La(Fe,Si)$_{13}$-based compounds are considered to be very promising magnetocaloric materials for magnetic refrigeration applications. Many studies have focused on this material family but only in bulk form. In this paper, we report the fabrication of thick films of La(Fe,Si)$_{13}$, both with and without post-hydriding. These films exhibit magnetic and structural properties comparable to those of bulk materials. We also observe that the ferromagnetic phase transition has a negative thermal hysteresis, a phenomenon not previously found in this material but which may have its origins in the availability of a strain energy reservoir, as in the cases of other materials in which negative thermal hysteresis has been found. Here, it appears that the substrate acts to store strain energy. Our exploratory study demonstrates the viability of thick films of the La(Fe,Si)$_{13}$ phase and motivates further work in the area, while showing that additional perspectives can be gained from reducing the dimensionality of magnetocaloric materials in which the magneto-volume effect is large.
The effect of 3-dimensional strain state on the magnetocaloric properties of epitaxial La0.8Ca0.2MnO3 (LCMO) thin films grown on two types of substrates, SrTiO3 (001) (STO) and LaAlO3 (001) (LAO) has been studied as a function of film thickness within the range of 25 to 300 nm. The STO substrate imposes an in-plane tensile biaxial strain while LAO substrate imposes an in-plane compressive biaxial strain. The in-plane biaxial strain on LCMO by STO substrate gets relaxed more rapidly than that by LAO substrate but both LCMO/STO and LCMO/LAO show a maximum entropy change of 12.1 J/Kg-K and 3.2 J/…
Significative enhance in magnetocaloric effect due to finite size and surface effects is reported in Terbium(Tb) thin films in the helimagnetic phase (corresponding to a temperature range from $T_C$=219 K to $T_N$=231 K), for external fields of the order of kOe. For a Tb thin film of 6 monolayers submitted to an applied field ($Δ$H= 30 kOe, $Δ$H= 50 kOe and $Δ$H= 70 kOe) we report a significative change in adiabatic temperature, $Δ$T/$Δ$H, near the Néel temperature, of the order ten times higher than that observed for Tb bulk. On the other hand, for small values of the magnetic field, large th…
We report the fabrication of ErAl2 magnetocaloric wires by a powder-in-tube method (PIT) and the evaluation of magnetic entropy change through magnetization measurements. The magnetic entropy change of ErAl2 PIT wires exhibits similar behavior to the bulk counterpart, while its magnitude is reduced by the decrease in the volume fraction of ErAl2 due to the surrounding non-magnetic sheaths. We find that another effect reduces the magnetic entropy change of the ErAl2 PIT wires around the Curie temperature, and discuss its possible origin in terms of a correlation between magnetic properties of E…
Indirect exchange coupling in magnetic multilayers, also known as the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction, is known to be highly effective in controlling the interlayer alignment of the magnetization. This coupling is typically fixed at the stage of the multilayer fabrication and does not allow ex-situ control needed for device applications. It is highly desirable, in addition to the orientational control, to also control the magnitude of the intralayer magnetization, ideally switch it on/off by switching the relevant RKKY coupling. Here we demonstrate a magnetic multilayer materi…
Combining multiple degrees of freedom in strongly-correlated materials such as transition-metal oxides would lead to fascinating magnetic and magnetocaloric features. Herein, the strain effects are used to markedly tailor the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of PrVO3 thin films. The selection of appropriate thickness and substrate enables us to dramatically decrease the coercive magnetic field from 2.4 T previously observed in sintered PVO3 bulk to 0.05 T for compressive thin films making from the PrVO3 compound a nearly soft magnet. This is associated with a marked enhancement of the ma…
In this study we report a method for the preparation of freestanding magnetocaloric thin films. Non-stoichiometric Heusler alloys Ni-Mn-Sn, Ni-Co-Mn-Sn and Ni-Co-Mn-Al are prepared via sputter deposition. A sacrificial vanadium layer is added between the substrate and the Heusler film. By means of selective wet-chemical etching the vanadium layer can be removed. Conditions for the crystallization of Vanadium layers and epitaxial growth of the Heusler films are indicated. Magnetic and structural properties of freestanding and as-prepared films are compared in detail. The main focus of this stud…
Magnetic properties of a series of (La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/SrRuO3) superlattices, where the SrRuO3 layer thickness is varying, are examined. A room-temperature magnetocaloric effect is obtained owing to the finite size effect which reduces the TC of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 layers. While the working temperature ranges are enlarged,, -DeltaSmax values remains similar to the values in polycrystalline La0.7Sr0.3MnO3. Consequently, the relative cooling powers are significantly improved, the microscopic mechanism of which is related to the effect of the interfaces at La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/SrRuO3 and higher nanostructural d…
