Scanning- and colloidal-probe atomic force microscopy were used to study the mechanical properties of poly(L-lysine)/hyaluronan (PLL/HA)(n) films as a function of indentation velocity and the number of polymer deposition steps n. The film thickness was determined by two independent AFM-based methods: scratch-and-scan and newly developed full-indentation. The advantages and disadvantages of both...

The effect of impurities on the grain boundary melting of ice is investigated through an extension of Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory, in which we include retarded potential effects in a calculation of the full frequency-dependent van der Waals and Coulombic interactions within a grain boundary. At high dopant concentrations, the classical solutal effect dominates the melting behavior. ...

The stratification of thin liquid films formed from micellar solutions or latex suspensions can be explained by layer-by-layer destruction of a colloid crystal structure inside the film. The stepwise decrease of the film thickness is due to appearance and growth of dark spots (of less thickness) in the film. This phenomenon is analyzed in the present paper, and an explanation is proposed. The d...

Moisture absorption in model photoresist films of poly(4-hydroxystryene) (PHOSt) and poly(tert-butoxycarboxystyrene) (PBOCSt) supported on silicon wafers was measured by X-ray and neutron reflectivity. The overall thickness change in the films upon moisture exposure was found to be dependent upon the initial film thickness. As the film becomes thinner, the swelling is enhanced. The enhanced swe...

Liquid film thickness measurements under temperature-varying conditions in a two-phase flow are of great importance to refining our understanding of two-phase flows. In order to overcome the limitations of the conventional electrical means of measuring the thickness of a liquid film, this study proposes a three-electrode conductance method, with the device fabricated on a flexible printed circu...

We study the temporal growth pattern of surface fluctuations on a series of spinodally unstable polymer films where the instability can be adjusted with the film thickness, h0. For the most unstable film studied (whose /(h0 - h(sp))/h(sp)/ = 0.988; h(sp) is the thickness where the second derivative of the interfacial potential of the film equals zero), the growth rate function of the surface mo...

A systematic study of interfacial fracture energies of thin gold films as a function of film thickness is presented in this paper. The films were sputter deposited onto sapphire substrates to thicknesses ranging from 10 nm to 200 nm. Nanoindentation was used to measure mechanical properties and combined with stressed overlayers to trigger delamination and buckling. Fracture energies and interfa...

AlN/GaN/sapphire heterostructures with AlN gate film thickness of 3–35 nm are characterized using photoreflectivity ~PR! and photoluminescence ~PL! spectroscopy. Under a critical AlN film thickness, the luminescence from the GaN channel layer near the interface proves to be excitonic. No luminescence related to the recombination of the two-dimensional electron gas ~2DEG! is observed, in spite o...

We investigated the linearly polarized emission of uniformly aligned poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-alt-(benzo[2,1,3]thia-diazol-4,8-diyl) (F8BT) with a liquid crystalline phase on a rubbed alignment layer. The polarization ratio, defined by the ratio of luminous intensities polarized parallel and perpendicular to the rubbed direction, gradually decreased with increasing thickness of th...

it was difficult to obtain directly in a single experiment films of exactly 0.1-mm. thickness, several films were selected so that the thickness of each film might be distributed in a range from 0.05 to 0.4 mm. and the respective water vapor permeability was measured at various humidity conditions. Plotting the relationship between permeation resistance (l/Q) and film thickness (I) gave a strai...