Thermal emission impacts a wide variety of applications, including thermophotovoltaics, photovoltaics, photon-enhanced thermionic emission, selective solar absorption, incandescent lighting, and spectroscopy. Ordinary structures generally emit a broad range of wavelengths, angles, and polarizations. However, highly selective thermal emission has potential to greatly improve performance in many of these applications. While prior work has explored a wide range of structures to provide some degree of control of one or more of these attributes, there is an ongoing challenge in combining readily-fabricated, simple structures made of appropriate (e.g., heat-resistant) materials with the desired functionality. Here, we will focus on using metasurfaces in conjunction with refractory materials as a platform for achieving selective control of emission. These structures are built from sub-wavelength elements that support localization of surface plasmon polaritons or electromagnetic resonant modes with appropriate attributes. Modeling is performed using rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA), plus Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation, which is further validated using finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulations and coupled-mode analysis. Such structures can be considered arbitrarily directional sources that can be carefully patterned in lateral directions to yield a thermal lens with a designed focal length and/or concentration ratio; the benefit of this approach is that it can enhance the view factor between thermal emitters and receivers, without restricting the area ratio or separation distance. This design and modeling platform is then applied to exclude thermal radiation over a certain range of angles. In this work, we study the effect of controlling the angular width and direction on the view factor, and we explore angular dependence of these angular selective structures.

In this manuscript a simple approach is discussed to fabricate uniform periodic surface structures on semiconductor surfaces by femtosecond laser irradiation for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) applications. Gold films having different thickness are first deposited on semiconductor silicon (Si) surfaces and then periodic surface structures are fabricated by femtosecond laser irradiation. The periodic structures are observed to be uniform over a large area with chain type structure formation of gold and Si. We have studied the formation of these surface structures on Si surface by having different thickness gold films deposited on Si substrates. This approach of the fabrication of surface structures with the assistance of gold film is found to help in local field enhancement and hence work as suitable substrate for the SERS experiments. The conditions for achieving high enhancement factor in SERS with different gold film thicknesses are explored in detail. We also present here the formation of low frequency ripples on Silicon (Si) and high frequency as well as low frequency ripples on titanium (Ti) surface in air and water environments by irradiation with fs laser pulses. Different morphologies were observed on Ti surface depending upon the laser irradiation parameters and the surrounding dielectric medium.

We present a review of our recent studies of Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) in Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistors (MOSFETs) fabricated with different material systems, highlighting the reliability opportunities and challenges of each novel device family. We discuss first the intrinsic reliability improvement offered by SiGe and Ge p-channel technologies, if a Si cap is used to passivate the channel, in order to fabricate a standard SiO2/HfO2 gate stack. We focus on SiGe gate stack optimizations for maximum BTI reliability, and on a simple physics-based model able to reproduce the experimental trends. This model framework is then used to understand the suboptimal BTI reliability and excessive time-dependent variability induced by oxide defect charging in different high-mobility channel gate stacks, such as Ge/GeOx/high-k and InGaAs/high-k. Finally we discuss how to pursue a reduction of charge trapping in alternative material systems in order to boost the device reliability and minimize time-dependent variability.

We have demonstrated the NiO/ZnO based rectifying diode for LED application for substituting GaN for optoelectronics applications. We have systematically studied the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of NiO based Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS) devices under forward and reverse bias for its use in LED applications. The results obtained show that the current increases exponentially with the voltage after a critical turn-on-voltage. The mechanism of carrier transport responsible for the rectifying behavior of the MIS structure as well as the light emission is discussed in relation to the experimental results.

Exposure to volatile organic compounds can lead to asphyxiation, pneumonia like conditions, comas, seizures and irreversible lung, kidney and central nervous system damage. Volatile organics are additionally extremely flammable and explosive, making their early detection in the immediate environment increasingly important. Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors present a potential technology to detect such gases.

