A method of controlling wafer bow in an integrated circuit fabrication process may include characterizing the wafer bow in response to performing one or more first fabrication processes to an active side of an integrated circuit wafer. Determining one or more second fabrication processes, to be applied to a back side of the integrated circuit wafer, to bring the wafer bow to below a predetermined threshold based on the one or more first fabrication processes the method may additionally include performing the one or more second fabrication processes on the back side of the integrated circuit wafer.

A method of forming a multilayered zinc alloy coating comprises steps of providing a bath of an aqueous electrolyte including zinc and a second electrodepositable component in an electrolytic cell having an anode and a cathode; applying a current or voltage between the anode and the cathode; modulating the applied current or voltage over time between at least two current or voltage values to thereby modulate the current density over multiple cycles between at least two current density values, wherein a first current density value is in a range of 0.3 to less than 2 A/dm.sup.2 and a second current density value is higher than the first current density value and is in a range of 0.6 to less than 5 A/dm.sup.2; and controlling the modulation of the applied current or voltage to obtain a multilayered structure having multiple layers of one or more of alternating proportions of the second component, alternating corrosion potential, alternating grain size, and alternating grain orientation, wherein one or more of the multiple layers has a thickness in the range of 1 to 10 μm.

A stage includes a base material including a step portion and an insulating film. The step portion includes a first surface recessed from a top surface of the base material and a second surface recessed from a side surface of the base material. The insulating film includes a plurality of first layers on the first surface and a plurality of second layers on the second surface. In the step portion, each first end portion of the plurality of first layers and each second end portion of the plurality of second layers are alternately stacked. The first surface and the second surface are connected via a corner, and each first end portion and each second end portion are alternately stacked at the corner.

Implementations described herein generally relate to a method for forming a metal layer and to a method for forming an oxide layer on the metal layer. In one implementation, the metal layer is formed on a seed layer, and the seed layer helps the metal in the metal layer nucleate with small grain size without affecting the conductivity of the metal layer. The metal layer may be formed using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and nitrogen gas may be flowed into the processing chamber along with the precursor gases. In another implementation, a barrier layer is formed on the metal layer in order to prevent the metal layer from being oxidized during subsequent oxide layer deposition process. In another implementation, the metal layer is treated prior to the deposition of the oxide layer in order to prevent the metal layer from being oxidized.

A coated cutting tool including a substrate and a coating layer formed on the substrate, wherein the coating layer has an alternately laminated structure of a first layer and a second layer, the first layer contains a compound having a composition represented by (Al.sub.aTi.sub.1-a)N (0.80 ≤ a ≤ 0.95), the second layer contains a compound having a composition represented by (Al.sub.bM.sub.cTi.sub.1-b-c)N (M represents at least one of Si or B, 0.80 ≤ b ≤ 0.95, and 0 < c ≤ 0.20), a and b satisfy |a-b| ≤ 0.05, and an average thickness of the alternately laminated structure is 1.0 .Math.m or more and 10.0 .Math.m or less.

The invention relates to a component having a coating containing chromium, nitrogen and carbon. According to the invention the coating comprises a sliding layer having a ceramic phase and a carbon phase, the ceramic phase forms a crystalline ceramic phase from Crx(C.sub.1-yN.sub.y) with 0.8=x=1.2 and y>0.7, and the crystalline ceramic phase and the carbon phase form a layer system of alternating individual layers (A, B), wherein the carbon phase has interstices that are filled with the crystalline ceramic phase.

A coated tool, such as a rotating, cutting tool, includes a tool body and a multilayer wear protection coating system. The wear protection system coats a functional surface of the tool body that is subject to wear and includes a first undoped diamond layer and a second undoped diamond layer disposed over the first undoped diamond layer. The first undoped diamond layer is electrically conductive and exhibits grain boundary conductivity from delocalized electrons. The second undoped diamond layer is electrically insulating. The first undoped diamond layer is 4-20 microns thick and is made with diamond grains whose size ranges from 4-10 nm. The first and second diamond layers are applied by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using a hot-wire method. The wear protection system also includes an additional undoped diamond layer that is electrically insulating and is disposed between the functional surface of the tool body and the first diamond layer.

A core-shell nanoparticle is provided that includes a core comprising a first isotope of an element; an isolation layer surrounding the core; and a shell layer surrounding the isolation layer, wherein the shell layer comprises a second isotope of the element, with the first isotope being different than the second isotope. Methods are also provided for forming such core-shell nanoparticles.

The present invention relates to a method for producing a blade or blade arrangement of a turbomachine, which features the following steps: producing a blade (4) from at least one blade material, machining the blade in at least one region of the blade by a surface machining process, cleaning the surface of the blade depositing an erosion protection coating (10) of at least two layers of different hardness by physical vapor deposition in the at least one region, machining the erosion protection coating (10) by a coating smoothing process in order to establish a defined surface roughness.

Furthermore, the invention relates to correspondingly produced blades or blade arrangements.

The invention relates to a coating comprising at least one molybdenum-containing layer having molybdenum oxide, said molybdenum being essentially molybdenum monoxide. The invention further relates to a PVD process for producing the disclosed coating, in which the layer comprising the molybdenum monoxide is produced using arc evaporation. The invention also relates to a component that has said coating.