanisms of propagation, coupling and formation are proposed based on the experimental observations.

Wet cleaning in actual LSI process is difficult to remove contamination perfectly, because the cleaning condition must be moderate to maintain device characteristics and device texture and because wet cleaning is not so effective for the particles generated during processes such as etching, photo lithography and film formation. Particle reduction depends on particle characteristics, i.e. the sticking force and the chemical structure of the particles. Metallic contamination on wafers, depending on the kind of solutions and the metal concentration in cleaning solutions, degrades TDDB characteristics and recom-bination lifetime. Although the lifetime degradation by the metallic contamination is appreciable, it is much smaller than those caused by damage in etching and in ion implantation.

We have investigated the relationship between particle removal efficiency and etched depth in SC-1 solution (the mixture composed of ammonium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide and DI water) for Si wafers. The Si etching rate increases with increasing NH4OH (ammonium hydroxide) concentration. The particle removal efficiency depends on the etched Si depth, and is independent of NH4OH concentration. The minimum required Si etching depth to get over 95% particle removal efficiency is 4 nm. Particles on the Si wafers exponentially decrease with increasing the etched Si depth. However the particle removal efficiency is not affected by particle size ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 µm. The particle removal mechanism on the Si wafers in SC-1 solution is dominated by the lift-off of particles due to Si undercutting and redeposition of the removed particle.

Breakdown fields and the charges to breakdown (QBD) of oxides increased after UV/Cl2 pre-oxidation cleaning. This is due to decreased residual metal contaminants on silicon surfaces in the bottom of the LOCOS region after wet cleaning. Treatment in NH4OH, H2O2 and H2O prior to UV/Cl2 cleaning suppressed increases in surface roughness and kept leakage currents through the oxides after UV/Cl2 cleaning as low as those after wet cleaning alone. The large junction leakage currents--caused by metal contaminants introduced during dry etching--decreased after UV/Cl2 cleaning which removes the contaminated layer.

The hole-trapping and electron-trapping characteristics in dry oxides following various chemical cleanings have been studied using the avalanche injection method. The results indicated that hole trap density was almost the same for the chemical cleanings. Electron traps with two capture cross sections, σ, were observed. Electron traps with σ210-17 cm2 were found to be independent of the chemical cleaning, while those with σ410-19 cm2 to depend on the cleaning. Comparison with previous works indicated that electron traps with larger σ were related to Si-OH bonds. The other electron trap showed the increasing trapping rate with increasing the current density injected into oxide. This was explained by trap generation due to electron injection. A correlation between the density of generated electron traps and the amount of Al contamination on surfaces before dry oxidation was observed.

The mechanism of UV-excited dry cleaning using photoexcited chlorine radicals has been investigated for removing iron and aluminum contamination on a silicon surface. The iron and aluminum contaminants with a surface concentration of 1013 atoms/cm2 were intentionally introduced via an ammonium-hydrogenperoxide solution. The silicon etching rates from the Uv-excited dry cleaning differ depending on the contaminants. Fe and Al can be removed in the same manner. The removal of Fe and Al is highly temperature dependent, and is little affected by the silicon etching depth. Both Fe and Al on the silicon surface were completely removed by UV-excited dry cleaning at a cleaning temperature of 170, and were decreased by two orders of magnitude from the initial level when the surface was etched only 2 nm deep.

It is crucial to make Si wafer surfaces ultraclean in order to realize such advanced processes as the low-temperature process and the high-selectivity in the ULSI production. The ultra clean wafer surface must be perfectly free from particles, organic materials, metallic impurities, native oxide, surface microroughness, and adsorbed molecule impurities. Since the metallic contamination on the wafer surface, which is one of the major contaminants to be overcome in order to come up with the ultra clean wafer surface, has the fatal effect on the device characteristics, the metallic impurities in the wafer surface must be suppressed at least below 1010 atoms/cm2. Meanwhile the current dry processes such as reactive ion etching or ion implantation, suffer the metallic contamination of 10121013 atoms/cm2. The wet process becomes increasingly important to remove the metallic impurities introduced in the dry process. Employing a new evaluation method, the metallic impurity segregations at the inrerface between the Si and liquid employed in the wet cleaning process of the Si surface such as ultrapure water and various clemicals were studied. This article clearly indicate that it is important to suppress the metallic impurities, such as Cu, which can exchange electrons with Si to be segregated, at least below the 10 ppt level in ultrapure water and liquid chemical such as HF, H2O2, which are employed in the final step of the wet cleaning. When the ultrapure water rinsing is performed in the ambience containing oxygen, the native oxide grows accompanying an inclusion of metals featuring lower electron negativity than Si. It is revealed that, in order to provent the metallic impurity precipitation, it is require not only to remove metallic impurities from ultrapure water but also to keep the cleaning ambience without oxygen, such as the nitrogen ambience, so as to suppress the native oxide formation.

Synchrotron radiation (SR) irradiation of amorphous SiO2 (a-SiO2) induces continuous removal of the SiO2 film without the use of etching gas. The dependence of the photostimulated evaporation rate on substrate temperature and SR intensity was measured and the reaction mechanism is discussed in detail separately for surface and bulk. Using the high material selectivity of the Sr-stimulated evaporation, a sefl-aligned process to fabricate a 0.6 µm line-and-space pattern is presented. Si surface cleaning is demonstrated as an example of application of this reaction to thin native oxide film grown by wet pretreatment. Si(100)-21 and Si(111)-77 structures were observed by reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) at temperatures as low as 650. The difference between a-SiO2 and native oxide on the evaporation rate is higlighted. Epitaxial Si growth using disilane (Si2H6) gas occurs selectively in the SR-irradiated region on a Si(100) surface. Using SR irradiation in an ultrahigh vacuum, followed by residual oxide reduction by disilane, is proposed as an effective cleaning method.

A new cleaning solution (FPM; HF-H2O2-H2O) was investigated in order to remove effectively metallic impurities on the silicon wafer surface. The removability of metallic impurities on the wafer surface and the concentrations of metallic impurities adsorbed on the wafer surface from each contaminated cleaning solution were compared between FPM and conventional cleaning solutions, such as HPM (HCl-H2O2-H2O), SPM (H2SO4-H2O2), DHF (HF-H2O) and APM (NH4OH-H2O2-H2O). This new cleaning solution had higher removability of metallic impurities than conventional ones. Adsorption of some kinds of metallic impurities onto the wafer surface was a serious problem for conventional cleaning solutions. This problem was solved by the use of FPM. FPM was important not only as a cleaning solution for metallic impurities, but also as an etchant. Furthemore, this new cleaning solution made possible to construct a simple cleaning system, because the concentrations of HF and H2O2 are good to be less than 1% for each, and it can be used at room temperature.