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It has been found that in the low-frequency regime, the experimentally determined thermal conductivity of thin dielectric films deviates significantly from the theoretical expectation based on Cahill's 3ω thermal model. It is shown in the present work that this deviation is mainly caused by the heat transport in the heater strip, which is neglected in Cahill's one-dimensional model. By taking this mechanism into account, an analytical model is developed to simultaneously consider the heat transport in the heater strip and the heat flow into the underlying substrate. The validity of this two-dimensional model is confirmed by experiments using specially designed test structures as well as by numerical simulation. The results show that the heat transport along the heater strip, originated from a nonuniform temperature, becomes comparable to that in the substrate at low frequencies. This effect of a nonuniform temperature distribution can also be exploited for extraction of the thermal conductivity of the metallic strip itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of UV-ozone (UVO) treatment on the sensing behaviours of extended-gate field-effect transistors (EGFETs) that use Al2O3 as the sensing film have been investigated. The Al2O3 sensing films are UVO-treated with various duration times and the corresponding EGFET sensing behaviours, such as sensitivity, hysteresis and long-term stability, are electrically evaluated under various measurement conditions. Physical analysis is also performed to characterize the surface conditions of the UVO-treated sensing films using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. It is found that UVO treatment effectively reduces the buried sites in the Al2O3 sensing film and subsequently results in reduced hysteresis and improved long-term stability of EGFET. Meanwhile, the observed slightly smoother Al2O3 film surface post UVO treatment corresponds to decreased surface sites and slightly reduced pH sensitivity of the Al2O3 film. The sensitivity degradation is found to be monotonically correlated with the UVO treatment time. A treatment time of 10 min is found to yield an excellent performance trade-off: clearly improved long-term stability and reduced hysteresis at the cost of negligible sensitivity reduction. These results suggest that UVO treatment is a simple and facile method to improve the overall sensing performance of the EGFETs with an Al2O3 sensing film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) in monolayer form have attracted a great deal of attention for electronic and optical applications. Compared to mechanical exfoliation and chemical synthesis, laser thinning is a novel and unique “on-demand” approach to fabricate monolayers or pattern desired shapes with high controllability and reproducibility. Its successful demonstration motivates a further exploration of the dynamic behaviour of this local thinning process. Here, we present an in-situ study of void formation by laser irradiation with the assistance of temporal Raman evolution. In the analysis of time-dependent Raman intensity, an empirical formula relating void size to laser power and exposure time is established. Void in thinner MoS2 flakes grows faster than in thicker ones as a result of reduced sublimation temperature in the two-dimensional (2D) materials. Our study provides useful insights into the laser-thinning dynamics of 2D TMDCs and guidelines for an effective control over the void formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, capacitive-type humidity sensors were prepared by sequentially drop-coating the aqueous suspensions of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanopowders and polyvinyl pyrrolidone-reduced graphene oxide (PVP-RGO) nanocomposites onto interdigitated electrodes. Significant improvements in both sensitivity and linearity were achieved for the ZnO/PVP-RGO sensors compared with the PVP-RGO/ZnO, PVP-RGO, and ZnO counterparts. Moreover, the produced ZnO/PVP-RGO sensors exhibited rather small hysteresis, fast response-recovery time, and long-term stability. Based on morphological and structural analyses, it can be inferred that the excellent humidity sensing properties of the ZnO/PVP-RGO sensors may be attributed to the high surface-to-volume ratio of the multilayer structure and the supporting roles of the PVP-RGO nanocomposites. The results in this work hence provide adequate guidelines for designing high-performance humidity sensors that make use of the multilayer structure of semiconductor oxide materials and PVP-RGO nanocomposites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth, morphology, and life cycle of two marine myxobacterial isolates, halotolerant Myxococcus fulvus strain HW-1 and halophilic Haliangium ochraceum strain SMP-2, were studied as models to determine the living patterns of myxobacteria in the ocean. The growth, morphology, and development of halotolerant strain HW-1 shifted in response to salinity. The optimal seawater concentration for growth of HW-1 was 0 to 80% (salinity, 0.1 to 2.9%), and the strain grew poorly in media with a salinity of more than 4%. The cells became shorter as the seawater concentration increased. The fruiting body structure was complete only on agar prepared with low concentrations of seawater or salts (less than 60% seawater; salinity, 2.1%), and rudimentary structures or even simple cell mounds appeared as the seawater concentration increased. In contrast, the halophilic strain SMP-2 was unable to grow without NaCl. The cell length and the morphology of the fruiting body-like structure did not change in response to salts. In seawater liquid medium, the cells of both strains were confirmed to be able to form myxospores directly from vegetative cells, but they could not do so in medium containing a Iow seawater concentration (10% or less). HW-1 cells from medium containing a high concentration of seawater grew independent of cell density, while cells from medium containing a Iow concentration of seawater (10% or less) showed density-dependent growth. SMP-2 cells showed density-dependent growth under all salinity conditions. The results suggest that the halotolerant myxobacteria are the result of degenerative adaptation of soil myxobacteria to the marine environment, while the halophilic myxobacteria form a different evolutionary group that is indigenous to the ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical vapor deposition synthesis of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offers a new route to build next-generation semiconductor devices. But realization of continuous and uniform multilayer (ML) TMD films is still limited by their specific growth kinetics, such as the competition between surface and interfacial energy. In this work, a layer-by-layer vacuum stacking transfer method is applied to obtain uniform and non-destructive ML-MoS2 films. Back-gated field effect transistor (FET) arrays of 1L- and 2L-MoS2 are fabricated on the same wafer, and their electrical performances are compared. We observe a significant increase of field-effect mobility for 2L-MoS2 FETs, up to 32.5 cm2 V−1 s−1, which is seven times higher than that of 1L-MoS2 (4.5 cm2 V−1 s−1). Then we also fabricated 1L-, 2L-, 3L-, and 4L-MoS2 FETs to further investigate the thickness-dependent characteristics of transferred ML-MoS2. Measurement results show a higher mobility but a smaller current on/off ratio as the layer number increases, suggesting that a balance between mobility and current on/off ratio can be achieved in 2L- and 3L-MoS2 FETs. Dual-gated structure is also investigated to demonstrate an improved electrostatic control of the ML-MoS2 channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been fabricated on sapphire substrates with different thicknesses of GaN buffer layer grown by a combination of hydride vapor phase epitaxy and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. We analyzed the LED efficiency and modulation characteristics with buffer thicknesses of 12 μm and 30 μm. With the buffer thickness increase, cathodoluminescence hyperspectral imaging shows that the dislocation density in the buffer layer decreases from  ∼1.3  ×  108 cm−2 to  ∼1.0  ×  108 cm−2, and Raman spectra suggest that the compressive stress in the quantum wells is partly relaxed, which leads to a large blue shift in the peak emission wavelength of the photoluminescence and electroluminescent spectra. The combined effects of the low dislocation density and stress relaxation lead to improvements in the efficiency of LEDs with the 30 μm GaN buffer, but the electrical-to-optical modulation bandwidth is higher for the LEDs with the 12 μm GaN buffer. A rate equation analysis suggests that defect-related nonradiative recombination can help increase the modulation bandwidth but reduce the LED efficiency at low currents, suggesting that a compromise should be made in the choice of defect density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]