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The electronic states of oxygen vacancies (V O s) in amorphous oxide semiconductors are shallow donors, deep donors or electron traps; these are determined by the local atomic structure. Because the amorphous phase is metastable compared with the crystalline phase, the degree of structural disorder is likely to decrease, which is referred to as structural relaxation (SR). Thus SR can affect the V O electronic state by changing the local atomic conditions. In this study, we demonstrated that electron doping is possible through the SR of amorphous oxides without redox reactions using a novel device structure that prevents extrinsic reactions with electrodes and ambient atmosphere during annealing. The concentration of V O s in the shallow-donor state in amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) increases from~10 16 to~10 19 cm − 3 with increasing annealing temperatures between 300 and 450°C. The SR-driven doping effect is strongly dependent on the annealing temperature but not on the annealing time. The Arrhenius activation energy of the SR-driven doping effect is 1.76 eV, which is similar to the bonding energies in a-IGZO. Our findings suggest that the free volume in a-IGZO decreases during SR, and the V O s in either deep-donor or electrontrap states are consequently transformed into shallow-donor states. NPG Asia Materials (2016) 8, e250; doi:10.1038/am.2016.11; published online 25 March 2016 INTRODUCTION Amorphous metal oxides, such as amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO), have become mainstream materials for large-area and flexible electronics because the long-range structural disorder enhances the uniformity of the electrical properties and mechanical flexibility compared with crystalline metal oxides. 1-5 A notable characteristic of amorphous oxides, relative to their crystalline counterparts, is that these materials contain structural disorder-related defects (for example, free volume) in addition to non-stoichiometric defects (for example, oxygen vacancies), which significantly affect the corresponding electrical properties. 3,[6][7][8] Moreover, the degree of structural disorder in amorphous metal oxides is always likely to decrease to form more stable structures because internal atomic rearrangement occurs even below the glass transition temperature (T g ). This process is known as structural relaxation (SR) 9-11 and results in continuous changes in the electrical properties. Thus understanding the effects of SR on the electrical properties of amorphous oxides is important for applications in future electronics.In addition to uniformity and flexibility, amorphous metal oxides exhibit tunable electrical conductivity through redox reaction control

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Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 (GST) films with a thickness of 300 nm, in which the nitrogen (N) implant dose was 0, 10 13 , or 10 15 ions/cm 2 , were prepared by RF magnetron sputtering on Si and glass substrates. The thermomechanical properties of the GST films, viz., the biaxial modulus and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), were determined using the substrate curvature method for the two different substrates. The biaxial modulus of the GST films decreased with increasing N dose, whereas the CTE varied only slightly. The dependence of the microstructure on the N implantation dose was examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The lattice parameter of the crystalline structure increased with increasing N dose, which indicated the distortion of the lattice by the implanted N atoms. Because the crystallite size increased with increasing N dose, grain growth refinement caused by the formation of nitrides did not occur. Also, the presence of nitrides in the N-implanted GST film was not observed in the binding energy spectra of 1s for the N element.

Microstructure in the damascene interconnects evolves with the overburden layer, an excessive metal layer over trenches. We present the results of threedimensional simulation, which show the effects of overburden thickness on microstructure evolution in a trench. When the thickness of the overburden is less than half of the trench depth, for a trench with the aspect ratio of unity, the microstructure in the trench tends to evolve into a bamboo structure. This effect is discussed in terms of grain sizes in the trench and those in the overburden. The thinner overburden layer would have smaller grains, of which growth is limited by its thickness. Such small-sized grains in the overburden are not likely to grow into the trench, which hardly make grain boundaries in the trench. Meanwhile, the grains from the trench are able to continue growth inside the trench, resulting in a bamboo structure. Overburden thickness affects the reliability and the electrical performance of the damascene copper interconnects. Optimization of overburden thickness is required to minimize these effects.

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The line width dependence of stress in damascene Cu was examined experimentally as well as with a numerical simulation. The measured hydrostatic stress was found to increase with increasing line width. The larger stress in an interconnect with large dimension is attributed to the larger grain size, which induce higher growth stress in addition to thermomechanical stress. A stress model based on microstructure was constructed and the contribution of the growth and thermal stress of the damascene lines were quantified using finite element analysis. It was found that the stress of the via is lower than that of wide lines when both the growth stress and thermal stress were considered. This stress gradient between via and line, which is the driving force of vacancy diffusion, is larger when the low-k with lower stiffness and higher thermal expansion is used for dielectric layer. For this reason, the Cu/low-k can be more vulnerable to stress-induced voiding.