We study the effect of corporate cultural similarity on merger decisions and outcomes. Using the similarity in firms’ corporate social responsibility characteristics to proxy for cultural similarity, we find that culturally similar firms are more likely to merge. Moreover, these mergers are associated with greater synergies, superior long-run operating performance, and fewer write-offs of goodwill. Our evidence is consistent with the notion that cultural similarity eases post-deal integration. Our results contribute to the literature on the determinants of merger success, provide new evidence on the impact of corporate culture, and offer a new approach to defining firms’ cultural similarity.

In South Korea, the resurgence of mumps was noted primarily among school-aged children and adolescents since 2000. We analyzed spatial patterns in mumps incidence to give an indication to the geographical risk. We used National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System data from 2001 to 2015, classifying into three periods according to the level of endemicity. A geographic-weighted regression analysis was performed to find demographic predictors of mumps incidence according to district level. We assessed the association between the total population size, population density, percentage of children (age 0–19 years), timely vaccination rate of measles–mumps–rubella vaccines and the higher incidence rate of mumps. During low endemic periods, there were sporadic regional distributions of outbreak in the central and northern part of the country. During intermediate endemic periods, the increase of incidence was noted across the country. During high endemic period, a nationwide high incidence of mumps was noted especially concentrated in southwestern regions. A clear pattern for the mumps cluster shown through global spatial autocorrelation analysis from 2004 to 2015. The ‘non-timely vaccination coverage’ (P = 0·002), and ‘proportion of children population’ (P < 0·001) were the predictors for high mumps incidence in district levels. Our study indicates that the rate of mumps incidence according to geographic regions vary by population proportion and neighboring regions, and timeliness of vaccination, suggesting the importance of community-level surveillance and improving of timely vaccination.

The Slewing Mirror Telescope (SMT) is the UV/optical telescope of UFFO-pathfinder. TheSMT optical system is a Ritchey-Chrétien (RC) telescope of 100 mm diameter pointed bymeans of a gimbal-mounted flat mirror in front of the telescope. The RC telescope has a17 × 17arcmin2 in Field of View and 4.3 arcsec resolution (full width halfmaximum of the point spread function) The beam-steering mirror enables the SMT to access a35 × 35degree region and point and settle within 1 sec. All mirrors were fabricated toabout 0.02 wavelengths RMS in wave front error (WFE) and 84.7% average reflectivity over200 nm ~ 650 nm. The RC telescope was aligned to 0.05 wavelengths RMS in WFE (testwavelength 632.8 nm). In this paper, the technical details of the RC telescope and slewingmirror system assembly, integration, and testing are given shortly, and performance testsof the full SMT optical system are reported.

The Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO) is a space mission to detect the early moments of an explosion from Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), thus enhancing our understanding of the GRB mechanism. It consists of the UFFO Burst & Trigger telescope (UBAT) for the recognition of GRB positions using hard X-ray from GRBs. It also contains the Slewing Mirror Telescope (SMT) for the fast detection of UV-optical photons from GRBs. It is designed to begin the UV-optical observations in less than a few seconds after the trigger. The UBAT is based on a coded-mask X-ray camera with a wide field of view (FOV) and is composed of the coded mask, a hopper and a detector module. The SMT has a fast rotatable mirror which allows a fast UV-optical detection after the trigger. The telescope is a modified Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with the aperture size of 10 cm diameter, and an image intensifier readout by CCD. The UFFO pathfinder is scheduled to launch into orbit on 2012 June by the Lomonosov spacecraft. It is a scaled-down version of UFFO in order to make the first systematic study of early UV/optical light curves, including the rise phase of GRBs. We expect UBAT to trigger ~44 GRBs/yr and expect SMT to detect ~10 GRBs/yr.

Self-aligned Cobalt silicide as ohmic contact layer on sub 100 nm hole patterned Si vertical diode formed by silicon epitaxial growth (SEG) is investigated and silicon epitaxial growth of higher than 4000 Å thickness and good crystalinity for PN diode has been successfully developed. Also, electrical isolation of 100 nm pitch size between diode and diode, and removal of unreacted Co/Ti/TiN layer have been realized by dip-out process without CMP simultaneously. Through the mechanism of void formation due to the variation of Si consumption rate during silicidation at limited hole pattern dimension, critical Co and Capping Ti thickness are investigated as various hole dimensions (80∼120 nm), and then with p+ type dopant species (49BF2, 11B). The ratio of Co thickness to hole dimension demonstrates void free cobalt silcidation on various pattern sizes of silicon epitaxial growth. Silicon epitaxial growing PN diodes including void free CoSi2 show excellent electrical performance, especially lower than 10 pA reverse off leakage current.

ZnO nanowires doped with Mn, Fe, Sn, and Li during the thermal growth following direct chemical synthesis were investigated using electric and magnetic measurements. Current-voltage characteristics of individual nanowires configured as a two-terminal device with Al electrodes show apparent rectify behavior indicating the Schottky-like barrier formation and resistivity being less 3 Ω·cm. Reproducible resistance modulation by a dc voltage at room temperature is observed. Magnetic susceptibility of the doped nanowires as a function of temperature demonstrates Curie–Weiss behavior. Magnetization versus field curves show hysteresis with the coercive field of about 200 Oe. The spatially-resolved magnetic force measurements of individual nanowires revealed the magnetic domain structure. The domains align perpendicular to c-axis and can be polarized in the external magnetic field.

