The transport processes in the contact line region (junction of evaporating thin liquid film, vapor, and substrate) of stationary steady-state evaporating thin films of hexane with various bulk compositions were studied experimentally. The substrate temperature distribution and liquid film thickness profile were measured, analyzed, and compared with previous results on other systems. The results demonstrate that small changes in the bulk composition significantly alter the characteristics of the transport processes in the contact line region. The curvature gradient at the liquid-vapor interface is a strong function of evaporation rate and composition. Concentration and temperature gradients give interfacial shear stresses and flow patterns that enhance contact line stability.
A scanning microphotometer was used to measure in situ the profile of an evaporating decane meniscus in the contact line region on a smooth inclined silicon substrate as a function of the evaporative heat flux. The use of this new experimental design to determine the effect of heat flux on the profile in the contact line region is discussed. The results support the hypothesis that fluid flow in the contact line region of an evaporating thin film results from a change in the thin film thickness profile.
This study investigated the effects of Si wafer polish damage on the electrical performance and integrated circuits, using metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors as the test structures. These test capacitors were fabricated with 100 or 250 Å oxide layers thermally grown on wafers having varied polish-damaged surfaces. Field-dependent and time-dependent breakdown data were measured and correlated with the surface polish quality as characterized by thermal wave (TW) modulated reflectance measurements. To study the effects of damage remaining in the silicon beneath the Si/SiO2 interface after the formation of the capacitors, the minority-carrier lifetime was measured and also correlated with the TW values obtained on the starting (nonprocessed) wafer surfaces. The results of this study established that increased polish damage, indicated by higher TW values, adversely affects thin oxide breakdown integrity and reduces the minority-carrier lifetime.
Various pre-gate oxide cleaning and gettering techniques on the integrity of thin gate oxide were investigated. A 100 Å thick oxide capacitor was used to study its time-dependent breakdown characteristics and minority carrier lifetime. It has been shown that the oxide integrity as measured by time-dependent breakdown and the minority carrier lifetime are very sensitive to the cleaning technique. On the other hand, given adequate cleaning process, different intrinsic gettering schemes may only influence the oxygen precipitation, as well as the minority carrier lifetime, but not the oxide integrity.
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