In this study, the reactive rf magnetron sputtering was used to deposit Ba(Zr0.1,Ti0.9)O3 (BZT) ferroelectric thin films on ITO/Glass substrate, and MFM structure was fabricated. The effects of various sputtering parameters on the characteristics of thin films, such as the oxygen concentrations, substrate temperature, rf power and chamber pressure were discussed, and then the optimal sputtering parameters were determined. The annealing process of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and conventional thermal annealing (CTA) were used to promote the ferroelectric characteristics. The physical characteristics of BZT thin films were obtained by the analyses of SEM, XRD patterns and AFM morphologies. The surfaces, cross-section, crystallization and surface roughness of thin films were discussed. To investigate the electrical properties, the capacitance-voltage (C-V), current-voltage (I-V) and P-E hysteresis characteristics of BZT thin films were measured by the HP4284A impedance analyzer, HP4156C semiconductor parameter analyzer and computerized radiant technology (RT66), respectively. Furthermore, characteristics of the MFM structure were discussed. From the experimental results, the dielectric constant with optimal sputtering parameters was about 84, and the leakage current of thin film was about 6 ¡Ñ 10-8 A/cm2 when the applied electrical field of thin film was at 0.4 MV/cm. The remanent polarization (Pr) and coercive field (Ec) were 2.87 £gC/cm2 and 259 kV/cm from the P-E hysteresis loops, respectively. In addition, the ferroelectric characteristics of the thin film could be improved after rapid thermal annealing at 550¢J for 3 minutes. The remanent polarization (Pr), coercive field (Ec) and saturated polarization (Ps) were 3.42 £gC/cm2, 266 kV/cm and 6.99 £gC/cm2, respectively.

The hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si:H TFTs) have been widely used as switching device for large-area electronics such as active matrix liquid crystal displays (AM-LCDs). a-Si TFT is particularly advantageous to the production of large screen displays and facilitates mass production. When employing an a-Si:H layer, the main objectives are to enhance the field effect mobility and to reduce the off-state current under light illumination. The increase of field effect mobility results in wide application of a-Si:H TFTs in high resolution LCDs. On the other hand, a-Si:H has high photoconductivity which results in high off-state current of a-Si:H TFT under light illumination. The off-state leakage current under light illumination is, in particular, a serious problem in the projection and/or multimedia displays that require high intensity backlight illumination. Minimizing the off-current increase by a-Si photosensitivity is an important design consideration for achieving highimage-quality LCDs. TFT off-current increase by photoillumination of a-Si decreases the charge stored on the pixel during the TFT off-time, and results in gray-scale shading, flicker, crosstalk and other display nonuniformity in the LCD. The fluorine incorporated amorphous silicon [a-Si:H(:F)] and amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) were illuminated with backlight to investigate electrical characteristics. The effect of different [SiF4] / [ SiH4] ratio on the performance of a-Si:H(:F) TFTs was also studied. We found the density of states in the gap of a-Si:H(:F) will be modified by the introduction of F into a-Si:H and resulting the shift of the Fermi level toward the valence band edge. The density-of-states increasing cause more recombination centers for electrons and holes to increase the carrier recombination rate. The shift in the Fermi level leads to a reduction of the photoconductivity of a-Si:H(:F). Due to these two important factor, the photo leakage current decreases.

The traditional displayer ¡V CRT has already been substituted by liquid crystal displayer (LCD).The a-Si TFT is used to be a switch, while the size of the displayer increases, the require of the performance and quality of TFTs is more and more better. Therefore, it is very important subject to study the stability and to improve the performance of a-Si TFTs. In this thesis, we fabricate another new structure (asymmetry dual-gate TFTs).For asymmetry dual-gate TFTs, the ITO back gate is extended to the middle of the channel and only covered on the drain contact. The new structure has the advantages of dual-gate TFTs. With dual-channel conduction, it exhibit higher Ion and lower photo leakage current performance than the conventional inverted staggered TFTs. In addition, we use the asymmetry dual-gate structure to investigate how the parasitic capacitance influences the feed-through voltage by C-V measurement. We also to investigate the influences of electrical characteristics with the ITO back gate whether or not overlap the source contact. The asymmetry in on current with source-drain swapping can be attributed to the difference in the ITO back gate whether overlaps the source contact. Finally, it simulated the process of the degradation on the TFTs to find the stability mechanism of the TFTs.