We have investigated atomistic processes of nucleation and crystallization in excimer-laser annealed thin Si films on glass based on molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations using the Tersoff potential. MD cells composed of up to approximately 50000 Si atoms were heated to produce melted Si, and then melted Si was quenched under various supercooled conditions with or without a temperature gradient and the corresponding nucleation processes were visualized. Lateral growth of thin Si crystalline films was also simulated by embedding a crystalline nano-particle with various crystal surfaces in melted Si. It has been found that the crystal surfaces become predominantly {111} during the lateral growth processes.

We have fabricated and characterized the lateral electron transport through InAs quantum dots with double barrier system. Aluminum metal electrodes with the inter-electrode spacing of 30 nm have been deposited on an InAs self-assembled quantum dot wafer to form the planar type quantum dot devices. Current peak structure and negative differential resistance effects are observed above 77 K in current-voltage characteristics. These results are interpreted as due to 3D-0D resonant tunneling through the single quantum dot positioned in between the electrodes.

A stress-driven formation of self-assembled InGaAs islands has been studied by the growth on GaAs (100) substrates with sub-micron platinum stripe pattern. Islands or quantum dots preferentially nucleate at the boundary of metal patterns. In addition, a quantum dot-free region near the boundary of the metal pattern is found. Those results are attributed to the stress between metal stripe and GaAs surface, which produces a laterally stressed region around the metal stripe. Adatoms on this region preferentially migrate toward the edge of metal stripes with maximum stress. This result may show a possible way for the interconnection between randomly distributed self-assembled quantum dots and metal stripes.

We have fabricated zincblende GaAs nanocrystals by means of Ga+ and As+ coimplantation into SiO2 matrices. A broad photoluminescence band is observed in the visible spectral region. Under selective excitation at energies within the visible luminescence band, GaAs-related phonon structures are observed at low temperatures. The photoluminescence mechanism in GaA/SiO2 nanocomposites is discussed.

The effects of nitrogen-radical treated amorphous silicon (a-Si) films on laser-crystallization behavior have been studied for the improvement of the grain-growth and the surface roughness. The radical treatments were performed by the rf (13.56 MHz) plasma-enhanced-chemical-vapor-deposition (PECVD) system with N2 gas before the laser-crystallization. The grain-size of the laser-crystallized polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) film with 600 seconds of radical-treatment time was remarkably increased by the relaxation of solidification process caused by the possible evolution of solid phase SiNx compounds which shows the low thermal conductivity. The electrical conductivity at 30 °C was rather lager value of 3×10-5 Ω-1cm-1 than 1×10-5 Ω-1cm-1 of poly-Si without radical treatment, while the highly resistive SiNx compounds were formed. From the SEM images, the surface roughness was also improved by the selective etching of the 5%-water-diluted hydrofluoric (HF) acid on the grain boundaries which the SiNx compounds were well segregated into during the laser-crystallization.

We have developed analytic SPICE models for hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and polysilicon (poly-Si) thin film transistors (TFTs) which accurately model all regimes of operation, are temperature dependent to 150°C, and scale with device dimensions. These models have been presented in [1, 2]. In this work, we compare the current-voltage characteristics predicted by our models with the measured characteristics from TFTs fabricated at different foundries. We compare the extracted device parameters in order to evaluate the robustness of our models and to determine a suitable default parameter set. We also use the models to examine the effects of device scaling for short channel TFTs. The models can be accessed using the circuit simulator AIM-Spice [3], which is available at http://nina.ecse.rpi.edu/aimspice.

In the present study, several different types of amorphous passivation layers such as PECVD-SiN and PECVD-TEOS were tested to learn how effectively they protect underlying Al interconnection lines. According to the experimental results, a thick monolithic passivation layer composing of PECVD-SiN was found to be highly susceptible to stress-related migration because it did not have sufficient elasticity. Moreover, since silicon nitride also has a high dielectric-breakdown strength, it exhibits an increased impedance to electric current due to parasitic resistance that exists in the path between the two passivated metal lines. On the other hand, passivation thickening through the use of PECVD-TEOS as an initial layer was estimated to be a more effective way to improve device reliability because of its better step coverage and smaller dielectric constant. The FEM simulation explains why the thick multilayer compromising an alternating sequence of mechanically dissimilar layers is an effective way to suppress stress-induced passivation damage during thermal cycling without having a significant effect on the IC pattern.

Si nanocrystals (diameter 2 – 5 nm) were formed by 35 keV Si+ implantation at a fluence of 6×1016 Si/cm2 into a 100 nm thick thermally grown SiO2 film on Si (100), followed by thermal annealing at 1100 °C for 10 min. The nanocrystals show a broad photoluminescence spectrum, peaking at 880 nm, attributed to the recombination of quantum confined excitons. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and transmission electron microscopy show that annealing these samples in flowing O2 at 1000 °C for times up to 30 min. results in oxidation of the Si nanocrystals, first close to the SiO2 film surface and later at greater depths. Upon oxidation for 30 min. the photoluminescence peak wavelength blue-shifts by more than 200 nm. This blueshift is attributed to a quantum size effect in which a reduction of the average nanocrystal size leads to emission at shorter wavelengths. The fabrication of a laser based on SiO2 waveguides doped with Si nanocrystals seems possible, if the nanocrystal size distribution can be narrowed down into the percent range.

We have fabricated a poly-Si TFT using a novel oxidation method, which improves the surface roughness at the interface between the poly-Si layer and the gate oxide layer. Compared with the poly-Si TFTs fabricated by the conventional oxidation method, the proposed poly-Si TFT exhibits the remarkable enhancement of the electrical parameters, such as the subthreshold swing and the threshold voltage. It is observed that the proposed poly-Si TFT has a higher dielectric strength and the device characteristics are not degraded significantly after an electrical stress. The improvement of the surface roughness at oxide/poly-Si interface is found to be critical to enhance the device performance.