Related papers: Structural tunability and origin of two-level syst…
In order to get homogeneous nanostructured Aluminum Nitride deposits, thin films were grown at room temperature on [001] Si substrates by radio frequency magnetron reactive sputtering. The deposits were analysed by Transmission Electron…
Due to their high kinetic inductance, highly disordered superconducting thin films are a potential hardware for the realization of compact, low-noise elements in cryoelectronic applications. However, high disorder typically results in…
Thin film metallic glasses undergoing devitrification can form partially crystallized or fully crystallized materials with novel structural and magnetic properties. The development of desired and tunable properties of such systems drives…
The nucleation and structure of silicon nanocrystals formed by different preparation conditions and silicon concentration (28 - 70 area %) have been studied using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Energy Filtered TEM (EFTEM) and…
We report specific heat and thermal conductivity of gadolinium- and yttrium-doped amorphous silicon thin films measured using silicon-nitride membrane-based microcalorimeters. Addition of gadolinium or yttrium to the amorphous silicon…
A mathematical model is developed to analyze the growth/decay rate of surface perturbations of an ultrathin metal film on an amorphous substrate (SiO_{2}). The formulation combines the approach of Mullins [J. Appl. Phys. v30, 77, 1959] for…
We have investigated the response of amorphous silicon (a-Si), in particular crystallization, to external mechanical shear deformations using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and the empirical Environment Dependent Inter-atomic…
Single phase nano and micro crystalline silicon films deposited using SiF4/H2 plasma at different H2 dilution levels were studied at initial and terminal stages of film growth with spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), Raman scattering (RS) and…
Hybrid systems consisting of metal-fullerene composites exhibit intriguing properties but often suffer from thermal instability. With proper control, such instability can be harnessed to enable the formation of sophisticated nanostructures…
Aluminum thin films are essential to the functionalities of electronic and quantum devices, where two-level systems (TLS) can degrade device performance. MBE-grown Al films may appeal to these applications due to their low TLS densities. We…
Amorphous silica deforms viscoplastically at elevated temperatures, as is common for brittle glasses. The key mechanism of viscoplastic deformation involves interatomic bond switching, which is known to be a thermally activated process. In…
The electrical transport properties of amorphous Bi films prepared by sequential quench deposition have been studied in situ. A superconductor-insulator (S-I) transition was observed as the film was made increasingly thicker, consistent…
Amorphous solids show surprisingly universal behaviour at low temperatures. The prevailing wisdom is that this can be explained by the existence of two-state defects within the material. The so-called standard tunneling model has become the…
We report on sexithiophene films, about 150nm thick, grown by thermal evaporation on single crystal oxides and, as comparison, on Si/SiO2. By heating the entire deposition chamber at 100 C we obtain standing-up oriented molecules all over…
Amorphous solids exhibit intrinsic, local structural transitions, that give rise to the well known quantum-mechanical two-level systems at low temperatures. We explain the microscopic origin of the electric dipole moment of these two-level…
Understanding the emergent electronic structure in twisted atomically thin layers has led to the exciting field of twistronics. However, practical applications of such systems are challenging since the specific angular correlations between…
Systematic exploration of amorphous ABC heterostructures revealed that nanoscale morphological modifications markedly improved their artificial bulk second-order susceptibility. These amorphous birefringent heterostructures were fabricated…
Diamond-like carbon (DLC) films are synthesized on Si using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The role of substrate bias and nitrogen doping on the structural evolution and local elastic modulus of DLC films are systematically…
During the growth of metal thin films on dielectric substrates at a given deposition temperature T, the film's morphology is conditioned by the magnitude and asymmetry of up- and downhill diffusion. Any severe change of this mechanism leads…
Entropy stabilization has garnered significant attention as a new approach to designing novel materials. Much of the work in this area has focused on bulk ceramic processing, leaving entropy-stabilized thin films relatively underexplored.…