Abstract: The use of lithium (Li) metal as anode in rechargeable batteries has been revived recently because Li metal has the potential to double the specific energy density of the state-of-the-art Li ion batteries. However, Li dendrite growth and low Coulombic efficiency still hinder the application of Li metal batteries. The urgent and most important thing is to develop an electrolyte which can enable Li metal to be used as anode with high safety and good stability. Solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) have attracted much attention due to their outstanding advantages over conventional liquid electrolytes, including no leakage of electrolytes, good flexibility, low flammability, high safety and stable contact with the electrodes. As the most widely studied polymer in SPEs, polyethylene oxide (PEO) still faces some challenges, including the low ionic conductivity (σ 〈 10 -5 S cm -1 ) at room temperature (RT) and instability when charged to above 4 V vs. Li/Li + . In this work, we developed a hybrid polymer electrolyte (HPE) which exhibits high oxidation voltage and high ionic conductivity. The HPE shows an oxidation stability above 4.5 V vs. Li/Li + when platinum was used as the working electrode in a three-electrode cell. The pure HPE has an ionic conductivity of 0.46 mS cm -1 and 2.8 mS cm -1 at 30 °C and 60 °C, respectively. The increased electrochemical window and the high conductivity of the HPE enable the Li||LiNi 1/3 Mn 1/3 Co 1/3 O 2 cells (with an areal capacity loading of 2 mAh cm -2 ) to show a stable cycling in the voltage range of 3.0 – 4.2 V, having a high capacity retention of 84.2% after 170 cycles under charge rate of C/5 and discharge rate of C/3 at 60 °C. More details will be reported during the presentation at the meeting. Acknowledgement This work was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Vehicle Technologies, the Advanced Battery Materials Research (BMR) Program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

Abstract: In the present work, a novel RTON (Rapid Thermal Oxidation and Nitridation) was investigated as STI (Shallow Trench Isolation) liner dielectric in 45-nm CMOS. Compare with conventional ISSG (In-Situ Steam Generation) oxide, this RTON liner demonstrate better device performance for NMOS transistors both in long channel and short channel. It shown 〉 4% Ioff/Ion improvement and exhibit more tighten SRAM standby leakage distribution. These performance gains can be explained by RTON liner contribution to NMOS channel tensile stress enhancement as well as its excellent capability to prevent channel doping diffusion.

Abstract: Polyaniline (PANI) is doped with poly(acrylic acid-co-maleic acid) (PAMA) containing HCl to obtain PANI-PAMA film. Platinum particles are deposited into the PANI-PAMA film via electrochemical deposition to obtain PANI-PAMA-Pt composite electrodes. Subsequently, ruthenium oxide (RuO2) particles are incorporated into the composite electrodes by cyclic voltammetry for 20 and 60 cycles to obtain PANI-PAMA-Pt-RuO220 and PANI-PAMA-Pt-RuO260 composite electrodes, respectively. X-ray diffraction analysis explains a decrease in the number of Pt crystalline facets for the incorporation of RuO2 into PANI-PAMA-Pt. Cyclic voltammetry results and chronoamperometric response measurements demonstrate that the PANI-PAMA-Pt-RuO220 electrode has the best activity and stability toward methanol oxidation among the three electrodes.

Abstract: The embedded silicon germanium (eSiGe) is widely applied in advanced CMOS device fabrication to boost PMOS channel mobility. Beside selectivity, defect control and thermal compatibility, one big challenge of epitaxy growth SiGe process is loading effect between different product and different features. In this work, two precursors of SiH4 and SiH2Cl2 (DCS) were applied for SiGe epitaxy growth respectively. Their impact on embedded silicon germanium global and micro loading was investigated also. The results reveal some solutions to minimize the loading effect such as proper precursor selection, partial pressure optimization and silicon open space constraint.

Abstract: In this paper, the effects of offset spacer on nMOSFET hot-carrier lifetime have been investigated. In this process, the offset spacer consists of silicon oxide formed by CVD in traditional poly/SiON gate process after poly etch and re-oxidation, which is found to reduce the gate-to-drain overlap capacitance (Cgd0) as well as the short channel effect (SCE). Intuitively, the reduction of Cgd0 will worsen the hot carrier performance. However, it is found that, the device with offset spacer has about four times hot carrier lifetime improvement in IO nMOSFET, compared to the case without offset spacer. Much decreased substrate current is seen in the process with offset spacer. Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) simulation results show that with the application of offset spacer, much longer hot carrier lifetime is achieved, contributed by the reduced Emax and optimized Emax location, even though the Cgd0 is reduced.

