A thin metallic film deposited on a compliant polymeric substrate begins to wrinkle under compression induced in curing process and afterwards cooling of the system. The wrinkle mode depends upon the thin film elasticity, thickness, compressive strain, as well as mechanical properties of the compliant substrate. This paper presents a simple model to study the modulation of the wrinkle mode of t...

As technology continues towards smaller, thinner and lighter devices, more stringent demands are placed on thin polymer films as diffusion barriers, dielectric coatings, electronic packaging and so on. Therefore, there is a growing need for testing platforms to rapidly determine the mechanical properties of thin polymer films and coatings. We introduce here an elegant, efficient measurement met...

In this work, we extracted the film’s hardness (HF) of ultra-thin diamond-like carbon layers by simultaneously taking into account the tip blunting and the substrate effect. As compared to previous approaches, which did not consider tip blunting, this resulted in marked differences (30–100%) for the HF value of the thinner carbon coatings. We find that the nature of the substrate influences thi...

3 | P a g e Abstract This thesis is concerned with the synthesis and characterisation of TiO2 based photocatalyst thin films and the assessment of their antimicrobial properties. When exposed to light of wavelength less than 380 nm TiO2 films can demonstrate self-cleaning and self-disinfecting properties. This is due to photocatalytic processes occurring on the film surface resulting in film su...

A scatterometer is extended and allows us to perform ellipsometric measurements on scattered light in each direction of space. Experimental data are given for single thin-film layers and optical coatings and reveal unexpected results. The phenomena are investigated by means of the electromagnetic theories of surface and bulk scattering that emphasize the role of partial correlation and localize...

In this work, nanostructured TiO2 and Cr-doped TiO2 thin films were deposited on glass substrate through sonochemical-chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The resulting thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-visible absorption spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques. The TiO2 thin film has nanocubic morphology and ...

thin film phthalocyanines(pc), incloding zinc, iron, and magnesium phthalocyani-nes, were prepared by vacuum deposition method. chronocoulometry was used to study the charge transfer reaction mechanism of ionic species through the thin films. the results obtained in chronocoulometric studies shows that the thin film phthalocyanines could operate via two mechanisms.the first mechanism metal pc t...

Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) coatings on implant materials are widely used in controlled drug delivery applications. Typically, such coatings are made with non-porous films. Here, we have synthesized a thin PLGA film coating with a highly ordered microporous structure using a simple and inexpensive water templating "breath figure" technique. A single stage process combining spin coatin...

The performance of solar cells (SCs) can be enhanced significantly by employing 2D photonic crystals (2D-PCs). They can either be used as omnidirectional, broadband antireflection coatings (ARCs) or applied to thin-film SCs (where PC effects are much more significant than in generic SCs). Although multilayer ARCs are commonly used, problems related to material selection, thermal mismatch, sensi...

We suggest a new type of efficient light-trapping structures for thin-film solar cells based on arrays of planar nanoantennas operating far from their plasmon resonances. The operation principle of our structures relies on the excitation of collective modes of the nanoantenna arrays whose electric field is localized between the adjacent metal elements. We calculate a substantial enhancement of ...