Metal oxides such as zirconia and hafnia are being investigated as new materials for application as gate dielectrics in future complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor devices. In this paper, we present results on oxidation of metal films such as Zr, Hf, and Al by the ultraviolet ͑UV͒ ozone oxidation method. A nuclear reaction analysis technique, the 16 O͑d,␣) 14 N nuclear reaction, was used to quantify the oxygen concentration in the dielectric stacks. The method was found to be sensitive to monolayer levels of oxygen. It was found that the oxidation kinetics of the metals increased significantly due to the presence of UV light. The oxidation rate was also found to depend on the oxygen partial pressure. The oxidation rate of Zr was greater than that of Hf, while Al oxidized more slowly than Hf for the UV-ozone oxidation conditions investigated. Possible reasons for the observed oxidation behavior are discussed in detail.

Polycrystalline LiH was reacted with decarbonated H2O to determine reaction products, rates, mechanisms, and the effects of experimental parameters. Rutherford backscattering analyses for measurement of elemental concentrations showed that product O growth rates showed an initial rise and then increased linearly with H2O exposure time. Increasing H2O concentration increased O growth rate while both increasing temperature and pressure decreased O growth rates. A thin-layer, diffusion-controlled reaction rate is suggested to explain the results, and a growth process for LiOH is illustrated. Micrographs of polycrystalline LiH show a two-phase bulk material and a surface hydrolysis layer with cracks.

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Electronic and structural properties of doped amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon deposited at low substrate temperatures by radio-frequency plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition Evaluation of the ion bombardment energy for growing diamondlike carbon films in an electron cyclotron resonance plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

The particle-induced depression of the superconducting critical temperature Tc of YBa2Cu3O7−δ is shown to be directly proportional, over seven orders of magnitude, to the nonionizing energy deposited in the lattice by primary knock-on atoms displaced by incident electrons, protons, and heavy ions. It is concluded that ΔTc is proportional only to the average number of defects produced and can therefore be predicted for any particle, energy, and fluence from a calculation of the nonionizing energy loss.