Diffusion mediated interaction in metal-substrate assembly during high temperature annealing leads to possible formation of new composite materials. Here, sputtered grown Ti films on Si3N4/Si substrate has been reported to produce titanium nitride and silicide based binary composites while undergoing high vacuum annealing process at temperatures 650°C and above. Diffusion of thermally decomposed Si and N atoms from Si3N4 and their subsequent chemical reaction with Ti have been probed by X-ray photo electron spectroscopy. For annealing at 800°C and above, most of the Si atoms show preferences to stay in elemental form rather than developing silicide phase with Ti. Whereas at lower annealing temperature, silicide becomes the dominant phase for decomposed Si atoms. However, N atoms react promptly with Ti and form TiN which appears as the majority phase for each of the studied annealing temperature. Further, the nitride and silicide phases across the films have been compared quantitatively for various annealing temperature and the maximum silicide formation is observed for the sample annealed at 780°C. Finally, the thermally anchored metal-substrate interaction mechanism can be exploited to fabricate disordered superconducting TiN films where TiSi2 and Si can be used to tune the level of disorder by altering the annealing temperature.
A simple method is developed to synthesize gram quantities of uniform Ge nanowires (GeNWs) by chemical vapor deposition on preformed, monodispersed seed-particles loaded onto high surface area silica support. Various chemical functionalization schemes are investigated to passivate the GeNW surfaces using alkanethiols and alkyl Grignard reactions. The stability of functionalization against oxidation of germanium for various alkyl chain lengths is elucidated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Among all schemes tested, long chain alkanethiols (>=C12) are found to impart the most stable GeNW pas…
Poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) was thermally evaporated and deposited in vacuum. Infrared spectroscopy was used to confirm that the thin films were indeed P3HT, and showed that in-situ thermal evaporation provides a viable route for contaminant-free surface/interface analysis of P3HT in an ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) environment. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) as well as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) experiments were carried out to examine the frontier orbitals and core energy levels of P3HT thin films vapor deposited in UHV on clean polycrystalline silver (Ag) surfaces. UPS …
The structural and electronic properties of thermally reduced SrTiO3(100) single crystals have been investigated using a probe with real- and reciprocal-space sensitivity: a synchrotron radiation microsopic setup which offers the possibility of Scanning Photoemission Microscopy and Angle Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy (ARPES) down to the nanometric scale. We have spectroscopically imaged the chemical composition of samples which present reproducible and suitable low-energy electron diffraction patterns after following well-established thermal reduction protocols. At the micrometric scale,…
High spin (S=3/2) organic triradicals may offer enhanced properties with respect to several emerging technologies, but those synthesized to date typically exhibit small doublet quartet energy gaps and/or possess limited thermal stability and processability. We report a quartet ground state triradical 3, synthesized by a Pd(0)-catalyzed radical-radical cross-coupling reaction, which possesses two doublet-quartet energy gaps, DeltaEDQ ~ 0.2-0.3 kcal mol-1 and DealtaEDQ2 ~ 1.2-1.8 kcal mol-1. The triradical has a 70+% population of the quartet ground state at room temperature, and good thermal st…
The deposition of a monolayer by direct self-assembly from solution of an active spin-crossover (SCO) complex via chemisorption has been achieved starting from the perchlorate salt of Co(II) bis(4-(4-carboxyphenyl)-2,2:6,2-terpyridine). MALDI-TOF MS, Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirm the presence of an intact monolayer of SCO molecules grafted through carboxylate groups to the Ag surface. Three different spectroscopic techniques (Raman, XPS and X-ray Absorption spectroscopy, XAS) evidence a thermal spin transition of such monolayer of molecules. To our knowl…
Crystals grow by gathering and bonding of atoms to form an ordered structure. Typically, the growth is equally probable in all crystalline directions, but sometimes, it is not, as is the case of nanowire growth. Nanowire growth is explained, in most cases, by the presence of liquid metal droplets that mediate between an incoming flux of atoms and a substrate or an existing crystal nucleus, while defining the lateral dimension. Here, we report and explain a previously unknown mode of non-isotropic crystal growth observed in two wurtzite semiconductors, InN and ZnO. Being of polar structure, wur…
The development of graphene (Gr) spintronics requires the ability to engineer epitaxial Gr heterostructures with interfaces of high quality, in which the intrinsic properties of Gr are modified through proximity with a ferromagnet to allow for efficient room temperature spin manipulation or the stabilization of new magnetic textures. These heterostructures can be prepared in a controlled way by intercalation through graphene of different metals. Using photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), we achieve a nanoscale control of thermal activated intercalation of h…