Abstract: Mechanical degradation is one of the most significant mechanisms that affect the cycle life of lithium-ion batteries. Cracks and fractures have been observed in both cathode and anode active material particles, which lead to isolation of active materials, disruption of the electrically conductive network and exposure of fresh surfaces that cause side reactions. These effects significantly reduce the battery capacity and increase the internal resistance. Modeling and simulation are essential to study the generation and effects of stress inside batteries. Treating the intercalation-induced stress analogously to thermal stress, a model has been developed to study the stress and concentration inside a particle. 1 This model has been extended to study various problems at both particle and cell levels. Nevertheless, this model and its extensions are based on the assumption of solid particles. This assumption does not apply for active materials with an agglomerate structure, such as LiNi 0.8 Co 0.15 Al 0.05 O 2 (NCA). 2 In these materials, many nanometer-scale primary particles agglomerate to a micrometer-scale secondary particle by the adhesion of binder. The secondary particle is porous rather than a compact solid, as the electrolyte is found to be soaked into the agglomerate. 2  Therefore, charge transfer reactions are expected to occur between the primary particle surface and the electrolyte inside a secondary particle. Although electrochemical models have been developed to investigate the characteristic of an agglomerate accounting for the effects of its internal structure, 3 no mechanical model has been developed to study the stress in agglomerates for lithium-ion batteries. Meanwhile, multiple experiments have reported observations of fracture of agglomerates after cycling, which is a major mechanism of capacity degradation. This calls for a fully understanding of the mechanical behaviors at the agglomerate level. This work presents a coupled mechanical and electrochemical model to predict the intercalation-induced stress in a secondary particle with an agglomerate structure, as shown in Fig. 1 . In this model, the electrochemical and transport processes are accounted for at both the secondary and primary particle levels. The porous electrode theory is applied at the secondary particle level, and the solid diffusion is incorporated at the primary particle level. Simulation results from the electrochemical model revealed that a major concentration gradient exists along the radius of the secondary particle, while the concentration is fairly uniform in each primary particle. Based on this finding, the mechanical model focused on the stress generation at the secondary particle level. The secondary particle is assumed to be mechanically homogeneous with effective properties, which can be calculated from the porosity and properties of bulk materials. Because the primary particle is much smaller than the secondary particle, the secondary particle is regarded as a continuum. Each spatial point in the secondary particle is composed of many primary particles at that location. Therefore the stress at each spatial point represents the loading stress exerted on the primary particles at that location. This loading stress is important to know since it is the cause of separation of primary particles, i.e. fracture in the secondary particle. The intercalation-induced stress is calculated using the analogy to thermal stress. The developed model has been applied to investigate factors affecting the stress generation behaviors. The results are summarized as follows: 1) A strong dependence of OCP on the solid lithium concentration leads to a more uniform current density in the secondary particle, which reduces the stress level. 2) A large magnitude of over-potential at the secondary particle surface causes severely non-uniform current density, and thus larger stresses. 3) The primary particle size shows a significant effect on the current density, concentration and stress profiles. A larger primary particle size results in a smaller active surface area per volume, which reduces the impact of non-uniform current density and thus reduces the stress level in the secondary particle. However, the concentration gradient inside the primary particle becomes pronounced with the increase of the primary particle size, which may generate stress inside the primary particle. 4) The comparison between a porous secondary particle and a solid particle of the same size shows that the stress is greatly alleviated in the porous secondary particle. This is attributed to the lower Young’s modulus of the porous particle, and more importantly, to the smaller concentration gradient in the porous secondary particle. References 1. X. Zhang, W. Shyy, and A. Marie Sastry, J Electrochem Soc , 154 , A910 (2007). 2. D. Abraham, D. Dees, J. Knuth, and E. Reynolds,  ARGONNE National Laboratory (ANL-05/21) , 196 (2005). 3. S. Lueth, U. S. Sauter, and W. G. Bessler, J Electrochem Soc , 163 , A210 (2016). Figure 1