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Several device concepts have been further evaluated after the successful implementation of epitaxial Si, SiGe and/or Si:C layers. Most of the next device generations will put limitations on the thermal budget of the deposition processes without making concessions on the epitaxial layer quality. In this work we address the impact of ex-situ wet chemical cleans and in-situ pre-epi bake steps, which are required to obtain oxide free Si surfaces for epitaxial growth. The combination of defect measurements, Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy, photoluminescence, lifetime measurements, and electrical diode characterization gives a very complete overview of the performance of low-temperature pre-epi cleaning methods. Contamination at the epi/substrate interface cannot be avoided if the pre-epi bake temperature is too low. This interface contamination is traceable by the photoluminescence and lifetime measurements. It may affect device characteristics by enhanced leakage currents and eventually by yield issues due to SiGe layer relaxation or other defect generation. A comparison of state of the art 200 mm and 300 mm process equipment indicates that for the same thermal budgets the lowest contamination levels are obtained for the 300 mm equipments.

High-k gate dielectrics (HK), such as HfO2 or HfSiON, are being considered as the gate dielectric option for the 45nm node and beyond. In order to alleviate the Fermi-level pinning issue and to enhance the CET (Capacitive Effective Thickness) by generating the depletion layer in poly-Silicon gate, metal gate electrodes with proper work functions (WF) have to be used on the high-k dielectrics.

Strained silicon engineering was first used at the 90-nm node. Nowadays, a series of techniques has seen wide-spread use and many derivatives are available because of their ease of integration and cost-effective features [ , ]. As a main part of stressor technique, embedded SiGe-S/D technology is reported to improve the pMOSFET drive current [ , ].

The introduction of metal gates and high-k dielectrics in FEOL and porous ULK dielectrics in BEOL presents severe issues [1] and leads to the requirement of new chemistries and processes. A major challenge in cleaning is the removal of photoresist (PR) in both FEOL and BEOL. In current semiconductor device fabrication flow, the photoresist strip process in FEOL is mostly achieved by applying a sequence of plasma ashing followed by a wet-clean step with sulfuric-peroxide mixture (SPM). But in general, ashing leads to strong oxidation or etching of silicon substrate. Hence, several approaches for ashless PR strip have been reported, such as hot SPM [2] and the combination of a pre-treatment using high velocity CO2 aerosol [3].

With the continuous shrinkage of critical sizes in semiconductor manufacturing, nano-particles smaller than 100-nm are becoming a potential threat to devices in chips. Storage of wafers contaminated during process steps often results in a decrease of particle removal efficiency in subsequent clean, a phenomenon referred to as aging. In this work, the influence of aging on the removal of silica and silicon nitride nano-particles from hydrophilic Si wafers was studied for different storage conditions. Trends observed for aging as a function of particle size and for different tools indicated that aging will become an issue for critical cleans where substrate etching must be kept very low and the physical component of the clean must be decreased to prevent damage to fine structures. Controlling the relative humidity during storage helped in lowering the effect of aging.

Cleaning of nano-particles is becoming a major challenge in semiconductor manufacturing as efficient particle removal must be achieved without substrate loss and without damage to fragile structures. In this work cleaning performance and structural damage by a mixed fluid-jet technique were evaluated and directly compared to the performance of several megasonic systems. The test vehicles were hydrophilic Si wafers contaminated with 78-nm SiO2 particles and 70-nm poly-gatestack line patterned wafers. The results showed a broader process window for particle removal without damaging for the mixed fluid-jet technique compared to the megasonic systems.