We have studied the processing of piezoelectric thick films using electrophoretic deposition (EPD) for high-frequency ultrasound applications. Lead-zirconium-titanate (PZT) particles synthetized by solid states synthesis were dispersed in ethanol using ammonium polyacrylate (PAA). The electrophoretic deposition of PZT particles was performed at a constant-current mode. PZT thick-films deposited at 1 mA for 60 seconds were sintered at 900oC for 2 hours in a PbO-controlled atmosphere. The scanning-electron microscopy (SEM) analysis shows that the thickness of PZT layer is uniform and that the po…
Simple vacuum evaporation technique for deposition of dyes on various solid surfaces has been developed. The method is compatible with conventional solvent-free nanofabrication processing enabling fabrication of nanoscale optoelectronic devices. Thin films of fluorescein were deposited on glass, fluorine-tin-oxide (FTO) coated glass with and without atomically layer deposited (ALD) nanocrystalline 20 nm thick anatase TiO2 coating. Surface topology, absorption and emission spectra of the films depends on their thickness and the material of supporting substrate. On a smooth glass surface the dye…
Disorder induced phase slip (PS) events appearing in the current voltage characteristics (IVCs) are reported for two-dimensional TiN thin films produced by a robust substrate mediated nitridation technique. Here, high temperature annealing of Ti/Si3N4 based metal/substrate assembly is the key to produce majority phase TiN accompanied by TiSi2 and elemental Si as minority phases. The method itself introduces different level of disorder intrinsically by tuning the amount of the non-superconducting minority phases that are controlled by annealing temperature (Ta) and the film thickness. The super…
For the first time, thousands of RF MOSFETs were batch-fabricated on liquid-exfoliated MoS2 below 300 °C with nearly 100% yield. The large-scale fabrication with high yield allowed the average performance instead of the best performance to be reported. The DC performance of these devices were typical, but the RF performance, enabled by buried gates and on the order of 100 MHz, was reported for the first time for liquid-exfoliated MoS2. To resolve the dilemma of thin vs. thick films, gate recess was used on 20-nm thick films to improve the gate control while keeping the contact resistance lower…
In the reported low-fluorine MOD-YBCO studies, the lowest F/Ba mole ratio of the precursor solution was 4.5. However, further lowering the F/Ba ratio is important according to the researches of YBCO thick film. On the other hand, the F/Ba ratio is necessary to be at least 2 for the full conversion of the Ba precursor to BaF_2 to avoid the formation of BaCO_3, which is detrimental to the superconducting performance. In this study, a novel solution with the F/Ba mole ratio of 2 was developed, in which the fluorine content was only about 10.3% of that used in the conventional TFA-MOD method. Atte…
Solution-Based Fabrication of High-Performance K$_{0.5}$Na$_{0.5}$NbO$_3$ Thin Films for Surface Haptics
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology（卢森堡科学与技术研究所）；University of Luxembourg（卢森堡大学）；Jožef Stefan Institute（约瑟夫·斯特凡研究所）；Kyungpook National University（庆北国立大学）；Harbin Engineering University（哈尔滨工程大学）；Technische Universität Darmstadt（达姆施塔特工业大学）
In the recently discovered class of materials known as topological insulators, the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling causes certain topological invariants in the bulk to differ from their values in vacuum. The sudden change of invariants at the interface results in metallic, time reversal invariant surface states whose properties are useful for applications in spintronics and quantum computation. However, a key challenge is to fabricate these materials on the nanoscale appropriate for devices and probing the surface. To this end we have produced 2 nm thick nanocrystals of the topological …
This study details the use of printing and other additive processes to fabricate a novel amperometric glucose sensor. The sensor was fabricated using a Au coated 12.7 micron polyimide film as a starting material, where micro-contact printing, electrochemical plating and chloridization, electrohydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing, and spin coating were used to pattern, deposit, print, and coat functional materials, respectively. We have found that e-jet printing was effective for the deposition and patterning of glucose oxidase inks between ~5 to 1000 micron in width, and we have demonstrated that…
High throughput experimental methods are known to accelerate the rate of research, development, and deployment of electronic materials. For example, thin films with lateral gradients in composition, thickness, or other parameters have been used alongside spatially-resolved characterization to assess how various physical factors affect material properties under varying measurement conditions. Similarly, multi-layer electronic devices that contain such graded thin films as one or more of their layers can also be characterized spatially in order to optimize the performance. In this work, we apply…