In this study, Mg-Cu thin film metallic thin films were fabricated via two ways, the co-deposition and post-annealing of the multilayered thin films. Amorphous Mg1-xCux, where x is from 38 to 82, thin films with nanocrystalline particles are able to be fabricated via co-sputtering. The mechanism of formation is different from the rapid quenching process. For the Mg-Cu co-sputtering system, the mechanical properties of the Mg-Cu co-sputtered films were tested via MTS nanoindenter. Mg23.5Cu76.5 exhibits a higher Young¡¦s modulus than Mg17.7Cu82.3 and Mg40.4Cu59.6 due to the partial amorphous structure. Moreover, the pop-in effects with a smaller size occurs of the Mg23.5Cu76.5 sample in a higher frequency than of the Mg17.7Cu82.3 and Mg40.4Cu59.6 samples. The small pop-in effects in the Mg23.5Cu76.5 sample approximate match the width of amorphous matrix via the HRTEM observation. Another process to form the amorphous thin film is via the post isothermal annealing process of the multilayered thin films. However, for the specimens of 20T32 consisting of 150-nm Mg and 50-nm Cu individual layers, the Mg individual layers would react to the Cu individual layers during the annealing at a temperature of 413 K owning to the slight negative heat of mixing. Due to the localized diffusion near the interfaces, Mg2Cu gradually form during the isothermal annealing since Mg2Cu is the most stable phase below 548 K [62]. Localized interdiffusion near the interfaces between Mg and Cu individual layers induced the formation of Mg2Cu rapidly. For the 40T32 specimens consisting of 15 nm Mg and 5 nm Cu individual layers, Mg2Cu rapidly form at 413 K due to the high interface energy. Then, the similar result exhibits in the 20T14 and 40T14 specimens annealed at 363 K.

In this thesis, we study the electrical characteristics of a series of polysilicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs) with different numbers of multiple channels of various widths, with lightly-doped drain (LDD) structures. Among all investigated TFTs, the nano-scale TFT with ten 67 nm-wide split channels (M10) has superior and more uniform electrical characteristics than other TFTs, such as a higher ON/OFF current ratio (>109), a steeper subthreshold slope (SS) of 137 mV/decade, an absence of drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) and a suppressed kink-effect. These results originate from the fact that the active channels of M10 TFT has best gate control due to its nano-wire channels were surrounded by tri-gate electrodes. Additionally, experimental results reveal that the electrical performance of proposed TFTs enhances with the number of channels from one to ten strips of multiple channels sequentially, yielding a profile from a single gate to tri-gate structure. In addition, we have also studied the multi-gate combining the pattern-dependent nickel (Ni) metal-induced lateral crystallization (Ni-MILC) polysilicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs) with ten nanowire channels. Experimental results reveal that applying ten nanowire channels improves the performance of Ni-MILC poly-Si TFT, which thus has a higher ON current, a lower leakage current and a lower threshold voltage (Vth) than single-channel TFTs. Furthermore, the experimental results reveal that combining the multi-gate structure and ten nanowire channels further enhances the entire performance of Ni-MILC TFTs, which thus have a low leakage current, a high ON/OFF ratio, a low Vth, a steep subthreshold swing (SS) and kink-free output characteristics. The multi-gate with ten nanowire channels NI-MILC TFTs has few poly-Si grain boundary defects, a low lateral electrical field and a gate channel shortening effect, all of which are associated with such high-performance characteristics. The PDMILC TFTs process is compatible with CMOS technology, and involves no extra mask. Such high performance PDMILC TFTs are thus promising for use in future high-performance poly-Si TFT applications, especially in AMLCD and 3D MOSFET stacked circuits. Otherwise, we have investigated the mechanism of the leakage currents in polysilicon TFT with different temperature and applied biases. Moreover, we have simulated the electric fields in different structure polysilicon TFT to explain the mechanism of the leakage currents. By comparing the leakage currents in different channel structures, the leakage current in nanowire channel structure is higher than that in non-nanowire channel structure. Moreover, the leakage current in multiple gate structure is lower than that in single gate structure. Therefore, these two experimental results are caused by high electric field in the drain-to-gate overlap and drain-to-body depletion region respectively.

Abstract A thin film deposition system using ultrasonic atomization is designed and constructed. Solution containing precursors is transported by carrying gas to the heated substrate where deposition is accomplished by pyrolysis. Tests including series of varying flow rate of carrying gas and varying substrate temperature were carried out with solutions of SnCl4 precursor in C2H5OH solvent and N2 as carrying gas. Also, TaCl5 was used as dopant to improved the electrical conductivity. The effects of doping in crystallinity, surface morphology, optical transmittance and electrical conductivity of the deposited thin films were examined and the optimal percentage of doping for electrical conductivity and optical transmittance was found. XRD reveals that the thin film was amorphous when the deposition temperature was below 350¢J. Polycrystalline thin films with grains size of 30~50nm were obtained with deposition temperature of 400~500¢J and N2 flow rate of 2.5 ~10 l/min. SEM examination reveals that porosity increases with increasing deposition temperature and N2 flow rate, which consequently reduces the electron mobility, as seen in Hall measurement. No discernible difference was observed between the morphology of the doped and undoped thin films. As shown in the UV-Visible spectra representative transmittance of all films at 550nm radiation ranges between 70% and 82%. No discernible effect was observed for Ta-doping. Hall measurement reveals that Ta-doping increases the electron mobility and carrier concentration by several times and one order of magnitude, respectively. The minimum resistivity is 1.2*10-1 £[- cm occurring at 4 at% Ta doping.

