The chances of movement of an atome reduce drastically with decreasing temperature. There is an energy barrier that has to be overcome in order to make the diffusion step. For Oxygen in Silicon this is approx. 2eV which is very high (need several hundred degrees Celsius to trigger diffusion). In fact, one way to make thin oxidized Silicon films is to expose the Silicon surface to Oxygen and heat it (several hundred deg.). The oxygen will diffuse into the Silicon and form the oxide. The layer thickness depends on temperature and duration of the treatment. However the article does not say whether they used this technique to get the gate oxide.
Making flat structures (gates oxides) 3 layers thick isn't that hard. What's hard is to make them that thick over the whole wafer and to make a working transistor (they claim the latter). The lateral structures are 30nm which is approx. 100 atom layers wide. Reducing lateral structure size is a lot harder.
I forgot to mention: a list of CAD programs is available at SAL (Scientific Applications on Linux): sal.kachinatech.com. They also list non-free programs.
Of course, there is xfig http://www-epb.lbl.gov/BVSmith/xfig/ but it isn't really CAD (doesn't have dimensioning, but v3.2.3c has layers). You can do exact drawings, but the lack of dimensioning makes it a little bit tiresome. Advantages: it runs on many Unices and doesn't require Qt, good user-interface.
For 2D CAD I can recommend Qcad http://www.qcad.org, it runs under linux (requires Qt 2.x), of course you can always try to compile it for other platforms. Advantages: supports DXF (Autocad), has dimensioning, multiple undo, advanced snapping functions. Disadvantages: slow user interface (too much clicking required). Qcad has also a non-free brother "CAM Expert".
No. Silicon is just below Carbon in the periodic system. It forms tetraedric covalent bonds in the bulk (just like Carbon).
They tried not only tungsten, but many other metals (Hf, Ta, Re, Ir, Nb, Mo, Co, Ni, La, Ce, Gd, Cu, Pd, Ag, Au, Al, Sn, Pb, Bi, Ba). They found that atoms with partially filled d-shells are best to build up the Silicon cage. The thermal properities of tungsten is of no relevace because it is a property of the bulk metal (i.e. large pieces) but the work concentrates on single atoms.
Thank God, it only takes 10^18 spins for NMR to be detectable.
Re:Electricity, Newton's Cradle and field effects
on
The Dot in .mars
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· Score: 1
Isn't this how electricity works? When you put current into a wire, you are adding electrons on one end and removing them on the other, but it is not the same electrons.
No. You cannot "put current into a wire". You can apply a voltage between two ends. If you do this, an electric field proportional to the voltage will propagate along the wire (with the speed of light - not instantaneous!). Then the electrons will be accelerated by this electric field, i.e. a current flows. The acceleration is countered by the effect that electrons are reflected by defects in the wire (i.e. they are slowed down) - this called "resistance".
A friend of mine is doing some laser-cooling research at Innsbruck University, Austria. On their homepage they have links to workgroups including the Hänsch group and the Ketterle group mentioned in the article (first and last picture).
Some thermal-non-equilibrium configurations can be described by a negative temperature (e.g. the population inversion in the active medium of a laser).
First a clarification of the term "temperature": Temperature is a number that describes the distribution of a set of particles over the energy, i.e. how many particles have what energy.
At T = 0 Kelvin all particles would have 0 energy (not possible). At T > 0 K there are some particles with higher energy: the higher the energy, the fewer particles you will find that have this energy. The exact distribution is given by a formula called "Maxwell-Boltzmann-Law" (or its quantum mechanical analogues) which gives the number of particles at an energy E for a system having the temperature T.
Now at T < 0 K the distribution is: the higher the energy, the MORE particles you will find that have this energy. The reason why this is called a negative temperature is that sometimes such distributions can be described by the Maxwell-Boltzmann formula with a negative T. This kind distribution is not stable, it's called "non-equilibrium", because most particles with high energy will tend to give energy to particles with lower energy and the system will approach a T > 0 K distribution.
"Heat" is something different than temperature, it's basically a synonym for energy.
You pay for the right to make PRIVATE copies for your own and your friends (this is and has been legal). Offering copies for the public is not covered by this fee (so it doesn't make napster et al legal). We already pay this fee for VCRs, Tape decks, copy machines, (some) scanners and recently CD-Recorders. The fees are part of the retail price, so you cannot circumvent them.
