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We have carried out a detailed programme to explore the superconducting characteristics of reactive DC-magnetron sputtered NbN. The basic principle is to ignite a plasma using argon, and then to introduce a small additional nitrogen flow to…
We have carried out a detailed programme to explore the superconducting characteristics of reactive DC-magnetron sputtered NbN. The basic principle is to ignite a plasma using argon, and then to introduce a small additional nitrogen flow to…
The room temperature growth, characterization, and electrical transport properties of magnetron sputtered superconducting Ti40V60 alloy thin films are presented. The films exhibit low surface roughness and tunable transport properties. As…
The V2O3 phase diagram contains two insulating phases and one metallic phase with different lattice structures. The stability of these phases is very sensitive to pressure, offering a mechanism to tune phase transitions by inducing strain…
Surface termination is known to play an important role in determining the physical properties of materials. It is crucial to know how surface termination affects the metal-insulator transition (MIT) of V$_2$O$_3$ films for both fundamental…
Reactive magnetron sputtering enables the deposition of various thin films to be used for protective as well as optical and electronic applications. However, progressing target erosion during sputtering results in increased magnetic field…
RF sputtered ZnO and Al:ZnO films are attractive transparent conductive oxides for fabrication of opto-electronic devices. In this paper we present efforts to control carrier concentration and mobility of ZnO/Al:ZnO thin films by…
Energy- and resource-efficient electrocatalytic water splitting is of paramount importance to enable sustainable hydrogen production. The best bulk catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), i.e., platinum, is one of the scarcest…
The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a key process in electrochemical water splitting. To lower the cost and environmental impact of this process, it is highly motivated to develop electrocatalysts with low or no content of noble…
We report on the delamination of thin ($\approx \mu$m) hydrogel films grafted to silicon substrates under the action of swelling stresses. Poly(dimetylacrylamide) (PDMA) films are synthesized by simultaneously cross-linking and grafting…
Recently, lattice dynamics of the highly strained europium monoxide, as a promising candidate for strong ferroelectric-ferromagnet material, applied in the next-generation storage devices, attracted huge attention in the solid-state…
Transition metal nitrides are a fascinating class of hard coating material that provide an excellent platform for investigating superconductivity and fundamental electron phonon interactions. In this work the structural morphological and…
We use density functional theory plus dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT) to study multiple control parameters for tuning the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in CaVO$_3$ thin films. We focus on separating the effects resulting from…
A variational model for epitaxially-strained thin films on rigid substrates is derived both by {\Gamma}-convergence from a transition-layer setting, and by relaxation from a sharp-interface description available in the literature for…
Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) poses a significant challenge to the durability of materials used in hydrogen production and utilization. Disentangling the competing nanoscale mechanisms driving HE often relies on simulations and…
To study the size and strain rate dependency of copper polycrystalline microstructures, a multi-layered copper/Al$_2$O$_3$ thin film was deposited on a Si substrate using a hybrid deposition system (combining physical vapour and atomic…
Hydrogen-based magneto-ionics is a promising approach for rapid magnetoelectric control of spintronic devices. Most investigations so far into the magneto-ionic manipulation of rare-earth transition-metal alloys have used electrochemical…
Thickness dependence and strain effects in films of $La_{1-x}A_xMnO_3$ perovskites are analyzed in the colossal magnetoresistance regime. The calculations are based on a generalization of a variational approach previously proposed for the…
The dewetting dynamics of ultrathin polymer films, e.g. in the model system of polystyrene on a polydimethylsiloxane-covered substrate, exhibits interesting behavior like a fast decay of the dewetting velocity and a maximum in the width of…
Dewetting of thin polystyrene films deposited onto silicone wafers at temperatures close to the glass transition exhibits unusual dynamics and front morphologies. Here, we present a new theoretical approach of these phenomena taking into…