Magnetoconductivity of thin epitaxial silver films

The magnetoconductance (MC) of thin epitaxial Ag films on Si(111) surfaces is studied as a function of film thickness (1–125 monolayers (ML)) at 20 K under ultra high vacuum (UHV) conditions. Three different regimes of magnetoconductance are observed depending on the degree of disorder in the films which is controlled by film thickness and annealing procedures. Thick films (d>3 ML) with diffuse electron transport show in the case of large elastic scattering times ₀ a classical, negative MC B ² and in the case of small ₀ a positive MC due to weak localization effects. The MC of thin films (d<2 ML) which have a conductance smaller than e ²/h, i.e. localized electron states, is negative again.     

The quantum size effect in thin antimony films

Thin antimony films have been epitaxially deposited at 350K onto cleavage surfaces of mica at different residual gas pressures between 10^?5 and 10^?9 torr, and their resistivity ? measured as a function of film thicknessd≦500Å at temperaturesT=110K andT=300K. The ?(d) characteristics of films deposited at residual gas pressures of about 10^?6 torr with condensation rates of about 1Å/s showed generally decreasing slopes as film thicknesses increased, but irregularities in detail. The ?(d) characteristics of films deposited at 10^?8 torr with the same condensation rate decreasing with increasingd, too, show no such irregularities but very small regular variations of ?(d) with constant oscillation length Δd between the maxima, and decreasing amplitudes with increasingd. These variations are better recognizable in a modified ?(d) graph. We tend to interprete these variations by the quantum size effect as we found oscillation lengths and amplitudes compatibel with theory.

     

The effects of substrate temperature on the structure, morphology and photoluminescence properties of pulsed laser deposited SrAl2O4:Eu,Dy thin films

In this study, SrAl₂O₄:Eu²⁺,Dy³⁺ thin film phosphors were deposited on Si (1 0 0) substrates using the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The films were deposited at different substrate temperatures in the range of 40-700 °C. The structure, morphology and topography of the films were determined by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Photoluminescence (PL) data was collected in air at room temperature using a 325 nm He-Cd laser as an excitation source. The PL spectra of all the films were characterized by green phosphorescent photoluminescence at ∼530 nm. This emission was attributed to 4f⁶5d¹→4f⁷ transition of Eu²⁺. The highest PL intensity was observed from the films deposited at a substrate temperature of 400 °C. The effects of varying substrate temperature on the PL intensity were discussed.     

Influence of oxygen depletion layer on the properties of tin oxide gas-sensing films fabricated by atomic layer deposition

In this paper we report on the influence of film thickness on the electrical and gas-sensing properties of tin oxide thin films grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. The nature of the carrier and post-flow gases used in ALD was found to have a dramatic influence on the electrical conductance of the deposited films. Up to a film thickness of 50 nm the sheet conductance of the films increased with the thickness, and above 50 nm the sheet conductance was not significantly influenced by the film thickness. This effect was attributed to oxygen depletion at the film surface. When the depth of oxygen depletion (d _dep) was greater than or equal to the film thickness (t), the sheet conductance was thickness dependant. On the other hand, when d _dep≤t, the sheet conductance was independent of the film thickness but depended on the depth of the oxygen depletion. This proposed explanation was verified by subjecting the films to different lengths of post-annealing in an oxygen depleted atmosphere. Gas-sensing functionality of the films with various thicknesses was examined. It was observed that the film thickness had a significant influence on the gas-sensing property of the films. When the thickness was greater than 40 nm, the sensitivity of the films to ethanol was found to follow the widely reported trend, i.e., the sensitivity decreases when the film thickness increases. Below the film thickness of 40 nm the sensitivity decreases as film thickness decreases, and we propose a model to explain this observation based on the increase in resistance due to multiple grain boundaries.     