Of course it is stupid to make the amount of money paid for the right to make private copies proportional to the number of devices one owns.
He predicted that one. At least he predicted the end of the cold war (which was pretty hot in the 60ies) when he let Floyd meet russian scientists at the orbital station.
Another anachronism (or design flaw) is that nobody would do an EVA without being tied to the mothership or at least have a means of propulsion. Second, no ground crew would agree to do a second EVA to refit a broken piece of hardware and risk loss of communication. Third, if HAL is so bright to know about a future failure of a component and its exact time he should also be able to give a reason for the failure.
Set up a public povray server to allow people to render ray tracing/radiosity pictures. (This idea is not new, such a thing already exists.) This would require some dedication, however. As an alternative, you could join an already existing rendering farm.
Indeed in the frame of some object (I forget which) the mass never actually reaches the event horizon.
In its own frame of reference the falling object never reaches the event horizon. For an outside observer the time to reach the event horizon is finite.
We still have two MicroVAXen running in our lab. They do the data aquisition and control of a nuclear physics experiment. Then only thing that we had to replace in the 10 years were the SCSI disks - they were too small (only 20MB) - now they are 1GB. Most of the programs are written in FORTRAN. The best thing about the OS is it's backup handling of files: If you overwrite a file, the system automatically makes a backup copy (filename with appended number) and you can have as many backup copies as you want (very useful in environments where several users fiddle with the system *g*). One can also access files on other VAXen over DECnet without using special networking tools - very handy.
The printers in question (i.e. not DeskJets) use PostScript anyway so I don't see the need for printer drivers. If there's a difference between Unix and Windows output it has to be an application flaw.
Have you heard of pdftex ? If you call it instead of latex it will generate a PDF file instead of DVI. Only minor adjustments to your tex source are necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
The chances of movement of an atome reduce drastically with decreasing temperature. There is an energy barrier that has to be overcome in order to make the diffusion step. For Oxygen in Silicon this is approx. 2eV which is very high (need several hundred degrees Celsius to trigger diffusion). In fact, one way to make thin oxidized Silicon films is to expose the Silicon surface to Oxygen and heat it (several hundred deg.). The oxygen will diffuse into the Silicon and form the oxide. The layer thickness depends on temperature and duration of the treatment. However the article does not say whether they used this technique to get the gate oxide.
Making flat structures (gates oxides) 3 layers thick isn't that hard. What's hard is to make them that thick over the whole wafer and to make a working transistor (they claim the latter). The lateral structures are 30nm which is approx. 100 atom layers wide. Reducing lateral structure size is a lot harder.
I forgot to mention: a list of CAD programs is available at SAL (Scientific Applications on Linux): sal.kachinatech.com. They also list non-free programs.
Of course, there is xfig http://www-epb.lbl.gov/BVSmith/xfig/ but it isn't really CAD (doesn't have dimensioning, but v3.2.3c has layers). You can do exact drawings, but the lack of dimensioning makes it a little bit tiresome. Advantages: it runs on many Unices and doesn't require Qt, good user-interface.
For 2D CAD I can recommend Qcad http://www.qcad.org, it runs under linux (requires Qt 2.x), of course you can always try to compile it for other platforms. Advantages: supports DXF (Autocad), has dimensioning, multiple undo, advanced snapping functions. Disadvantages: slow user interface (too much clicking required). Qcad has also a non-free brother "CAM Expert".
Silicon is a transition metal...
No. Silicon is just below Carbon in the periodic system. It forms tetraedric covalent bonds in the bulk (just like Carbon).
They tried not only tungsten, but many other metals (Hf, Ta, Re, Ir, Nb, Mo, Co, Ni, La, Ce, Gd, Cu, Pd, Ag, Au, Al, Sn, Pb, Bi, Ba). They found that atoms with partially filled d-shells are best to build up the Silicon cage. The thermal properities of tungsten is of no relevace because it is a property of the bulk metal (i.e. large pieces) but the work concentrates on single atoms.
The Z-component of a spin-1/2 particle has only to values.
Thank God, it only takes 10^18 spins for NMR to be detectable.
Isn't this how electricity works? When you put current into a wire, you are adding electrons on one end and removing them on the other, but it is not the same electrons.
