Igor Alencar

The stopping power and straggling of backscattered protons on nanometric Pt films were measured at low to medium energies (60–250 keV) by using the medium-energy ion scattering technique. The stopping power results are in good agreement with the most recent measurements by Primetzhofer Phys. Rev. B 86, 094102 (2012) and are well described by the free electron gas model at low projectile energies. Nevertheless, the straggling results are strongly underestimated by well-established formulas up to a factor of two. Alternatively, we propose a model for the energy-loss straggling that takes into account the inhomogeneous electron-gas response, based on the electron-loss function of the material, along with bunching effects. This approach yields remarkable agreement with the experimental data, indicating that the observed enhancement in energy-loss straggling is due to bunching effects in an inhomogeneous electron system. Nonlinear effects are of minor importance for the energy-loss straggling.

A comprehensive study of sillenite Bi₁₂SiO₂₀ single-crystal properties, including elastic stiffness and piezoelectric coefficients, dielectric permittivity, thermal expansion and molar heat capacity, is presented. Brillouin-interferometry measurements (up to 27 GPa), which were performed at high pressures for the first time, and ab initio calculations based on density functional theory (up to 50 GPa) show the stability of the sillenite structure in the investigated pressure range, in agreement with previous studies. Elastic stiffness coefficients c ₁₁ and c ₁₂ are found to increase continuously with pressure while c ₄₄ increases slightly for lower pressures and remains nearly constant above 15 GPa. Heat-capacity measurements were performed with a quasi-adiabatic calorimeter employing the relaxation method between 2 K and 395 K. No phase transition could be observed in this temperature interval. Standard molar entropy, enthalpy change and Debye temperature are extracted from the data. The results are found to be roughly half of the previous values reported in the literature. The discrepancy is attributed to the overestimation of the Debye temperature which was extracted from high-temperature data. Additionally, Debye temperatures obtained from mean sound velocities derived by Voigt-Reuss averaging are in agreement with our heat-capacity results. Finally, a complete set of electromechanical coefficients was deduced from the application of resonant ultrasound spectroscopy between 103 K and 733 K. No discontinuities in the temperature dependence of the coefficients are observed. High-temperature (up to 1100 K) resonant ultrasound spectra recorded for Bi₁₂ MO₂₀ crystals revealed strong and reversible acoustic dissipation effects at 870 K, 960 K and 550 K for M = Si, Ge and Ti, respectively. Resonances with small contributions from the elastic shear stiffness c ₄₄ and the piezoelectric stress coefficient e ₁₂₃ are almost unaffected by this dissipation.

Non-planar Fin Field Effect Transistors (FinFET) are already present in modern devices. The evolution from the well-established 2D planar technology to the design of 3D nanostructures rose new fabrication processes, but a technique capable of full characterization, particularly their dopant distribution, in a representative (high statistics) way is still lacking. Here we propose a methodology based on Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) to address this query, allowing structural and compositional quantification of advanced 3D FinFET devices with nanometer spatial resolution. When ions are backscattered, their energy losses unfold the chemistry of the different 3D compounds present in the structure. The FinFET periodicity generates oscillatory features as a function of backscattered ion energy and, in fact, these features allow a complete description of the device dimensions. Additionally, each measurement is performed over more than thousand structures, being highly representative in a statistical meaning. Finally, independent measurements using electron microscopy corroborate the proposed methodology.