Silicides were introduced into the technology of electronic devices some thirty years ago; since then, they have been continuously used to form both ohmic and rectifying contacts to silicon. Silicides are also important for other applications (thermoelectric devices and structural applications, such as jet engines), but it is not easy to find an updated reference containing both their basic properties, either chemical or physical, and the latest applications.The 16th Course of the International School of Solid State Physics, held in Erice (Italy) in the late spring of 1999, was intended to break artificial barriers between disciplines, and to gather people concerned with the properties and applications of silicides, regardless of the formal fields to which they belong, or of the practical goals they pursue. This book is therefore concerned with theory as well as applications, metallurgy as well as physics, and materials science as well as microelectronics.

This is the first book to provide guidance on the development and application of metal silicide technology as it emerges from the scientific to the prototype and manufacturing stages. Other key topics covered are fundamentals, present and future silicide technology for Si-based devices, and characterisation methods. Suitable for engineers and students in microelectronics.

The properties of silicon alloyed with metals are presented here for silicides of both transition and rare earth metals.

Nanoscale materials are showing great promise in various electronic, optoelectronic, and energy applications. Silicon (Si) has especially captured great attention as the leading material for microelectronic and nanoscale device applications. Recently, various silicides have garnered special attention for their pivotal role in Si device engineering

In Advanced ULSI interconnects – fundamentals and applications we bring a comprehensive description of copper-based interconnect technology for ultra-lar- scale integration (ULSI) technology for integrated circuit (IC) application. In- grated circuit technology is the base for all modern electronics systems. You can ?nd electronics systems today everywhere: from toys and home appliances to a- planes and space shuttles. Electronics systems form the hardware that together with software are the bases of the modern information society. The rapid growth and vast exploitation of modern electronics system create a strong demand for new and improved electronic circuits as demonstrated by the amazing progress in the ?eld of ULSI technology. This progress is well described by the famous “Moore’s law” which states, in its most general form, that all the metrics that describe integrated circuit performance (e. g. , speed, number of devices, chip area) improve expon- tially as a function of time. For example, the number of components per chip d- bles every 18 months and the critical dimension on a chip has shrunk by 50% every 2 years on average in the last 30 years. This rapid growth in integrated circuits te- nology results in highly complex integrated circuits with an increasing number of interconnects on chips and between the chip and its package. The complexity of the interconnect network on chips involves an increasing number of metal lines per interconnect level, more interconnect levels, and at the same time a reduction in the interconnect line critical dimensions.

The science of complex materials continues to engage researchers from a vast range of disciplines, including physics, mathematics, computational science, and virtually all domains of engineering.This volume presents a unique multidisciplinary panorama of the current research in complex materials. The contributions explore an array of problems reflecting recent developments in four main areas: characterization and modeling of disordered packings, micromechanics and continuum theory; discrete element method; statistical mechanics. The common theme is the quest to unravel the connection between the microscopic and macroscopic properties of complex materials.

This volume contains papers delivered at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop and provides a broad introduction to all major aspects of quantum dot structures. Such structures have been produced for studies of basic physical phenomena, for device fabrication and, on a more speculative level, have been suggested as components of a solid-state realization of a quantum computer. The book is structured so that the reader is introduced to the methods used to produce and control quantum dots, followed by discussions of their structural, electronic, and optical properties. It concludes with examples of how their optical properties can be used in practical devices, including lasers and light-emitting diodes operating at the commercially important wavelengths of 1.3 Am and 1.55 Am."