Abstract There is converging evidence, from various independent areas of neuroscience, for a functional specialization of the left and right cerebral hemispheres for positive and negative emotions, ...respectively (“valence theory” of emotional processing). One subfield, however, has produced mixed results, i.e. work on the detection of parafoveally presented positively or negatively emotional words by healthy subjects. Right or left visual field advantages were described and interpreted as reflecting the superiority of either the left hemisphere (LH) for linguistic material, or of the right hemisphere (RH) for highly emotional stimuli. Here we show that 48 healthy, right-handed participants' performance on a lateralized lexical decision task depends on their individual inclination to bisect a line to the left or right of the objective center. Only those with a bisection bias to the right showed the LH advantage for word detection known from the neuropsychological literature. Negative emotional words were processed with comparable accuracy in the two visual fields. However, a recognition advantage for negative over positive emotional words was found exclusively for those participants with a leftward line bisection bias. These results suggest that in work on functional hemispheric differences state variables like stimulus lateralization and word emotionality may be less decisive than the trait variable of lateral hemispatial attention. We propose a cautious reconsideration of the concept of “hemisphericity,” which once emphasized individual differences in baseline hemispheric arousal, but was later dismissed in a reaction to oversimplifications in popular science accounts.
Hard silicon nitride-like coatings have been grown in a high-density microwave electron cyclotron resonance discharge, using hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) as the deposition precursor and ammonia as ...the reactive gas. Statistical experiment design methodology was used to investigate the effects of microwave power and NH
3/HMDSO flow-rate ratio on the growth rate, elastic modulus and hardness of the plasma-grown coatings. The films deposited are hard, colorless and transparent, with growth rates of up to 0.5 μm/min. Films lasted 745–840 h in an ASTM B117 salt-fog corrosion test. X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopic analyses showed the coating composition to be SiC
x
O
y
N
z
, with significant carbon and up to 13.7 at.% nitrogen concentration. While not stoichiometric Si
3N
4, coatings grown at high microwave power and high NH
3/HMDSO flow ratios had an elastic modulus of 176 GPa and hardness of 12.2 GPa, comparable to values reported for thermally grown silicon nitride.
Silicon dioxide coatings can be grown at low substrate temperatures in a pulse-modulated microwave electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) oxygen plasma with octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (OMCTS) as the ...organosilicon precursor. The 2.45 GHz microwave power was pulse-modulated with repetition frequencies of 20 Hz-20 kHz, duty ratios (pulse on-time/pulse period) from 25 to 100%, and peak microwave power from 800 to 2400 W. The coatings are SiO2-like with Si:O ratios of approximately 3:4 and carbon percentages of 20-25%. Pulsed plasma deposition significantly lowers the deposition substrate temperature as the peak power and duty ratio decrease. With 1600 W input continuous microwave power, substrate temperatures were 140-150DGC after 10 min of deposition, while with a 50% pulse duty cycle and 1600 W peak power the temperature decreased to 90DGC. The coating hardness decreased with pulsed operation compared to continuous operation, unless the average microwave power levels were made equivalent. Deposition growth rates depended only weakly on the pulse repetition frequency and duty ratio, but increased strongly as the pulse peak power was raised. Pulsed deposition at 800 W peak power and 50% duty ratio gave a growth rate of 0.5-0.6 *mm/min for all frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, increasing to 0.8-0.9 *mm/min at 1600 W peak power. (Substrates: stainless steel, brass.)
Hard titanium, zirconium and chromium nitride-like coatings were grown in a high-density microwave electron cyclotron resonance discharge. The organometallic deposition precursors were titanium (IV) ...isopropoxide and tetrakis(dimethylamino)titanium, zirconium 2-methyl-2-butoxide and zirconium
t-butoxide, and bis(ethylbenzene)chromium, with ammonia as the reactive gas. The deposited metal nitride-like coatings have nano-indentation hardness values of 20–28 GPa for TiN-like coatings, 17–21 GPa for ZrN-like coatings and 25–31 GPa for CrN-like coatings. Growth rates were 10–20 nm/min. X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopic analyses showed the compositions of titanium-, zirconium- and chromium-containing coatings to be TiC
x
O
y
N
z
, ZrC
x
O
y
N
z
and CrC
x
O
y
N
z
with significant carbon and oxygen atomic concentrations. The titanium nitride-like and zirconium nitride-like coatings had characteristic gold coloring and lasted more than 1000 h in an ASTM B117 salt-fog corrosion test without color change or visible corrosion.
This letter demonstrates that the conventional two-element lumped model can provide valid capacitance-voltage (C-V ) characteristics for gate oxides with large tunneling current, if the gate length ...is reduced. The two-element models generally suffer from severe distortion of C-V due to tunneling current, resulting in poor oxide thickness extraction. The distortion can be suppressed using high frequencies in series model or using short gate lengths in parallel model. Considering instrument limits and manufacturability, however, the parallel model is more desirable. The distortion can be completely suppressed up to 10 4 A/cm 2 of tunneling current, using gate lengths shorter than 0.2 μm in parallel model.
Appropriate balancing of the polysilicon dopant concentration and the physical gate dielectric thickness is required so as to accomplish a minimized capacitance equivalent thickness (CET) at low gate ...leakage (
J
G) and high reliability. Here, we investigate the impact of polysilicon predoping and physical gate-dielectric thickness scaling on the interaction of CET,
J
G and TDDB reliability for both NMOS- and PMOS-devices for physical thicknesses between 1.28 and 1.58
nm. Furthermore, the impact of an additional N
14
+ ion implantation into the PMOS gate is investigated.
For NMOS both modal lifetime and leakage current density are not influenced by changes of the poly-depletion layer thickness or the CET, respectively, that result from increasing phosphorus implant dose. Since
J
G scales with physical thickness and since modal lifetime strongly depends upon
J
G, both physical thickness and leakage current density can be used to determine the thickness scaling of gate dielectrics reliability.
A similar result is found for pMOS though the CET is varied less by the increased boron doping level. Boron penetration resulting in degraded TDDB reliability was observed for the physically thinnest split for excess boron doping by
p-polysilicon ion-implantation. An additional nitrogen implant into the
p-poly proved to prevent pMOS devices from reliability degradation, however, at the expense of any scalability margin that additional boron would eventually offer.
We present device and circuit characterization resulting from technology/design co-development to improve the design and manufacture of analog/mixed-signal (AMS) circuits in processors. We introduce ...I D -based MOSFET transconductance measurements and a new measurement of drain saturation margin at realistic analog biasing. We also describe routinely monitored scribe lane replicas of key AMS passives and circuits. Such measurements enable construction and validation of compact models better suited to AMS needs than those historically tailored for logic design.
The turbulent state initiated by the electron-beam-ion two-stream instability is investigated. The spectrum of fluctuations is concentrated on a Cherenkov cone with a single modulus of phase ...velocity, azimuthally symmetric around the beam axis. The associated diffusion in velocity space occurs mainly on the surface of a double cone, complementary to the Cherenkov emission cone. This model is supported by an experiment in which the three-dimensional diffusion coefficient is measured with use of space-time correlation functions.
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