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Register a new userGrowth evolution of self-affine thermally evaporated KBr thin films: A fractal assessment
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In this article, fractal concepts were used to explore the thermally evaporated potassium bromide thin films of different thicknesses 200, 300, and 500 nm respectively; grown on aluminium substrates at room temperature. The self-affine or self similar nature of growing surfaces was investigated by autocorrelation function and obtained results are compared with the morphological envelope method. Theoretical estimations revealed that the global surface parameters such as, interface width and lateral correlation length are monotonically decreased with increasing film thickness. Also, from height profile and A-F plots, it has been perceived that irregularity/ complexity of growing layers was significantly influenced by thickness. On the other hand, the fractal dimension and local roughness exponent, estimated by height-height correlation function, do not suggest such dependency.
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Recent advances in high-throughput experimentation for combinatorial studies have accelerated the discovery and analysis of materials across a wide range of compositions and synthesis conditions. However, many of the more powerful characterization methods are limited by speed, cost, availability, and/or resolution. To make efficient use of these methods, there is value in developing approaches for identifying critical compositions and conditions to be used as a-priori knowledge for follow-up characterization with high-precision techniques, such as micron-scale synchrotron based X-ray diffraction (XRD). Here we demonstrate the use of optical microscopy and reflectance spectroscopy to identify likely phase-change boundaries in thin film libraries. These methods are used to delineate possible metastable phase boundaries following lateral-gradient Laser Spike Annealing (lg-LSA) of oxide materials. The set of boundaries are then compared with definitive determinations of structural transformations obtained using high-resolution XRD. We demonstrate that the optical methods detect more than 95% of the structural transformations in a composition-gradient La-Mn-O library and a Ga$_2$O$_3$ sample, both subject to an extensive set of lg-LSA anneals. Our results provide quantitative support for the value of optically-detected transformations as a priori data to guide subsequent structural characterization, ultimately accelerating and enhancing the efficient implementation of $mu$m-resolution XRD experiments.
Energy spectra of backscattered and transmitted ions with primary energies of 50 keV and 100 keV interacting with self-supporting foils were recorded with a Time-of-Flight Medium-Energy Ion Scattering setup in a single experiment. Self-supporting Au and W foils without backing material were used. For He ions transmitted through Au the spectrum of detected particles shows two distinct components corresponding to different energy losses in the film, whereas for protons no such phenomenon was observed. To determine the origin of these different contributions, measurements for different angles of incidence and scattering angles have been evaluated. The results suggest that the two components in the spectrum of transmitted He ions could be attributed to impact parameter dependent energy loss, being more prominent for He ions than for protons. The main origin of the necessary impact parameter selection along the different ion trajectories is expected to be texture in the Au-foils.
The relation between the contact angle of a liquid drop and the morphological parameters of self-affine solid surfaces have been investigated. We show experimentally that the wetting property of a solid surface crucially depends on the surface morphological parameters such as: (1) root mean square (rms) roughness $sigma$, (2) in-plane roughness correlation length $xi$ and (3) roughness exponent $alpha$ of the self-affine surface. We have shown that the contact angle monotonically decreases with the increase in the rms local surface slope $rho$ ($propto sigma/xi^alpha$) for the cases where the liquid wets the crevices of the surface upon contact. We have shown that the same solid surface can be made hydrophobic or hydrophilic by merely tuning these self-affine surface morphological parameters.
The metastable orthorhombic phase of hafnia is generally obtained in polycrystalline films, whereas in epitaxial films, its formation has been much less investigated. We have grown Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 films by pulsed laser deposition, and the growth window (temperature and oxygen pressure during deposition and film thickness) for epitaxial stabilization of the ferroelectric phase is mapped. The remnant ferroelectric polarization, up to around 24 uC/cm2, depends on the amount of orthorhombic phase and interplanar spacing and increases with temperature and pressure for a fixed film thickness. The leakage current decreases with an increase in thickness or temperature, or when decreasing oxygen pressure. The coercive electric field (EC) depends on thickness (t) according to the coercive electric field (Ec) - thickness (t)-2/3 scaling, which is observed for the first time in ferroelectric hafnia, and the scaling extends to thicknesses down to around 5 nm. The proven ability to tailor the functional properties of high-quality epitaxial ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 films paves the way toward understanding their ferroelectric properties and prototyping devices.
The plasmonic properties of vacuum evaporated nanostructured gold thin films having different types of nanoparticles are presented. The films with more than 6 nm thickness show presence of nanorods having non cylindrical shape with triangular base. Two characteristics plasmon bands have been recoreded in absorption spectra. First one occurs below 500 nm and other one at higher wavelength side. Both the peaks show dependence on the dielectric property of surroundings. The higher wavelength localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak shifts to higher wavelength with an increase in the nanoparticle size, surface roughness and refractive index of the surrounding (Methylene Blue dye coating). This shows that such thin films can be used as sensor for organic molecules with a refractive index sensitivity ranging from 250 - 305 nm/RIU (Refractive Index Unit).
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