Self-assembly and Electronic Properties of Graphyne and Graphdiyne Molecular Wires on Metallic Surfaces
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia（联邦乌贝兰迪亚大学物理研究所）；Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Triângulo Mineiro（米纳斯吉拉斯三角区联邦教育、科学与技术学院）；School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Keele University（基尔大学工程与物理科学学院）
High-entropy perovskite thin films, as the prototypical representative of the high-entropy oxides with novel electrical and magnetic features, have recently attracted great attention. Here, we reported the electronic structure and charge transport properties of sol-gel-derived high-entropy Ba(Zr0.2Sn0.2Ti0.2Hf0.2Nb0.2)O3 thin films annealed at various temperatures. By means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and absorption spectrum, it is found that the conduction-band-minimum shifts downward and the valence-band-maximum shifts upward with the increase of annealing temperature, leading to the…
Epitaxial NbO2 (110) films, 20 nm thick, were grown by pulsed laser deposition on Al2O3 (0001) substrates. The Ar/O2 total pressure during growth was varied to demonstrate the gradual transformation between NbO2 and Nb2O5 phases, which was verified using x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and optical absorption measurements. Electric resistance threshold switching characteristics were studied in a lateral geometry using interdigitated Pt top electrodes in order to preserve the epitaxial crystalline quality of the films. Volatile and reversible transitions between high and low…
The ability to integrate carbon nanotubes, especially single-walled carbon nanotubes, seamlessly onto silicon would expand the range of applications considerably. Though direct integration using chemical vapor deposition is the simplest method, the growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes on bare silicon and on ultra-thin oxides is greatly inhibited due to the formation of a non-catalytic silicide. Using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we show that silicide formation occurs on ultra-thin oxides due to thermally activated metal diffusion through the oxide. Silicides affect the growth of singl…
Interfacial mixing of elements is a well-known phenomenon found in thin film deposition. For thin-film magnetic heterostructures, interfacial compositional inhomogeneities can have drastic effects on the resulting functionalities. As such, care must be taken to characterize the compositional and magnetic properties of thin films intended for device use. Recently, ferrimagnetic Mn$_4$N thin films have drawn considerable interest due to exhibiting perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, high domain-wall mobility, and good thermal stability. In this study, we employed X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy …
Self assembly on suitably chosen substrates is a well exploited root to control the structure and morphology, hence magnetization, of metal films. In particular, the Cu3Au(001) surface has been recently singled out as a good template to grow high spin Fe phases, due to the close matching between the Cu3Au lattice constant (3.75 Angstrom) and the equilibrium lattice constant for fcc ferromagnetic Fe (3.65 Angstrom). Growth proceeds almost layer by layer at room temperature, with a small amount of Au segregation in the early stage of deposition. Islands of 1-2 nm lateral size and double layer he…
Ferrites with (inverse) spinel structure display a large variety of electronic and magnetic properties making some of them interesting for potential applications in spintronics. We investigate the thermally induced interdiffusion of Ni$^{2+}$ ions out of NiO into Fe$_3$O$_4$ ultrathin films resulting in off-stoichiometric nickelferrite-like thin layers. We synthesized epitaxial Fe$_3$O$_4$/NiO bilayers on Nb-doped SrTiO$_3$(001) substrates by means of reactive molecular beam epitaxy. Subsequently, we performed an annealing cycle comprising three steps at temperatures of 400\,$^{\circ}$C, 600\,…
In this article, the results of investigation of processes occurring during the molecular-beam deposition of germanium layers on Si$_3$N$_4$ dielectric substrates within a wide range of the Ge film growth temperatures (30 to 600°C) are presented. The intensity of the IR absorption bands related to the vibrations of the N$-$H and Si$-$N bonds are established to decrease with the increase of the Ge deposition temperature. It appears that this phenomenon cannot be explained only as a thermally activated process. Simultaneously, the peak corresponding to the Ge$-$N vibration bonds emerges in the X…
The properties of metal-semiconductor junctions are often unpredictable because of non-ideal interfacial structures, such as interfacial defects or chemical reactions introduced at junctions. Black phosphorus (BP), an elemental two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting crystal, possesses the puckered atomic structure with high chemical reactivity, and the establishment of a realistic atomic-scale picture of BP's interface toward metallic contact has remained elusive. Here we examine the interfacial structures and properties of physically-deposited metals of various kinds on BP. We find that Au, Ag, …
