Polyurea thin films containing azo-based nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore were prepared by co-deposition of 4,4'-diphenylmethane diisocyanate and 2,4-diamino-4'-nitroazobenzene monomers using the ionization-assisted method. The co-deposited film reacted to form polyurea after annealing in the air. The dichroic optical absorption spectra indicated the preferential orientation of dipole moments in the as-deposited film. The substrate bias voltage influenced the optical anisotropy. Maker fringe measurement showed that the films have NLO activity without the poling process.

The chemical stability of the constituent elements in polycrystalline Sr-Bi-Ta-O thin film with various Bi content prepared by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Moreover, that of the epitaxial films was also investigated to estimate the effect of the grain boundary in polycrystalline films. Therefore, only the Bi element drastically changed from Bi3+ state to Bi0 one by the Ar sputtering. This change increased with increasing the Ta/Bi mole ratio in the film from 0.64 to 1.67. This result was observed not only for the polycrystalline films but also for the epitaxial films, suggesting that this is the grain character not grain boundary one. The stability and the leakage character of the film strongly depend on the constituent of the film.

Micropatterning of organosilane self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) was demonstrated on the basis of photolithography using an excimer lamp radiating vacuum ultra-violet (VUV) light of 172 nm in wavelength. This lithography is generally applicable to micropatterning of organic thin films including alkyl and fluoroalkyl SAMs, since its patterning mechanism involves cleavage of C-C bonds in organic molecules and subsequent decomposition of the molecules. In this study, SAMs were prepared on Si substrates covered with native oxide by chemical vapor deposition in which an alkylsilane, that is, octadecyltrimethoxysilane [CH3(CH2)17Si(OCH3)3, ODS] or a fluoroalkylsilane, that is, 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorodecyltrimethoxy-silane [CF3(CF2)7CH2CH2Si(OCH3)3, FAS] were used as precursors. Each of these SAMs was photoirradiated through a photomask placed on its surface. As confirmed by atomic force microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, the SAMs were decomposed and removed in the photoirradiated area while the masked areas remained undecomposed. A micropattern of 2 µm in width was successfully fabricated. Furthermore, microstructures composed of two different SAMs, that is, ODS and FAS, were fabricated as follows. For example, an ODS-SAM was first micropatterned by the VUV-lithography. Since, the VUV-exposed region on the ODS-SAM showed an affinity to the chemisorption of organosilane molecules, the second SAM, i. e. , FAS, confined to the photolithographically defined pattern was successfully fabricated. Due to the electron negativity of F atoms, the FAS covered region showed a more negative surface potential than that of the ODS surface: its potential difference was ca. 120 mV as observed by Kelvin probe force microscopy.

Polymeric thin films can be prepared by physical vapor deposition in several manners such as direct evaporation of the polymer, co-evaporation of two monomers followed by polyaddition or polycondensation reaction, or evaporation of single monomer followed by chain polymerization. The ionization-assisted deposition (IAD) was proposed as a new method of polymer deposition that has special features such as activation of polymerization reaction and aligning of the dipole orientation. These mechanisms were utilized for the formation of vinyl polymer and polyurea thin films aiming for such applications as organic light emitting diodes and piezoelectric devices.

A novel optical technique for the measurement of temperature is proposed. This is accomplished by depositing alternating 1/4 wave layers of silicon nitride and silicon-rich silicon nitride at the end of an optical fiber. These layers of alternating refractive index form the equivalent of a Bragg grating of a high temperature material. When the fiber and the Bragg grating are heated, the Bragg stack expands, and there is a change in the reflective peak wavelength of this wave stack. Thus, the wavelength of peak reflectivity is a function of temperature. Currently, the 15 nm spectral width of the Bragg stacks is achieved in our laboratory, which is conveniently monitored with a CCD solid state spectrometer and the temperature sensor probes can be also multiplexed at separated specific reflection wavelength. In the experiment, the temperatures in excess of 1,100 centigrade have been measured with a resolution of less than 3 centigrade degree.

Equipment simulation can provide valuable support in reactor design and process optimization. This article describes the physical and chemical models used in this technique and the current state of the art of the available software tools is reviewed. Moreover, the potential of equipment simulation will be highlighted by means of three recent examples from advanced quarter micron silicon process development. These include a vertical batch reactor for LPCVD of arsenic doped silicon oxide, a multi station tungsten CVD reactor, and a plasma reactor for silicon etching.

Thin films of PTFE (mean molecular weight of source material 8500) were deposited by ionization-assisted deposition (IAD) method at different ion acceleration voltages Va on substrates kept at room temperature. The molecular chains in the film were found to be oriented in parallel with the substrate, and the film has preferential crystal orientation to (100) plane. Although the ion acceleration did not give significant influence on the film orientation and chemical structure, IAD was effective to improve the surface smoothness. The Cu decoration test revealed that the pinhole density in the film is reduced and the insulating capability is improved by depositing the film at Va = 500 V. The result of dielectric loss measurement for Al/PTFE/Al capacitors was in consistency. However, excessive ion acceleration deteriorated the insulating property, probably due to the dielectric breakdown that occurred in the course of deposition.

Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we studied structural defects in a Sr0. 7Bi2. 3Ta2O9 (SBT) thin film to be used for ferroelectric memory devices. We examined the effects of the substrate, crystal continuity, and dislocations in crystals as major causes of defects. For this study, we used an SBT thin film grown from an alkoxide solution. Since crystal growth was hardly influenced by the substrate, the substrate had little influence on the occurrence of defects resulted in misfit of lattice constant. Regions of partially low crystal continuity were observed in the SBT thin film. In these regions, the orientation was still uniform, but the continuity of the crystal grain was low because of the defects. In addition, variation in contrast was observed in the crystals, however, no obvious variation in chemical composition was found in this region of varying contrast. Therefore, the contrast variation is considered to be attributed to the dislocation. Such a dislocation was found to be occurred in the direction of the (2010) plane in many instances. The defects in the SBT film were also confirmed by the TEM observation.

The post-annealing process has been investigated for (Ba, Sr)TiO3 [BST] thin films employed as a capacitor dielectric in 1 Gbit dynamic random access memories (DRAMs). The effects of post-annealing on morphology, crystallinity, and dielectric properties were examined for thin film capacitors with BST prepared on Pt electrodes by liquid source chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The direct annealing of BST capacitors caused a roughening in surface morphology of the upper Pt electrodes and BST films. However, the post-annealing of capacitors with a silicon dioxide passivation layer was found to cause little change in surface morphology of Pt and BST, and also no significant deterioration in leakage current. The improvement in crystallinity of BST films through post-annealing was confirmed at a temperature in the range 700-850 by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). Moreover, the post-annealing experiments for BST films with different compositions showed that the post-annealing greatly increases the dielectric constant of BST films having approximately stoichiometric composition. The leakage and breakdown properties of BST films were also examined, indicating that excess Ti ions result in an increase of the turn-on voltage and the breakdown time. Based on these investigations, the electrical properties of dielectric constant ε 260, equivalent silicon dioxide thickness teq 0. 44 nm, and leakage current JL110-7 A/cm2 at 1. 9 V were successfully obtained for stoichiometric 30-nm-thick BST films post-annealed at 750. Hence, it can be concluded that the post-annealing is a promising technique to enhance the applicability of CVD-deposited BST films with conformal coverage to memory cell capacitors of 1 Gbit DRAMs.

Sr0. 7Bi2. 3Ta2O9(SBT) films are drawing attention as fatigue-free materials. We prepared an SBT film containing discontinuous crystals in the Bi-layered compound using a misted deposition method. In comparison to films prepared by the spin-on method, leakage current was low and spontaneous polarization is high but saturation performance was low. The low saturation performance seems attributable to the inclusion of discontinuous crystals in the Bi-layered compound, while the low leakage current may be explained by the films smaller, denser particles, which form a film without voids, resulting in higher uniformity. The misted deposition method has advantages of finer grain size and higher uniformity.

In order to improve the sensitivity of micromachined sensors applied with electrostatic fields and increase their actuated force of electrostatic micromachined actuators, "electrets," which are dielectrics carrying non equilibrium permanent space charges of polarization distribution, are very important. In this paper, positively corona charged silicon dioxide electrets, which are deposited by Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition (PCVD) and thermally oxidized, are investigated. Physical studies will be described, in which the charge stability is correlated to Thermally Stimulated Current (TSC) measurements and to Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) analysis. Some intrinsic differences have been observed between materials. The electrets with superior long-term charge stability contain 10,000 times as much E' center (Si3 as the ones with inferior long-term charge stability. Finally, some investigations on the long-term charge storage mechanism of the positively charged silicon dioxide electret will be described.

The 4th harmonics of a Nd:YAG laser beam (266 nm) is applied to fabricate highly oriented Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ -SrTiO3-Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ multilayer structures. It has been shown that the emission temperature of a film surface will change during deposition, depending on deposition conditions, even though the heater temperature is constant. The change of substrate temperature is strongly correlated to film characteristics such as critical temperature, c-axis length, and resistivity. The insitu monitoring of the substrate temperature is useful for obtaining high-quality Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ films reproducibly. It is also shown that a SrTiO3 layer prevents oxygen restoration in a Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ underlayer. The relationship between oxygen deficiency and the annealing conditions is studied.

In order to simulate the mechanism of particle growth by film deposition, imaginary-particle formation method has been newly developed. By using this formation method, the particle size, the particle height and the position of particle on a wafer could be controlled very easily. In this study, the imaginary-particles of various size larger than 0.15 micron and various height were formed on a wafer. By using these imaginary-particles, the effects of a deposition method, a film thickness, a particle size and a particle height upon the particle growth were investigated. As deposition methods, low pressure CVD method, plasma CVD method and sputtering method were compared. As a result, in all deposition method, it's clear that the particle growth doesn't depend on the initial size, and is proportional to the film thickness. Their particle growth rates are characterized by the deposition method, and their values are 1.9, 1.1 and 0.64 in low pressure CVD, plasma CVD and sputtering method, respectively. These values can be explained by the step coverage decided by the deposition method. Furthermore, the particle growth on imaginary-particle was compared with that on the real-particle. It is clear that the growth mechanism of the real-particle is closely similar to that of imaginary-particle, and the study by use of the imaginary-particle is very effective to make clear the mechanism of particle growth. Therefore, the particle size which should be controlled before deposition process is necessary to be decided by counting the particle growth shown in this paper.