Carbon nanosheets are mechanically stable free-standing two-dimensional materials with a thickness of ~1 nm and well defined physical and chemical properties. They are made by radiation induced cross-linking of aromatic self-assembled monolayers. Here we present a route to the scalable fabrication of multilayer nanosheets with tunable electrical, optical and chemical properties on insulating substrates. Stacks up to five nanosheets with sizes of ~1 cm^2 on oxidized silicon were studied. Their optical characteristics were investigated by visual inspection, optical microscopy, UV/Vis reflection …
We report on a novel method for the fabrication of three-dimensional buried graphitic micropaths in single crystal diamond with the employment of focused MeV ions. The use of implantation masks with graded thickness at the sub-micrometer scale allows the formation of conductive channels which are embedded in the insulating matrix at controllable depths. In particular, the modulation of the channels depth at their endpoints allows the surface contacting of the channel terminations with no need of further fabrication stages. In the present work we describe the sample masking, which includes the …
This paper addresses the structural characterisation of a series of U/Fe, U/Co and U/Gd multilayers. X-ray reflectivity has been employed to investigate the layer thickness and roughness parameters along the growth direction and high-angle diffraction measurements have been used to determine the crystal structure and orientation of the layers. For the case of uranium/transition metal systems, the interfaces are diffuse and the transition metals are present in a polycrystalline form of their common bulk phases with a preferred orientation along the closest packed planes; Fe, bcc (110) and Co, h…
Optical reflectivity contrast provides a simple, fast and noninvasive method for characterization of few monolayer samples of two-dimensional materials. Here we apply this technique to measure the thickness of thin flakes of hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN), which is a material of increasing interest in nanodevice fabrication. The optical contrast shows a strong negative peak at short wavelengths and zero contrast at a thickness dependent wavelength. The optical contrast varies linearly for 1-80 layers of hBN, which permits easy calibration of thickness. We demonstrate the applicability of this q…
Fabrication and characterization of single-crystalline CoSn (10-10) kagome metal thin films for interconnect applications: structure and anisotropic electrical resistivity
Advancement of molecular devices will critically depend on the approach to establish electrical connections to the functional molecule(s). We produced a molecular device strategy which is based on chemically attaching of molecules between the two magnetic/nonmagnetic metallic electrodes along the multilayer edge(s) of a prefabricated tunnel junction. Here, we present the fabrication methodology for producing these multilayer edge molecular electronics/spintronics devices (MEMEDs/MEMSDs) and details of the associated challenges and their solutions. The key highlight of our MEMED/MEMSD approach …
A free-standing bulk gallium nitride layer with a thickness of 365 $μ$m and a diameter of 50 mm was obtained by hydride vapor phase epitaxy on a sapphire substrate with a carbon buffer layer. The carbon buffer layer was deposited by thermal decomposition of methane $\textit{in situ}$ in the same process with the growth of a bulk GaN layer. The bulk GaN layer grown on the carbon buffer layer self-separated from the sapphire substrate during the cooling after the growth. The dislocation density was $8\cdot10^{6}$ cm$^{-2}$. The (0002) X-Ray rocking curve full width at half maximum was 164 arcsec…
We report the synthesis of tetragonal $\mathrm{FeS}_x\mathrm{Se}_{1-x}$ films ($x \leq 0.78$) by pulsed-laser deposition. To fabricate the tetragonal alloy films with tetragonal FeSe and hexagonal FeS targets, we adopted an alternate deposition technique with FeSe buffer layer on MgO(001). The overall film composition is controlled by the thickness ratio of FeS / FeSe layers. The out-of-plane lattice parameter of the films follows Vegard's law, demonstrating homogeneous alloying by inter-diffusion. The sulfur solid solubility reaches $x = 0.78$ in the $\mathrm{FeS}_x\mathrm{Se}_{1-x}$ films, w…
Few-layer PtSe2 films are promising candidates for applications in high-speed electronics, spintronics and photodetectors. Reproducible fabrication of large-area highly crystalline films is, however, still a challenge. Here, we report the fabrication of epitaxially aligned PtSe2 films using one-zone selenization of pre-sputtered platinum layers. We have studied the influence of the growth conditions on the structural and electrical properties of the films prepared from Pt layers with different initial thickness. The best results were obtained for PtSe2 layers grown at elevated temperatures (60…
Among the several flexible thermoelectric modules in existence, sintered Bi-Te-based modules represent a viable option because of their high output power density and flexibility, which enables the use of arbitrary heat sources. We have fabricated Bi-Te-based modules with a large-scalable fabrication process and improved their output performance. The reduction in the interconnection resistance, using thick electrodes of the flexible printed circuit, significantly improves the module's output power to 87 mW/cm$^{2}$ at $ΔT$ = 70 K, which is 1.3-fold higher than a previous prototype module. Furth…