Molecular dynamics simulations is performed to investigate the structural properties of the PMMA (poly(methyl methacrylate)) thin film on an Au (111) surface. According to model the MMA (methyl methacrylate) thin film on an Au (111) surface, we found that there is a significant effect on the density profile near the interface between the thin film and Au substrate. Moreover, the density clearly decreases in this region as the temperature increases. Next, we calculated and examined the relationships among the stress, surface tension, average potential energy, orientation, and formation energy. In order to investigate the material properties of MMA nano-thin films of different thicknesses on the Au (111) surface, the simulation for the nano-indentation process is used to obtain the material properties of MMA nano-thin films. And the deformation mechan- ism of the MMA thin films during the course of the indentation is also discussed in this study, completely. Furthermore, Molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate chain-length effect on conformations of methyl methacrylate (MMA)-oligomer thin films on an Au (111) substrate. For short chain films, there is a sharp peak in the density profile of the MMA monomers for the adsorption region and the thin films exhibit a flattened conformation in the adsorption and the surface regions. For long chain films, however, there is no sharp peak in the whole density profiles and a snake-like conformation appears in the adsorption region, which shrinks and convolutes gradually in the bulk region and even more in the surface region of the thin film.

¡@Complex nano-architectures of different materials have very interesting geometry. Combining different metallic nanoparticles should allow the manufacture of novel nanocomposite materials with a plethora of exploitable electronic, optical, and magnetic properties. ¡@Thiolate-capped Au nanoparticles prepared by Brust-Schiffrin two phase method and carboxylate-capped Ag nanoparticles prepared by our one-step synthetic method are reported. ¡@We also developed and prepared Ag colloidal solution which can be used to form a high valuable conductive thin film by spin coating on Si wafer. Specific resistivity of 6.097 £g£[¡Ecm for the silver metallic film (0.7 £gm) on the Si wafer can be simply produced by thermal annealing of Ag MPCs film under an atmosphere of 10 % H2-90 % N2 at 300 ¢J for 1 h. Furthermore, it can be applied to make a micro-circuit by ink-jet printing technique. ¡@The characterizations of TEM, PXRD, UV-Visible, NMR, FT-IR, ESCA, TGA, TA-MS, EI-MS and SEM of Au and Ag nanoparticles are described. ¡@We hope the thiolate-capped Au nanoparticles and carboxylate-capped Ag nanoparticles could spontaneously self-connect to form the nanoscale alloy superlattice structure by the molecular recognizable bifuctional linkage.

In this thesis, the residual stress distribution of metal film sputtered on silicon substrate are studied. The commercial Marc finite element method package is used in this work. The thermal-mechanical model is employed in the residual and thermal stress analysis of thin film during the sputtering process. Two models finite element are used in this study. One is the 2D axial-symmetric model and the other is the 3D. The 2D axial-symmetric model was employed to investigation the residual stress distribution in 4¡¨, 6¡¦¡¦, and 8¡¦¡¦ wafer during the UBM sputtering process. The 3D model was used to study the effects of sputtering parameters, i.e. sputtering temperature and film thickness, on the residual stress distribution. The effect of etching process on the sputtered film has also been studied by using the 3D model. Results indicate the proposed model can simulate the residual stress distribution successfully.

Thin Film bulk acoustic wave devices have the advantages of low loss, low temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency, and high power handling. These excellent characteristics are suitable for the applications on high frequency communication systems. In this study, thin film bulk acoustic wave filters using the ladder-type filter and stacked crystal filter configurations were investigated. Platinum was chosen as the top and bottom electrodes. To improve the platinum adhesion on SiNx/SiO2/Si substrates, a seeding layer of titanium is used. Highly c-axis oriented piezoelectric zinc oxide thin films were deposited by two-step deposition method under room temperature. As resonant area decreases, the band rejection of ladder-type filter will increase. Because the resonant area decreased, the distance between signal and ground will increase the results in an increased insertion loss. On the other hand, stacked crystal filters have larger band rejection and less 3dB bandwidth, which are suitable for the application of narrow band filters.