The quantum size effect in thin antimony films

Thin antimony films have been epitaxially deposited at 350K onto cleavage surfaces of mica at different residual gas pressures between 10⁻⁵ and 10⁻⁹ torr, and their resistivity ∂ measured as a function of film thicknessd≦500? at temperaturesT=110K andT=300K. The ∂(d) characteristics of films deposited at residual gas pressures of about 10⁻⁶ torr with condensation rates of about 1?/s showed generally decreasing slopes as film thicknesses increased, but irregularities in detail. The ∂(d) characteristics of films deposited at 10⁻⁸ torr with the same condensation rate decreasing with increasingd, too, show no such irregularities but very small regular variations of ∂(d) with constant oscillation length Δd between the maxima, and decreasing amplitudes with increasingd. These variations are better recognizable in a modified ∂(d) graph. We tend to interprete these variations by the quantum size effect as we found oscillation lengths and amplitudes compatibel with theory.     

Influence of induced anisotropy on the processes of magnetization reversal of cobalt circular nanodots

The magnetic structure and the processes of magnetization reversal of individual cobalt nanodots and arrays of cobalt nanodots have been studied using the magneto-optical Kerr effect and magnetic force microscopy. Arrays of nanodots have been prepared by ion etching from a continuous cobalt film. Magnetic anisotropy is induced during deposition of the cobalt films. The nanodots have the diameter d = 600 nm and the period varying from 1.5d to 3.0d. Magnetic force microscopy images have shown that the induced magnetic anisotropy affects the orientation of magnetization of noninteracting nanodots and the direction of displacement of the magnetic vortex center in the nanodots coupled by the dipole-dipole interaction.     

Islands of stability of the d-wave order parameter in s-wave anisotropic superconductors

In this paper we find and present on diagrams in the coordinates of η=2t₁/t₀ (the ratio of the second and the first nearest neighbor hopping integrals) and n (the carrier concentration) the areas of stability for the superconducting spin-singlet s- and d-wave and the spin-triplet p-wave order parameters hatching out during the phase transition from the normal to the superconducting phase. The diagrams are obtained for an anisotropic two-dimensional superconducting system with a relatively wide partially-filled conduction band. We study a tight-binding model with an attractive nearest neighbor interaction with the amplitude V₁, and the on-site interaction (with the amplitude V₀) taken either as repulsive or attractive. The problem of the coexistence of the s-, p- and d-wave order parameters is addressed and solved for chosen values of the ratio V₀/V₁. A possible island of stability of the d-wave order parameter in the s-wave order parameter environment for a relatively strong on-site interaction is revealed. The triple points, around which the s-, d-, and p-wave order parameters coexist, are localized on diagrams. It is shown that results of the calculations performed for the two-dimensional tight-binding band model are dissimilar with some obtained within the BCS-type approximation.     

Identification of optical nonlinearities of dye-doped nematic and polymer-dispersed liquid crystals using Z-scan technique

This study investigates the nonlinear optical properties of azo-dye-doped nematic and polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (ADDPDLC) films with nano-sized LC droplets using the Z-scan technique, which is a simple but powerful technique for measuring the optical Kerr constants of materials. The results indicate that the optical Kerr constant (n₂) of the azo-dye-doped nematic LC (ADDLC) film is large because of the photoisomerization effect and the thermal effect. Therefore, the optical Kerr constant of this material can be modulated by varying the temperature of the sample and the direction of polarization of incident laser. The range of n₂ modulated is from −5.26 × 10⁻³ to 1.62 × 10⁻³ cm²/W. The optical Kerr constants of ADDPDLC films at various temperatures are also measured. The experimental results reveal that liquid crystals in the ADDPDLC film strengthen the nonlinearity. The n₂ of the ADDPDLC film is maximal at ∼35 °C, because of the decrease in the clearing temperature of the ADDPDLC films. The clearing temperatures of the liquid crystals (E7), and the ADDPDLC film used in this work were found to be 61 °C and 43 °C, respectively.     

