Cancer stem cells (CSCs) exhibit specific characteristics including decontrolled self‐renewal, tumor‐initiating, promoting, and metastatic potential, abnormal stemness signaling, and chemotherapy resistance. Thus, targeting CSC is becoming an emerging cancer treatment. α‐Mangostin has been shown to have potent and multiple anticancer activities. Accordingly, we hypothesized that α‐mangostin may diminish the stemness and proliferation of CSC‐like cervical cancer cells. In our results, comparing to the parent cells, CSC‐like SiHa and HeLa cells highly expressed CSC marker Sox2, Oct4, Nanog, CK‐17, and CD49f. α‐Mangostin significantly reduced the cell viability, sphere‐forming ability, and expression of the CSC stemness makers of CSC‐like cervical cancer cells. Further investigation showed that α‐mangostin induced mitochondrial depolarization and mitochondrial apoptosis signaling, including upregulation of Bax, downregulation of Mcl‐1 and Bcl‐2, and activation of caspase‐9/3. Moreover, α‐mangostin synergically enhanced the cytotoxicity of cisplatin on CSC‐like SiHa cells by promoting mitochondrial apoptosis and inhibiting the expression of CSC markers. Consistent with in vitro findings, in vivo tumor growth assay revealed that α‐mangostin administration significantly inhibited the growth of inoculated CSC‐like SiHa cells and synergically enhanced the antitumor effect of cisplatin. Our findings indicate that α‐mangostin can reduce the stemness and proliferation of CSC‐like SiHa and HeLa cells and promote the cytotoxicity of cisplatin, which may attribute to the mitochondrial apoptosis activation. Thus, it suggests that α‐mangostin may have clinical potential to improve chemotherapy for cervical cancer by targeting cervical CSC.

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The gap-fill performance and process of perhydropolysilazane-based inorganic spin-on dielectric (PSZ-SOD) film in shallow trench isolation (STI) with the ultra-low dispensation amount of PSZ-SOD solution have been investigated in this study. A PSZ-SOD film process includes liner deposition, PSZ-SOD coating, and furnace curing. For liner deposition, hydrophilic property is required to improve the contact angle and gap-fill capability of PSZ-SOD coating. Prior to PSZ-SOD coating, the additional treatment on liner surface is beneficial for the fluidity of PSZ-SOD solution. The superior film thickness uniformity and gap-fill performance of PSZ-SOD film are achieved due to the improved fluidity of PSZ-SOD solution. Following that up, the low dispensation rate of PSZ-SOD solution leads to more PSZ-SOD filling in the trenches. After PSZ-SOD coating, high thermal curing process efficiently promotes PSZ-SOD film conversion into silicon oxide. Adequate conversion from PSZ-SOD into silicon oxide further increases the etching resistance inside the trenches. Integrating the above sequence of optimized factors, void-free gap-fill and well-controlled STI recess uniformity are achieved even when the PSZ-SOD solution dispensation volume is reduced 3 to 6 times compared with conventional condition for the 28 nm node NAND flash and beyond.

In this paper, we study the effect of Hg lamp ultraviolet (UV) irradiation on the physical properties and wet etch resistance of perhydro-polysilazane-based inorganic spin-on-glass (PSZ-SOG) film. Superior film qualities include smaller volumetric shrinkage, better thickness uniformity, and minor tensile stress variation of the SOG film can be obtained by applying UV curing with higher temperature, stronger irradiation power, and longer exposure time procedure. In addition, better PSZ-SOG conversion efficiency is showed based on FT-IR and SIMS analysis; results in the higher wet etch amount. The better convertibility of PSZ-SOG film comes mainly from the efficient energy of UV photon (3.88 -5.64 eV) irradiation; it can trigger the Si-H (4.07 eV) and Si-N (3.68 eV) bonds dissociation and promote the conversion to Si-O bonds at O 2 or H 2 O environment. As to the wet etch resistance inside the trench, the samples with UV irradiation exhibit preferable performance. It can attribute to the more uniform and smaller stress change of oxide film formation as compared with the samples without UV curing. Therefore, the new promising solution of UV irradiation provides better depth profile of PSZ conversion and uniform oxide film at STI area without extra thermal budget.