Suvorova, A.; Lawn, B. R.; Liu, Y.; Hu, X. Z.; Dell, J. M.; and Faraone, L., "Effect of deposition conditions on mechanical properties of low-temperature PECVD silicon nitride films" (2006 AbstractThe effect of deposition conditions on characteristic mechanical properties -elastic modulus and hardness -of low-temperature PECVD silicon nitrides is investigated using nanoindentation. It is found that increase in substrate temperature, increase in plasma power and decrease in chamber gas pressure all result in increases in elastic modulus and hardness. Strong correlations between the mechanical properties and film density are demonstrated. The silicon nitride density in turn is shown to be related to the chemical composition of the films, particularly the silicon/nitrogen ratio.

In order to characterize the electron transport properties of the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in AlGaN/GaN modulation-doped field-effect transistors, channel magnetoresistance has been measured in the magnetic field range of 0–12 T, the temperature range of 25–300 K, and gate bias range of +0.5 to −2.0 V. By assuming that the 2DEG provides the dominant contribution to the total conductivity, a one-carrier fitting procedure has been applied to extract the electron mobility and carrier sheet density at each particular value of temperature and gate bias. Consequently, the electron mobility versus 2DEG sheet density has been obtained for each measurement temperature. Theoretical analysis of these results suggests that for 2DEG densities below 7×1012 cm−2, the electron mobility in these devices is limited by interface charge, whereas for densities above this level, electron mobility is dominated by scattering associated with the AlGaN/GaN interface roughness.

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Commercially manufactured near-infrared (NIR) instruments became available about 50 years ago. While they have been designed for laboratory use in a controlled environment and boast high performance, they are generally bulky, fragile and maintenance intensive, and therefore expensive to purchase and maintain. Micromachining is a powerful technique to fabricate micromechanical parts such as integrated circuits. It was perfected in the 1980s and led to the invention of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMSs). The three characteristic features of MEMS fabrication technologies are miniaturization, multiplicity and microelectronics. Combined, these features allow the batch production of compact and rugged devices with integrated intelligence. In order to build more compact, more rugged and less expensive NIR instruments, MEMS technology has been successfully integrated into a range of new devices. In the first part of this paper we discuss the UWA MEMS-based Fabry–Pérot spectrometer, its design and issues to be solved. MEMS-based Fabry–Pérot filters primarily isolate certain wavelengths by sweeping across an incident spectrum and the resulting monochromatic signal is detected by a broadband detector. In the second part, we discuss other microspectrometers including other Fabry–Pérot spectrometer designs, time multiplexing devices and mixed time/space multiplexing devices.

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