Thermal ALD deposited Al2O3 films on silicon show marked difference in surface passivation quality as a function of annealing time (using rapid thermal process). An effective and quality passivation is realized in short anneal duration (~100s) which is reflected in the low surface recombination velocity (SRV <10 cm/s). The deduced values are close to the best reported SRV obtained by high therm...

The selective annealing of point defects with different activation energies is studied, by performing sequences of thermal treatments on gamma irradiated silica samples in the temperature range 300-450 °C. Our experiments show that the dependence on time of the concentration of two irradiation induced point defects in silica, named ODC(II) (standing for oxygen deficient centre II) and the E(γ)(...

The impact of annealing on the structural and magnetic properties of sputtered [Gd/Co]n multilayers has been researched. Structural and phase contrast of atomic force microscope measurements at the imaging of the facet sample cross-section demonstrate that thermal annealing process at 700 K leads to intermixing between Co and Gd layers, i.e. the alloy formation around the former interface. Magn...

A gradient annealing cell has been developed for the high-throughput study of thermal annealing effects on thin-film libraries in different environments. The inexpensive gradient annealing unit permits temperature gradients as large as 28 °C∕mm and can accommodate samples ranging in length from 13 mm to 51 mm. The system was validated by investigating the effects of annealing temperature on the...

Both temperature and strain characterization of seed and regenerated gratings with and without post annealing is reported. The high temperature regeneration has significant impact on thermal characterization and mechanical strength of gratings while the post annealing has little effect. The observed difference is evidence of viscoelastic changes in glass structure.

The comprehensive study of C/FePt granular multilayers prepared by ion-beam sputtering at room temperature and subsequent annealing is reported. The as-deposited multilayers consist of carbon-encapsulated FePt nanoparticles (average size ∼3 nm) with a disordered face-centered-cubic structure. The effects of thermal annealing on the structural and magnetic properties are investigated by using de...

The thermal stability of an iron/molybdenum bilayer was determined using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and X-ray diffraction. Substantial interdiffusion (3%) was observed upon annealing at 973 K for one hour. High temperature annealing of Fe/Mo layers in oxygen ambient is therefore not suitable for the formation of magnetite layers.

Classical and quantum annealing is discussed in the case of a generalized kinetically constrained model, where the relaxation dynamics of a system with trivial ground state is retarded by the appearance of energy barriers in the relaxation path, following a local kinetic rule. Effectiveness of thermal and quantum fluctuations in overcoming these kinetic barriers to reach the ground state are st...

The melting duration and molten depth are key information for Laser-Assisted Direct Imprinting, which raises the issue of the melting & solidification induced by excimer-pulse-laser shining through unilaterally transparent binary materials. Based on the matured laser-annealing analysis, the thermal-contact resistance is taken into account to simulate and predict the melting behavior for this pr...