The influence of different doping elements on microstructure, piezoelectric coefficient and resistivity of sputtered ZnO film

ZnO film is attractive for high frequency surface acoustic wave device application when it is coupled with diamond. In order to get good performance and reduce insertion loss of the device, it demands the ZnO film possessing high electrical resistivity and piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃. Doping ZnO film with some elements may be a desirable method. In this paper, the ZnO films undoped and doped with Cu, Ni, Co and Fe, respectively (doping concentration is 2.0 at.%) are prepared by magnetron sputtering. The effect of different dopants on the microstructure, piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃, and electrical resistivity of the film are investigated. The results indicate that Cu dopant can enhance the c-axis orientation and piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃, the Cu and Ni dopant can increase electrical resistivity of the ZnO film up to 10⁹ Ω cm. It is promising to fabricate the ZnO films doped with Cu for SAW device applications.     

2D-Conductivity of thin Pd films condensed at low temperatures

Resistance measurements have been made on quenched condensed Pd films with thicknesses between 25 Å and 350Å. The films are prepared under different evaporation conditions by varying the system pressure between 10^?8 and 10^?5 mbar. Resistance minima with a logarithmic increase of the sheet resistance are observed for thick films (d<350Å) condensed under intentionally “bad” (10^?5 mbar) vacuum conditions, as well as for thin films (d<50Å) condensed at pressures around 10^?8 mbar. Structure investigations show that the thick films are granular. For these films the relation of granularity to 2D localization is discussed. The thin films are continuous and the logarithmic resistance increase is in agreement with predictions of 2D-theories.     

Effect of thickness on the structure, morphology and optical properties of sputter deposited Nb2O5 films

Nb₂O₅ films with the thickness (d) ranging from 55 to 2900 nm were deposited on BK-7 substrates at room temperature by a low frequency reactive magnetron sputtering system. The structure, morphology and optical properties of the films were investigated by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and spectrophotometer, respectively. The experimental results indicated that the thickness affects drastically the structure, morphology and optical properties of the film. There exists a critical thickness of the film, d_cri =2010 nm. The structure of the film remains amorphous as d < d_cri. However, it becomes crystallized as d > d_cri. The root mean square of surface roughness increases with increasing thickness as d > 1080 nm. Widths and depths of the holes on film surface increase monotonously with increasing thickness, and widths of the holes are larger than 1000 nm for the crystalline films. Refractive index increases with increasing thickness as d < d_cri, while it decreases with increasing thickness as d > d_cri. In addition, the extinction coefficient increases with increasing thickness as d > d_cri.     

Spinodal dewetting of thin liquid films at soft interfaces

We study theoretically the behavior of nanoscopic liquid films L (thickness e) intercalated between a solid S and a rubber R (elastic modulus μ). Thickness modulations involve a healing length , which results from a competition between elastic and disjoining pressure. With van der Waals interactions, , where a is a molecular size and h₀ the rubber capillary length ( , interfacial tension). If the Hamaker constant of the intercalated liquid is negative, the film dewets by amplification of peristaltic fluctuations (“spinodal dewetting”). The typical size of the contacts is predicted to scale like for films of thicknesses . The rise time of the fastest mode, predicted to scale like , should be very sensitive to the film thickness. Received 11 February 2000 and Received in final form 22 May 2000     

Dynamical mean-field study of the Mott transition in thin films

The correlation-driven transition from a paramagnetic metal to a paramagnetic Mott-Hubbard insulator is studied within the half-filled Hubbard model for a thin-film geometry. We consider simple-cubic films with different low-index surfaces and film thickness d ranging from d=1 (two-dimensional) up to d=8. Using the dynamical mean-field theory, the lattice (film) problem is self-consistently mapped onto a set of d single-impurity Anderson models which are indirectly coupled via the respective baths of conduction electrons. The impurity models are solved at zero temperature using the exact-diagonalization algorithm. We investigate the layer and thickness dependence of the electronic structure in the low-energy regime. Effects due to the finite film thickness are found to be the more pronounced the lower is the film-surface coordination number. For the comparatively open sc(111) geometry we find a strong layer dependence of the quasi-particle weight while it is much less pronounced for the sc(110) and the sc(100) film geometries. For a given geometry and thickness d there is a unique critical interaction strength U _c2 (d) at which all effective masses diverge and there is a unique strength U _c1 (d) where the insulating solution disappears. U _c2 (d) and U _c1 (d) gradually increase with increasing thickness eventually approaching their bulk values. A simple analytical argument explains the complete geometry and thickness dependence of U_c2. U_c1 is found to scale linearly with U_c2. Received 19 August 1998     

