Indium oxide conducting films were deposited on p-type Si (100) substrates at various temperatures by a liquid-delivery metal organic chemical vapor deposition technique using indium (III) tris(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedionato) (dpm)(3) precursors. The structural, morphological, and chemical bonding features of these films were studied by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The effect of substrate temperature on the electrical and structural properties has been investigated to obtain a high mobility and highly conducting In(2)O(3) film. All deposited films within the temperature range of 200-400 degrees C have a [111] preferred orientation and exhibit an increase of grain size from 21 to 33 nm with increasing deposition temperature. In this range of deposition temperature, there is no metallic indium phase in deposited films. It was observed that the electrical properties of the films are closely related to the microstructure of the films. Hall mobility and electrical resistivity values of the films are comparable to most of the presently investigated transparent conducting oxide films. (C) 2008 American Vacuum Society.

A key requirement for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to remain competitive is the ability to assess incoming orders in terms of their profitability and determine the best orders that they should accept. This paper proposes a decision support system (DSS) approach that helps SMEs to make appropriate responses to customer enquiries. First, the customer enquiry and the generic processing procedure are addressed. Next, the framework of the proposed DSS approach is discussed. Four fundamental components of the framework are investigated in detail. For one specific enquiry, an available-to-promise (ATP)-based heuristic approach is developed for determining a feasible delivery date and checking its feasibility. For enquiries that are processed concurrently, an optimization model is built to evaluate them against limited ATP quantities in order to select a subset which will be fulfilled. Finally, the implementation issues for the proposed DSS are discussed. A simple application is illustrated to show how SMEs can respond effectively to customer enquiries using the proposed DSS approach.