We report the successful fabrication of superconducting tantalum nitride (TaN) thin films using a pulsed laser deposition technique with 1064 nm radiation. Films with thickness $ \sim $ 100 nm deposited on MgO (100) single crystals and on oxidized silicon (SiO$_{2} $) substrates exhibited a superconducting transition temperature of $\sim $ 8 K and 6 K, respectively. The topography of these films were investigated using atomic force and scanning electron microscopy, revealing fairly large area particulate free and smooth surfaces, while the structure of the films were investigated using standar…
The epitaxial growth of two-dimensional (2D) $β-In_2Se_3$ material was obtained over 2-inches c-sapphire wafers using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Excellent quality of thick (90 nm) and very thin films, down to two quintuple layers (2 nm), was confirmed by x-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (ac-STEM). Wafer-scale fabrication of photodetectors based on five quintuple layers was produced using photolithography and other standard semiconductor processing methods. The photodetectors exhibit responsivity of 3 mA/W, peak s…
The fabrication, characterisation, and superconductivity of MgB2 thick films grown on stainless steel substrate were studied. XRD, SEM, and magnetic measurements were carried out. It was found that the MgB2 thick films can be fast formed by heating samples to 660 oC then immediately cooling down to room temperature. XRD shows above 90% MgB2 phase and less than 10 % MgO. However, the samples sintered at 800 oC for 4 h contain both MgB4 and MgO impurities in addition to MgB2. The fast formed MgB2 films appear to have a good grain connectivity that gives a Jc of 8 x 10 4 A/cm2at 5 K and 1 T and m…
The employment of femtosecond pulsed lasers has received significant attention due to its capability to facilitate fabrication of precise patterns at the micro- and nano- lengths scales. A key issue for efficient material processing is the accurate determination of the damage threshold that is associated with the laser peak fluence at which minimal damage occurs on the surface of the irradiated solid. Despite a wealth of previous reports that focused on the evaluation of the laser conditions that lead to the onset of damage, the investigation of both the optical and thermal response of thin fi…
Sputter thin film deposition after photolithography often produces unwanted spikes along the side edges. These spikes are a significant issue for the development of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)-based memory and molecular spintronics devices, microelectronics, and micro-electro-mechanical systems because they influence the properties of the other films deposited on the top. Our molecular spintronics devices that utilize MTJ as the testbed are almost short-lived and encountered high background current that masked the effect of molecular transport channels placed along the sides of MTJs. Theref…
Scalable, Simple, and Versatile Encapsulation of 2D Materials and Devices
Boston College（波士顿学院）；Stony Brook University（石溪大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；Air Force Research Laboratory（空军研究实验室）；Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学）
High quality metal thin films and nanostructures are critical building blocks for next generation nanotechnologies. They comprise low-loss circuit elements in nanodevices, provide new catalytic pathways for water splitting and $CO_2$ reduction technologies, and enable the confinement of spatially extended electromagnetic waves to be harnessed for application in information processing, energy harvesting, engineered metamaterials, and new technologies that will operate in the quantum plasmonics limit. However, the controlled fabrication of high-definition single-crystal subwavelength metal nanos…
We report the magnetic properties of yttrium iron garnet (YIG) thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition technique. The films were deposited on Si (100) substrates in the range of 15-50 nm thickness. Magnetic characterizations were investigated by ferromagnetic resonance spectra. Perpendicular magnetic easy axis was achieved up to 50 nm thickness. We observed that the perpendicular anisotropy values decreased by increasing the film thickness. The origin of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) was attributed to the texture and the lattice distortion in the YIG thin films. We anticipate…
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) as a phase-change material controls the transferred heat during phase transition process between metal and insulator states. At temperature above 68C, the rutile structure VO2 keeps the heat out and increases the IR radiation reflectivity, while at the lower temperature the monoclinic structure VO2 acts as the transparent material and increase the transmission radiation. In this paper, we first present the metal-insulator phase transition (MIT) of the VO2 in high and low temperatures. Then we simulate the meta-surface VO2 of metamaterial reflector by Ansys HFSS to show t…