Effect of substrate interactions on the melting behavior of thin polyethylene films

Polymer films have been known to change their physical properties when film thickness is decreased below a certain value. The cause of this phenomenon is still unclear but it has been suggested that interactions and/or chain free-volume changes at the surface of the films are largely responsible for this behavior. In this paper, the effect of substrate interactions on the behavior of polymer thin films is evaluated quantitatively. The infrared spectra of nanothin polyethylene (PE) films were recorded as a function of temperature and amount of substrate covering the surface of the film. The evolution of specific bands in the CH₂ rocking region of the spectra was used to determine the melting temperature (T _m ) of the material. Results show different variations in T _m depending on the nature of the substrate, indicating that interactions dominate free-volume considerations in PE thin films. By varying the amount of surface coverage, a quantitative estimate of the heat of interaction was determined, which confirmed the importance of surface interactions.     

Structural phase transition in the mixed state of superconducting films in a parallel magnetic field

A thin film of a second-kind superconductor in a magnetic field parallel to the surface of the film is considered in the London approximation. It has been shown that if bulk pinning is absent and the suppression of super-conductivity by the magnetic field is negligible, the splitting of a vortex chain in the film occurs as a structural phase transition either of the first or second order, depending on the ratio of the thickness of the film d to the penetration depth of the magnetic field λ. The ratio d/λ, and thereby the character of the transition in the vortex lattice, can be changed by varying the temperature. The corresponding critical thicknesses of films and field ranges in which this effect can be observed experimentally have been calculated.     

Magnetic anisotropy in (, .44, .55, .67, and .78) alloy film grown on and MgO(001) by molecular beam epitaxy

Fe_xPd_1−x (x=.30, .44, .55, .67, and .78) films were directly grown on SrTiO₃(001) and MgO(001) by molecular beam epitaxy at 500 C. The thickness of all films is 50 nm. X-ray diffraction shows epitaxial quality and face-center- tetragonal (00l), (002), and (003) peaks indicating an FePd L1₀ order state for films of x=.30, .44 and .55. X-ray diffraction only shows (002) peaks with a relatively weak intensity for the film of x=.67 and no (00l) peak is observed, but a broad body-center-cubic Fe(002) is identified for the film of x=.78. Magnetic hysteresis curves are carried out by a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) with an applied field within 12 kOe. Magnetization of both in-plane and perpendicular-to- the-plane measurements show a linear increase of the magnetization saturation from 560 emu/cm³ to 1250 emu/cm³ as x increasing from .30 to .78. For the results of the in-plane measurements, remanence (M_r), however, shows a minimum while the anisotropy field (H_k) shows a maximum for the film with x=.44 indicating the optimal content ratio of Fe/Pd for perpendicular anisotropy in the present alloy films. Further, negative remanence is observed in the hysteresis curves where the field is perpendicular to the film of x=.78 This may indicate that the L1₀order state still affects the magnetic anisotropy for high Fe content films even though the film has a body-center-cubic structure.     

