An investigation of microindenter-induced crack evolution with independent variation of both temperature and relative humidity has been pursued in PV-grade Si wafers. Under static tensile strain conditions, an increase in subcritical crack elongation with increasing atmospheric water content was observed. To provide further insight into the potential physical and chemical conditions at the microcrack tip, micro-Raman measurements were performed. Preliminary results confirm a spatial variation in the frequency of the primary Si vibrational resonance within the cracktip region, associated with local stress state, whose magnitude is influenced by environmental conditions during the period of applied static strain. The experimental effort was paired with molecular dynamics (MD) investigations of microcrack evolution in single-crystal Si to furnish additional insight into mechanical contributions to crack elongation. The MD results demonstrate that crack-tip energetics and associated crack elongation velocity and morphology are intimately related to the crack and applied strain orientations with respect to the principal crystallographic axes. The resulting elastic strain energy release rate and the stress-strain response of the Si under these conditions form the basis for preliminary micro-scale peridynamics (PD) simulations of microcrack development under constant applied strain. These efforts will be integrated with the experimental results to further inform the mechanisms contributing to this important degradation mode in Si-based photovoltaics.
Due to their negative permittivity, plasmonic materials have found increasing number of applications in advanced photonic devices and metamaterials, ranging from visible wavelength through microwave spectrum. In terms of intrinsic loss and permittivity dispersion, however, limitations on available plasmonic materials remain a serious bottleneck preventing practical applications of a few novel nano-photonic device and metamaterial concepts in visible and nearinfrared spectra. To overcome this obstacle, efforts have been made and reported in literature to engineer new plasmonic materials exploring metal alloys, superconductors, graphene, and heavily doped oxide semiconductors. Though promising progress in heavily doped oxide semiconductors was shown in the near-infrared spectrum, there is still no clear path to engineer new plasmonic materials in the visible spectrum that can outperform existing choices noble metals, e.g. gold and silver, due to extremely high free electron density required for high frequency plasma response. This study demonstrates a path to engineer new plasmonic materials in the visible spectrum by significantly altering the electronic properties in existing noble metals through high density charging/discharging and its associated strong local bias effects. A density functional theory model revealed that the optical properties of thin gold films (up to 7 nm thick) can be altered significantly in the visible, in terms of both plasma frequency (up to 12%) and optical permittivity (more than 50%). These corresponding effects were observed in our experiments on surface plasmon resonance of a gold film electrically charged via a high density double layer capacitor induced by a chemically non-reacting electrolyte.
Extreme ultra-violet (EUV) lithography has become the technique of choice to print the ever-shrinking nanoscale features on the silicon wafer. For successful transfer of patterns on to the wafer, the EUV photomask cannot contain defects greater than 30 nm. Megasonic cleaning is a very successful cleaning technique for removal of particles on photomasks, but also causes a relatively high amount of damage to the fragile EUV photomasks thin film structures. Though it is believed that acoustic cavitation is the primary phenomenon responsible for cleaning as well as pattern damage, a fundamental picture of the acoustic cavitation mechanisms in play during megasonic cleaning has not yet clearly emerged. In this study, we characterize the role of acoustic cavitation in megasonic cleaning by examining the effects of acoustic power densities, cleaning solution properties, and dissolved gas content on cavitation via experiments and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. MD is an atomistic computation technique capable of modeling atomic-level and nanoscale processes accurately making it well suited to study the effect of cavitation on nano-sized particles and patterns.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.