This paper presents a novel Membrane Deflection Fracture Experiment (MDFE) to investigate the fracture toughness of MEMS and other advanced materials in thin film form. It involves the stretching of freestanding thin-film membranes, in a fixed-fixed configuration, containing pre-existing cracks. The fracture behavior of ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD), a material developed at Argonne Nation...

Thin film composite (TFC) nanofiltration (NF) membranes supported by polymeric have suffered from limited mechanical properties and chemical cleaning stability, resulting in an increasing operation cost. Strengthening the support of TFC is expected to provide great stability for membranes. This work provided a membrane constructed on poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) incorporated carbon nanotube film,...

Forward Osmosis (FO) polyamide thin-film composite membranes have been prepared by interfacial polymerization using commercial UF polyethersulfoneas membrane support. Different interfacial polymerization times (10s, 30s and 60s) in the organic solution containing trimesoyl chloride (TMC) at constant mphenylenediamine (MPD) concentration (2% w/v) were studied. The synthesized polyamide membranes...

We report the fabrication of microporous thin film membranes with two-dimensionally arranged submicron pores whose size can be varied by changing pH of aqueous medium. A solution containing poly(2vinylpyridine) partially quaternized with 1,4-diiodobutane (qP2VP) and unreacted 1,4-diodobutane (DIB) was used for the formation and deposition of the membranes on solid substrates. The membranes were...

co-fe films were electrodeposited on cu substrate from electrolytes with different co concentration  levels. x-ray diffraction (xrd) was used  to  investigate  the  films  crystal  structures. the  results  indicate that  if  the  co  concentration  is  less  that  the  fe  concentration,  the cubic  structure  appears  in  the  films, while  the  hexagonal  structure dominates when  the co  co...

A novel formulation for thick-film graphite sacrificial pastes is studied in this paper. It is composed of coarse graphite powder (grain size: 25 μm), dispersed in a vehicle consisting of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) dissolved in a propylene glycol (PG) – glycerol (G) – water mix, which is not aggressive to thin LTCC sheets. The presented sacrificial paste has been successfully applied for fabricati...

In this work, we present a method able to fabricate thin GaN nanomembranes fit for device applications. Starting from commercial GaN on sapphire substrates, MBE was used to deposit a sacrificial layer, which comprises of a superlattice of InN/InGaN, after which thin a GaN film of hundreds of nanometers thickness was grown on top. Pulsed laser irridiation with photon energy of 2.3eV gives rise t...

Directed co-assembly of polymer-conjugated cyclic peptide nanotubes (CPNs) and block copolymers in thin films is a viable approach to fabricate sub-nanometer porous membranes without synthesizing nanotubes with identical length and vertical alignment. Here we show that the process is pathway dependent and successful co-assembly requires eliminating CPNs larger than 100 nm in solution. Optimizin...

Article history: Received 26 June 2016 Accepted 7 July 2016 Available online xxxx In the thin film transistors (TFTs) device research for foldable display, the degradation effect by the mechanical stress is crucial. Here, the crack position is critical for TFT reliability. However, it is difficult to characterize the crack position due to the random generation of the crack by mechanical stress....