This thesis is a use-wear study that deals with microwear on stone endscrapers used on one worked material: animal skins. The first part of the study defines and describes the process of rendering freshly skinned pelts into functional leather or rawhide products, addressing confusing terminology found in the literature as well. Problems with past use-wear experiments dealing with animal skins are also confronted and explained. The second part of the study examines endscrapers used to flesh and dehair bison hides and compares the use-wear traces left on the tool edge by each activity. This suite of characteristics is then compared to those found on an assemblage of Clovis-age scrapers from the Gault site in central Texas.

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Czochralski (Cz) silicon wafers are used almost exclusively for the fabrication of VLSI devices. Such silicon contains excess oxygen which precipitates as oxide particles either when the initial ingot is grown or subsequently during the wafer device fabrication. Such oxide particles can produce reduced device performance or failure if they occur within the active device regions. However, they can be used to improve the device performance by a process known as internal oxide gettering. The wafers are given a series of preanneal treatments to produce controlled precipitation in which a surface zone of the wafer to a depth of typically in the range of 10 to 50 μm is denuded of oxide particles, while the remainder of the wafer contains large numbers of well formed particles. The devices are fabricated in the surface denuded zone and harmful contaminating metal impurities are attracted during the heat treatment stages away from the device regions to precipitate at the underlying oxide particles or their associated dislocations. In this way device yields can be significantly increased. Because of the importance of these oxide particles and the oxygen precipitation process for VLSI fabrication, considerable efforts have been made to develop methods to assess the numbers and distributions of such particles within the wafers. The number density range of most interest is 10⁷ to 10¹⁰ cm^-3, and the particle size range is typically 30 to 300 nm. The method that has mostly been used is surface etching followed by optical microscopy to obtain etch pit densities. Transmission electron microscopy is a research method used for obtaining detailed information concerning a small number of individual particles. However, because these methods are destructive, much attention has been given during the last few years to the development of infra-red microscopy methods to directly image the particles within the silicon wafers. Although the particles are smaller than the resolution of these methods, individual particles can nevertheless be imaged. This is because the particles are mostly further apart than the resolution limit, and the sensitivity can be sufficient high that adequate contrast occurs. The contrast arises from scattering or absorption of the light by the particle. Infra-red imaging methods developed include infra-red microscopy (IRM), laser scattering tomography (LST), optical precipitate profiler (OPP) and scanning infra-red microscopy (SIRM), all described more fully in Chapter 2. The SIRM has been developed and used to investigate a variety of semiconductor specimens in the Materials Department, Oxford University, during the last ten years. The SIRM has a good performance and flexibility making it especially suitable as a research instrument. Although all of these infra-red imaging methods have been successful to different degrees in assessing oxide particles in Cz silicon wafers, their performance has at least initially been assessed by comparing the number densities and distributions thus obtained with the corresponding results produced by etch pit studies. Furthermore, no serious attempt has yet been made to develop a rigorous theory of the imaging process and to compare the predictions with the experimental images. One of the main objectives of the present work is to do this or at least to make a significant start to such a project based on the SIRM. The outline of an ideal project which aims at a full understanding of the imaging process and the contrast mechanisms is as follows. The performance of the present Oxford SIRM should be improved and the number of imaging modes increased. The improved performance, i.e. better lateral and depth resolutions and higher sensitivity, would enable smaller particles and higher number densities to be imaged, and hence better quantitative data obtained. The larger number of imaging modes would enable the optimum method to be used to image different types of particle. A rigorous theory should be developed that can describe the imaging process and the contrast mechanisms. First, the illumination system should be studied, and in particular the structure of the focussed probe within the specimen and how the structure changes on focussing deeper into the specimen. Second, the interaction of the light with the specimen should be investigated and especially how light is scattered by individual oxide particles in silicon for the case of the particle size being smaller than the light wavelength. Third, the detection system should be considered. For example, for the reflection confocal SIRM, how the light back scattered by the particles is collected by the probe forming lens and imaged at a pin-hole aperture placed in the