Recent studies suggest that the disease isoform of prion protein (PrPSc) is non-neurotoxic in the absence of cellular isoform of prion protein (PrPC), indicating that PrPC may participate directly in the neurodegenerative damage by itself. Meanwhile, transgenic mice harboring a high-copy-number of wild-type mouse (Mo) PrPC develop a spontaneous neurological dysfunction in an age-dependent manner, even without inoculation of PrPSc and thus, investigations of these aged transgenic mice may lead to the understanding how PrPC participate in the neurotoxic property of PrP. Here we demonstrate mitochondria-mediated neuronal apoptosis in aged transgenic mice overexpressing wild-type MoPrPC (Tg(MoPrP)4053/FVB). The aged mice exhibited an aberrant mitochondrial localization of PrPC concomitant with decreased proteasomal activity, while younger littermates did not. Such aberrant mitochondrial localization was accompanied by decreased mitochondrial manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD) activity, cytochrome c release into the cytosol, caspase-3 activation, and DNA fragmentation, most predominantly in hippocampal neuronal cells. Following cell culture studies confirmed that decrease in the proteasomal activity is fundamental for the PrPC-related, mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. Hence, the neurotoxic property of PrPC could be explained by the mitochondria-mediated neuronal apoptosis, at least in part.

Noncompliance with drug therapy was suspected based on the results of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in two 3-and 4-year-old children with epilepsy. An analysis of the data for both children showed the serum concentration of the antiepileptic drugs estimated from individual parameters to deviate remarkably from those established based on population parameters, and that the difference between these values varied after each measurement.After a careful evaluation of patient compliance according to the results of TDM, it was revealed the dosage due to the fact that mother had not realized her inaccurate dosage while another mother admitted that she had reduced the dosage due to the fact that her child refused to take the drug. The time needed to correct the noncompliance after its discovery using TDM was 3 months in the case of inaccurate dosage, and 12 months in the case where the child had refused to take the drug, by means of compliance education and training given to the mothers once -a-month at the outpatient clinic.

The objectives of present. paper are to develop the estimation method for the hydrodynamic forces on very large floating structures in the vicinity of a breakwater and to clarify the characteristics of elastic response on the very large floating structures (VLFS).In the present paper. the source distribution method was applied to prediction of by hydrodynamic forces on VLFS and the elastic responses of VLFS were computed by model analysis. From the results of numerical calculation, the effects of breakwater on the elastic response of VLFS and the characteristics of elastic responses on the phase two model of VLFS were made clear.

Many papers describing the lunar base construction have been published previously. Lunar base has been considered to be a useful facility to conduct future scientific programs and to get new nuclear energy resource, namely 3He, for defending the environmental collapse on Earth and also to develop lunar resources such as oxygen and nitrogen for extending human activities in space more economically. The scale of the lunar base and the construction methods adopted are determined by the scenario of a lunar utilization program but constrained by the availability of the established space transportation technologies. As indicated in the scenarios described in papers regarding lunar base construction, the first steps of lunar missions are the investigation of lunar itself for conducting scientific research and for surveying the lunar base construction sites, the second steps are the outpost construction for conducting man-tended missions, for more precise scientific research and studying the lunar base construction methods, and third steps are the construction of a permanent base and the expansion of this lunar base for exploiting lunar resources. The missions within the first and second steps are all possible using the ferry (OTV) similar to the service and command modules of Apollo Spacecraft because all necessary weights to be landed on the lunar surface for these missions seem to be under the equivalent weight of the Apollo Lunar Lander. On the other hand, the permanent facilities constructed on the lunar surface in the third step requires larger quantities of construction materials to be transported from Earth, and a new ferry (advanced OTV) having higher transportation ability, at least above 6 times, compared with Apollo Service and Command Modules, are to be developed. The largest problems in the permament lunar base construction are related to the food production facilities, 30–40 m2 plant cultivation area per person are required for providing the nutrition requirement and the necessary electric power per person for producing high energy foods, such as wheat, rice and potato, are now estimated ranging from 30 to 40 kW. The extension program of crew numbers under the limitation of usable transportation capability anticipated at present and the construction scenarios, including the numbers of facilities to be constructed every year, are to be determined based upon the requirements of plant cultivation area and of electric power for producing necessary and sufficient foods in order to accelerate the feasibility studies of each subsystem to be installed in the permanent lunar base in future.

This study will review some of the critical aspects of cleaning for sub-65 nm technologies. These issues include: surface preparation for high k dielectrics on Si and on Ge, metal gate cleaning and removal of small particles without creating damage to structures.