Metal oxide semiconducting (MOS) gas sensors represent a cheap, robust and sensitive technology for detecting volatile organic compounds. An array of five thick film MOS gas sensors was fabricated, based on vanadium pentoxide inks. Production took place using a commercially available screen printer, a 3 x 3 mm alumina substrate containing interdigitated electrodes and a platinum heater track. V2O5 inks were modified using zeolite beta, zeolite Y, mordenite & ZSM5 admixtures. Sensors were exposed to three common reducing gases, namely acetone, ethanol, and toluene, and a machine learning technique was applied to differentiate between the different gases. Sensors produced strong responses to all gases. Zeolite modified sensors were found to increase the responsiveness of the sensors compared to umodified V2O5 in a number of cases. Machine learning techniques were incorporated to test the selectivity of the sensors. A high level of accuracy was achieved in determining the class of gas observed.

Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) is a novel form of non-volatile memory that is expected to play a major role in future computing and memory solutions. It has been shown that the resistance of RRAM devices can be precisely tuned by modulating switching voltages, by limiting peak current, and by adjusting the switching pulse duration. This enables the realization of novel applications such as memristive neuromorphic computing and neural network computing. The RRAM devices described in this work utilize an inert tungsten bottom electrode, hafnium oxide based active switching layer, a titanium oxygen exchange layer, and an inert titanium nitride top electrode. Linear sweep and controlled pulse (down to 10 ns) based electrical characterization of RRAM devices was performed in a 1 transistor 1 RRAM (1T1R) configuration to determine endurance, reliability, retention and threshold voltage parameters. We demonstrated endurance values above 108 cycles with an average on/off ratio of 15 and pulse voltages for set/reset operation of ±1.5V. The on-chip 1T1R structures show an excellent controllability with respect to the low and high resistive state by manipulating the peak current from 75 up to 350µA we were able to achieve 10 discrete resistive states. Our results demonstrate that the set operation (which shifts the RRAM device from the high to the low resistance state) is only dependent on the voltage of the switching pulse and the peak current limit. The reset operation, however, occurs in an analog fashion and appears to be dependent on the total energy of the applied switching pulse. Pulse energy was modulated by varying the peak voltage which resulted in a larger relative change of the RRAM device resistance.

The optical properties of RF sputtered polycrystalline permalloy oxide (PyO) thin films were studied in the infrared by variable angle ellipsometry. The dispersion of PyO shows a Lorentzian dispersion peak at 381.5 cm-1. We attribute this peak to the transverse optical phonon of PyO. This peak is consistent with a rocksalt crystal structure for the Ni0.81Fe0.19O1-δ thin films.

For practical use of Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM), understanding resistive switching mechanism in transition metal oxides (TMO) is important. Some papers predict its mechanism by using first principles calculation; for example, TMO become conductive by introducing oxygen vacancy in bulk single crystalline TMO. However, most of ReRAM samples have polycrystalline structures. In this paper, we introduced a periodic slab model to depict grain boundary and calculated the surface energy and density of states for surfaces of NiO with various orientations using first-principles calculation to consider the effect of grain boundaries for resistive switching mechanisms of ReRAM. As a results, vacancies can be formed on the side surface of grain more easily than in grain. Moreover, we showed that surface conductivity depends on surface orientation of NiO and the orientation of side surface of grain can change easily by introduction of vacancies, which is the switching mechanism of NiO-ReRAM

It is widely received that resistive switching in electrode (EL)/metal oxide (MO)/EL cell is caused by formation and rupture of a conductive filament (CF) consisting of oxygen vacancies, VO’s. However, driving forces that migrate VO’s are not elucidated yet. Considering an experimental fact that good data endurance more than 106 cycles is often observed, an isotropic driving force that gathers oxygen vacancies and form a CF for set switching is required instead of an electric field drift that is widely received as the driving force of set switching.

In this paper, we reexamined driving forces and succeeded in reproducing pulse response data for wide rise time, t rise, range by simulating VO migration assuming Fick and Soret diffusion, without including the electric-field drift. Therefore, it was suggested that controlling T distribution considering the waveforms of write/erase pulses and the thermodynamic parameters of ELs as well as MO is crucial for the optimization of switching speed of ReRAM.