Precision measurement of vector and tensor analyzing powers in elastic deuteron-proton scattering

High-precision vector and tensor analyzing powers of elastic deuteron-proton ( d + p) scattering have been measured at intermediate energies to investigate effects of three-nucleon forces. Angular distributions in the range of 70^°-120^° in the center-of mass frame for incident-deuteron energies E _d ^lab = 130 and 180 MeV were obtained using the RIKEN facility. The beam polarization was unambiguously determined by measuring the ^12C (d, α)^10B(2⁺) reaction at 0^°. Results of the measurements are compared with state-of-the-art three-nucleon calculations. The present modeling of nucleon-nucleon forces and its extension to the three-nucleon system is not sufficient to describe the high-precision data consistently and requires, therefore, further investigation.     

Static and dynamic properties of supercooled thin polymer films

The dynamic and static properties of a supercooled (non-entangled) polymer melt are investigated via molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations. The system is confined between two completely smooth and purely repulsive walls. The wall-to-wall separation (film thickness), D, is varied from about 3 to about 14 times the bulk radius of gyration. Despite the geometric confinement, the supercooled films exhibit many qualitative features which were also observed in the bulk and could be analyzed in terms of mode-coupling theory (MCT). Examples are the two-step relaxation of the incoherent intermediate scattering function, the time-temperature superposition property of the late time α-process and the space-time factorization of the scattering function on the intermediate time scale of the MCT β-process. An analysis of the temperature dependence of the α-relaxation time suggests that the critical temperature, T _c, of MCT decreases with D. If the confinement is not too strong ( D≥10monomer diameter), the static structure factor of the film coincides with that of the bulk when compared for the same distance, T - T _c(D), to the critical temperature. This suggests that T - T _c(D) is an important temperature scale of our model both in the bulk and in the films. Received 12 September 2001     

Influence of the nematic order on the rheology and conformation of stretched comb-like liquid crystalline polymers

We have studied the rheology and the conformation of stretched comb-like liquid-crystalline polymers. Both the influence of the comb-like structure and the specific effect of the nematic interaction on the dynamics are investigated. For this purpose, two isomers of a comb-like polymetacrylate polymer, of well-defined molecular weights, were synthesized: one displays a nematic phase over a wide range of temperature, the other one has only an isotropic phase. Even with high degrees of polymerization N, between 40 and 1000, the polymer chains studied were not entangled. The stress-strain curves during the stretching and relaxation processes show differences between the isotropic and nematic comb-like polymers. They suggest that, in the nematic phase, the chain dynamics is more cooperative than for a usual linear polymer. Small-angle neutron scattering has been used in order to determine the evolution of the chain conformation after stretching, as a function of the duration of relaxation t _r. The conformation can be described with two parameters only: , the global deformation of the polymer chain, and p, the number of statistical units of locally relaxed sub-chains. For the comb-like polymer, the chain deformation is pseudo-affine: is always smaller than (the deformation ratio of the whole sample). In the isotropic phase, has a constant value, while pincreases as tr. This latter behavior is not that expected for non-entangled chains, in which p varies as t _r ^1/2 (Rouse model). In the nematic phase, decreases as a stretched exponential function of t _r, while p remains constant. The dynamics of the comb-like polymers is discussed in terms of living clusters from which junctions are produced by interactions between side chains. The nematic interaction increases the lifetime of these junctions and, strikingly, the relaxation is the same at all scales of the whole polymer chain. Received 5 May 1999 and Received in final form 18 October 1999     

Sodium Intercalation of Graphene Films on Re( $$10\bar 10$$ 10 1 ¯ 0 )

It is shown that during low-temperature (300–500 K) intercalation of sodium atoms into thin multilayer graphene and graphite films on rhenium the first graphene layer plays the role of a trap to which atoms coming on the surface diffuse through a graphite film. The intercalation phase of the interlayer space in the graphite bulk is actively filled at a sodium atoms concentration under the first graphene layer close to the maximum possible (2 ± 0.5) × 10¹⁴ cm^–2. This phase capacity is proportional to the graphite film thickness that can be varied in this work from one graphene layer to ~50 atomic layers. The diffusion energy E _d of Na atoms through the graphite film was estimated to be E _d ≈ 1.4 eV.