In this work the damage added on gate stack features after batch megasonic cleaning is identified and classified by SEM review. To understand if damaging is a random or a clustered process, damage clustering distributions are compared with a theoretical random distribution of damage sites. In the damaged areas, defect clusters are observed that we explain by the presence of so-called weak spots in the neighborhood of a damaging event. Only a limited influence of the megasonic cleaning settings was found on the damage-size distributions. This suggests that, for the cleaning conditions investigated in this work, the number of added defects varied with the amount of the damage events but the event strength remains the same.

Experimental fast reactor JOYO achieved its first criticality in 1977 spring. Since then a series of reactor noise analysis has been carried out. During zero power testing, the reactor kinetic parameters, i.e. β/l and subcriticality, were obtained, applying band-pass filter and polarity correlation methods. As the high power operation started from 1978, the reactor noise analysis based on neutron flux spectra has been proceeded. This paper presents study of noise analysis for rather lower frequency region at high power operation. At 50 Mwt power level operation, noises of neutron flux signals, reactor inlet temperatures and subassembly outlet temperatures were measured, and then auto power spectral densities and coherence functions were calculated. The frequency range for the noise analysis is for 10−3 − 10−1 Hz. In the APSD of neutron flux, a low peak was observed at 2.5×10−2 Hz. For neutron noise, it was estimated that the noises in the frequency region lower than 1.5 × 10−2 Hz is a core inherent temperature noises, while that in the frequency region higher than 1.5 × 10−2 Hz is a core inherent neutron noise. The coherence function of neutron fluxes, which are signals of ex-core detectors located at opposite positions against the core center, indicated that some space dependent phenomena of neutron noise might exist in 5×10−3 − 6×10−2 Hz. The space dependency in 5×10−3 − 1.5×10−2 Hz were estimated to be produced by the sodium temperature noise due to the insufficient mixing of two primary coolant loops. In 1.5×10−2 − 6×10−2 Hz, the peak existed at 2.5×10−2 Hz and reverse phases were observed in the coherence of two neutron signals at opposite side of the core. With the investigation of phase relations between neutron flux and subassembly outlet temperature in this frequency region, the phenomenon was estimated to be due to mechanical vibration of some reactor core components. When the static gain of reactivity-to-power transfer function increased, the changes of reactor noise characteristics were observed. Since the change of the gain indicates a change of the reactor core characteristics, the observation of reactor noise characteristics has a potential for the surveillance of the reactor core.

Cadmium (Cd), co-administered with an excess of L-cysteine, accumulates rapidly in the kidneys of the rat. After subcutaneous (s. c.) injection of 3 μmol CdCl2/kg body wt the concentrations of Cd in the blood and kidneys increase with the dose of cysteine over the range 0.06–5.0 mmol/kg body wt. At cysteine doses of less than 1.5 mmol/kg body wt the ratio of the concentrations of Cd in the outer medulla and cortex of the kidney remains the same as that after the injection of Cd alone. This ratio, however, is more than doubled at dose levels of 5–10 mmol cysteine/kg body wt. Hepatic uptake of Cd is unaffected by doses of cysteine below 1.5 mmol/kg body wt but decreases markedly at higher doses. In animals that are dosed simultaneously with 5 mmol cysteine/kg body wt, renal uptake of 109Cd is known to occur in the straight segments of the proximal tubules. At a dose level of less than 1.5 mmol cysteine/kg body wt the present autoradiographical studies show that 109Cd is taken up predominantly by the proximal convoluted tubules of the kidney cortex. At the critical dose level (1.5 mmol/kg body wt), cysteine decreases the retention of Cd at the s. c. injection site, but probably has little effect on the distribution of Cd between protein and other carrier molecules in the blood. This distribution, however, is altered at higher cysteine dose levels. It is suggested that, under the latter conditions, stable Cd-cysteine complexes are formed in the blood and are filtered readily through the glomeruli. These complexes are taken up in the kidney at the sites of cysteine reabsorption which, by studies with L-[35S]-cysteine, are identified as the straight segments of the proximal tubules.