front of the detector. Well designed experiments are required to determine the imaging properties of the different modes and comparisons should be made between the experimental and theoretical data. The successful conclusion of such a project would enable SIRM images of the particles to be more fully interpreted and hence more detailed information obtained concerning the particles. Furthermore, the images expected from different types of particle could be more closely predicted, e.g. whether they are detectable or not, and hence materials projects could be better planned at the outset. In this thesis we describe the methods that are presently being used to assess oxide particles in bulk silicon (Chapter 2). We review the literature on scanning optical microscopy covering both visible and infra-red light, present some considerations regarding the design of a high performance and versatile SIRM, and describe the various microscope modes that have been or could be used to image particles in semiconductors with infra-red light (Chapter 3). We give a detailed rigorous theoretical analysis of the energy distributions in the probe for the case when the light is focussed by a high numerical aperture lens from air into silicon (Chapters 4, 5). Numerically computed distributions are obtained to illustrate how the probe changes under different conditions, e.g. different focussing depths (Chapter 6). The relationship between the penetration depth of the probe and the spherical aberration coefficient arising from the silicon specimen is determined (Chapter 7). The classical theory of light scattering is applied to individual spherical silicon dioxide particles embedded in silicon. Numerical results are presented and a contrast mechanism is proposed to describe how the scattered intensity depends on particle size (Chapter 8). A formal solution relevant to the reflection confocal SIRM is given to treat the backward propagation of light using a model which takes into account the polarisation state of the incident light, the spherical aberration introduced by the silicon wafer, the polarisation state of the scattered light and the size of the pin-hole (Chapter 9). Experimental results are obtained for most of the imaging modes described in Chapter 3, specimens being selected so that the wide range of the imaging capabilities of the SIRM is shown, and experimental contrast values are compared with theoretical values (Chapter 10). Finally, overall conclusions are drawn and suggestions are made for completing the work started here (Chapter 11).

This thesis concerns the development of simple, compact scanning optical microscopes which can obtain confocal and interference images. The effects of feeding the reflected signal back into the laser cavity of a confocal microscope are investigated and exploited. Monomode optical fibres are used to perform the spatial filtering required for confocal microscopy and, later, as the source of reference beams for interferometry. The theory describing the basic operation of the microscopes is developed. The optical systems are modelled using scalar diffraction theory and the effects of optical feedback into the laser cavity are described, with the practical implications emphasised. A fully reciprocal arrangement of the microscope is developed, in which a single mode optical fibre both launches the signal towards the object and then collects the reflected signal. The fibre is shown to exhibit the spatial filtering properties required for the source and detector in a confocal microscope. It is shown that a semiconductor laser can be used as a detector of the amplitude of the object signal. This is first demonstrated by directing the microscope signal back into the laser cavity and measuring the variation of the optical intensity in the cavity itself. Comparable results are obtained when the variation of the junction voltage across the cavity is measured. It is also shown that the optical fibre is redundant in this system, since the lasing mode of the cavity itself is sufficiently small to adequately spatially filter the reflected signal. When a Helium-Neon laser is used as the source of illumination the effect of the feedback on the laser is seen to be very different, resulting in interferometry. It is shown that high frequency modulation techniques can be used to obtain both confocal images and surface profiles from the same system. This is first demonstrated using an optical feedback scheme in which the modulation of the optical path length of the object beam is controlled electrooptically. In an alternative scheme the images are obtained by calculation, rather than by using a control loop system. In this case the modulation is achieved mechanically. The theoretical limits for the resolutions of the systems described are discussed. It is shown that the lateral resolution of the surface profile systems is inherently non-linear with feature height. Finally, a semiconductor laser based microscope is developed which can obtain confocal images and surface profiles independently. The dependence of the wavelength on the injection current is exploited as a convenient means of introducing a phase shift into the feedback signal by which profilometry can be achieved. All the systems are described theoretically and demonstrated experimentally.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1981. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-224).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.