No. You cannot "put current into a wire". You can apply a voltage between two ends. If you do this, an electric field proportional to the voltage will propagate along the wire (with the speed of light - not instantaneous!). Then the electrons will be accelerated by this electric field, i.e. a current flows. The acceleration is countered by the effect that electrons are reflected by defects in the wire (i.e. they are slowed down) - this called "resistance".
A friend of mine is doing some laser-cooling research at Innsbruck University, Austria. On their homepage they have links to workgroups including the Hänsch group and the Ketterle group mentioned in the article (first and last picture).
Some thermal-non-equilibrium configurations can be described by a negative temperature (e.g. the population inversion in the active medium of a laser).
First a clarification of the term "temperature":
Temperature is a number that describes the distribution of a set of particles over the energy, i.e. how many particles have what energy.
At T = 0 Kelvin all particles would have 0 energy (not possible). At T > 0 K there are some particles with higher energy: the higher the energy, the fewer particles you will find that have this energy. The exact distribution is given by a formula called "Maxwell-Boltzmann-Law" (or its quantum mechanical analogues) which gives the number of particles at an energy E for a system having the temperature T.
Now at T < 0 K the distribution is: the higher the energy, the MORE particles you will find that have this energy. The reason why this is called a negative temperature is that sometimes such distributions can be described by the Maxwell-Boltzmann formula with a negative T.
This kind distribution is not stable, it's called "non-equilibrium", because most particles with high energy will tend to give energy to particles with lower energy and the system will approach a T > 0 K distribution.
"Heat" is something different than temperature, it's basically a synonym for energy.
The fact that he made the statement just shows how desperate they are.
You pay for the right to make PRIVATE copies for your own and your friends (this is and has been legal). Offering copies for the public is not covered by this fee (so it doesn't make napster et al legal). We already pay this fee for VCRs, Tape decks, copy machines, (some) scanners and recently CD-Recorders. The fees are part of the retail price, so you cannot circumvent them.
Of course it is stupid to make the amount of money paid for the right to make private copies proportional to the number of devices one owns.
Oh, using POVray do draw the screen - what excellent idea!
Soviet Union
He predicted that one. At least he predicted the end of the cold war (which was pretty hot in the 60ies) when he let Floyd meet russian scientists at the orbital station.
Another anachronism (or design flaw) is that nobody would do an EVA without being tied to the mothership or at least have a means of propulsion. Second, no ground crew would agree to do a second EVA to refit a broken piece of hardware and risk loss of communication. Third, if HAL is so bright to know about a future failure of a component and its exact time he should also be able to give a reason for the failure.
He doesn't jump. He is pushed outside by the air in the drone escaping into the vacuum.
The Mark Levinson No.33 looks like a good candidate for a computer case.
Set up a public povray server to allow people to render ray tracing/radiosity pictures. (This idea is not new, such a thing already exists.) This would require some dedication, however. As an alternative, you could join an already existing rendering farm.
No, unfortunately it seems that we are both wrong. Here is an explanation.
Indeed in the frame of some object (I forget which) the mass never actually reaches the event horizon.
In its own frame of reference the falling object never reaches the event horizon. For an outside observer the time to reach the event horizon is finite.
Why not ? Most people have two hands. Two mice could be useful for gfx programs or games.
We still have two MicroVAXen running in our lab. They do the data aquisition and control of a nuclear physics experiment. Then only thing that we had to replace in the 10 years were the SCSI disks - they were too small (only 20MB) - now they are 1GB. Most of the programs are written in FORTRAN. The best thing about the OS is it's backup handling of files: If you overwrite a file, the system automatically makes a backup copy (filename with appended number) and you can have as many backup copies as you want (very useful in environments where several users fiddle with the system *g*). One can also access files on other VAXen over DECnet without using special networking tools - very handy.
The printers in question (i.e. not DeskJets) use PostScript anyway so I don't see the need for printer drivers. If there's a difference between Unix and Windows output it has to be an application flaw.
Have you heard of pdftex ? If you call it instead of latex it will generate a PDF file instead of DVI. Only minor adjustments to your tex source are necessary.
psfrag...change text in ps figures
Geee, I think you just made Illustrator obsolete at our lab. Great Tip!