The magnetic properties and the structure of electroless-deposited NiFeB films were investigated in comparison with those of electrodeposited NiFe films. The electroless-deposited NiFeB film with 27at% Fe content had the lowest coercivity, H, as low as 0.5 Oe with a saturation magnetic flux density, Bs, of 1.0 T. The saturation magnetostriction, λ, and the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, Hk, were 5.010-6 and 10 Oe, respectively, which were larger than those of the conventional, electrodeposited permalloy film. The permeability of as-deposited Ni70Fe27B3 film was 1000 at 1 MHz. In order to improve the permeability, the film was heated at 200 in a magnetic field applied in the hard-axis direction to decrease the Hk value, and the permeability became 2000 at 1 MHz. The crystal structure and grain size of NiFeB and NiFe films were investigated by XRD, THEED and TEM. Both films with low Hc had an fcc structure; the grain size of the NiFeB film was smaller than 10 nm, while that of the NiFe film was larger, approximately 20 nm. The results suggested that the electroless-deposited NiFeB film had a larger magnetic anisotropy than the electrodeposited NiFe film. Moreover, the films with Hc less than 10 Oe ded not show clear difference between their TEM bright images and THEED patterns.

Mesa structures have been investigated to optimize a buried-heterostructure (BH) for a GaInAsP/InP surface-emitting (SE) laser regrown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), and it has been found that a square mesa top pattern of which the sides are at an angle of 45 to the 011 orientation is suitable. A 1.3-µm GaInAsP/InP square buried heterostructure (SBH) SE laser with this mesa structure has been demonstrated and low-threshold CW oscillation (threshold current Ith=0.45 mA) at 77 K and low-threshold room-temperature pulsed oscillation (Ith=12 mA) have been obtained.

Electrical and optical properties of organic multilayer structure have been investigated. Two types of current-voltage characteristics have been found for thin multilayer structure of organic films. Optical property and its application for electroluminescent diode have been presented. The diode characteristics have been discussed in terms of energy band scheme.

A new method for simulation of etching and deposition processes has been developed. This method is based on fundamental morphological operations derived from image and signal processing. As the material surface during simulation moves in time, the geometry either increases or decreases. If the simulation geometry is considered as a two-valued image (material or vacuum), etching and deposition processes can be simulated by means of the erosion and dilation operation. Together with a cellular material representation this method allows an accurate and stable simulation of three-dimensional arbitrary structures. Simulation results for several etching and deposition problems demonstrate accuracy and generality of our method.

A new redundancy technique especially suitable for ultra-high-speed static RAMs (SRAMs) has been developed. This technique is based on a decoding-method that uses two kinds of fuses without introducing any additional delay time. One fuse is initially ON and can be turned OFF afterwards, if necessary, by a cutting process using a focused ion beam (FIB). The other is initially OFF and can be turned ON afterwards by a connecting process using laser chemical vapor deposition (L-CVD). This technique is applied to a 64 kbit SRAM having a 1.5-ns access time. The experimental results obtained through an SRAM chip repaired using this redundancy technique show that this technique does not introduce any increase in the access time and does not reduce the operational margin of the SRAM.

A new direct projection patterning technique of aluminum using synchrotron radiation (SR) is proposed. It is based on the thermal reaction control effect of SR excitation. In the case of the Si surface, pure thermal growth is possible at 200, however, this growth is suppressed perfectly by SR irradiation. On the other hand, Al growth on the SiO2 surface is impossible at the same temperature thermally, however, SR has an effect to initiate thermal reaction. Both new effects of SR, suppression and initiation, are clarified to be caused by atomic order level thin layers formed from CVD gases by SR excitation on the surfaces. By using these effects, the direct inverse and normal projection patterning of Al are successfully demonstrated.

Among the many fabrication methods for oxide superconductor films, metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is particularly suitable for industrial application because of its mass productivity and the low growth temperature. Therefore we have studied this technique using the horizontal cold wall furnace type MOCVD method to obtain high quality superconducting films. As the result, we have succeeded in fabricating YBa2Cu3Oy films which have high critical temperatures (over 80 K) under substrate temperatures as low as 700 without post-annealing. But, in the course of our experiments, it was found that the thicknesses of YBa2Cu3Oy films fabricated by MOCVD were not uniform. The cause of this non-uniformity is believed to be that the deposition rate exponentially falls off along the flow direction because of the decrease of the source gas concentration through the reaction. In this paper, this non-uniformity is analytically studied. It is shown that the deposition rate decrease can be controlled with a tapered inner tube, and that these theoretical results are in good agreement with the results of experiment. In addition, it is indicated that the superconducting property of the films has less dependence on substrate position as a result of the tapered inner tube.