Uniaxial quasi-static, uniaxial dynamic and confined dynamic compression experiments have been performed to characterize the failure and deformation mechanisms of a sintered polycrystalline aluminum nitride using a servohydraulic machine and a modified Kolsky bar. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are used to identify the fracture and deformation mechanisms...

Thanks to its high thermal conductivity, aluminum nitride may be a serious candidate as fuel coating for the Gas Fast Reactor. However, its behavior under irradiation is not entirely well understood. In order to catch a glimpse of this behavior, specimens were irradiated with swift heavy ions of different energies then characterised by both thermally stimulated luminescence and optical absorpti...

0167-9317/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.mee.2011.02.080 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0 832 295726; fa E-mail addresses: [email protected], simopetro In this work the micro-fabrication of flexible MicroElectroMechanical transducers based on the piezoelectric effect is reported. We developed the technological protocol to realize a piezoelectric transducer composed...

One-dimensional AlN nanowires/tubes were exploited as hydrogen storage media. The adsorption of atomic and molecular hydrogen on AlN nanowires was investigated by using density functional theory computations. Hydrogen atoms prefer to adsorb on top of neighboring threefold-coordinated N and Al atoms in pairs. A hydrogen molecule, however, prefers to adsorb on top of threefold-coordinated Al atom...

This paper reports on design, fabrication and experimental testing of a new class of two-port stacked piezoelectric aluminum nitride contour-mode micromechanical resonators that can be used for RF filtering and timing applications. This novel design consists of two layers of thin film AlN stacked on top of each other and excited in contour mode shapes using the d31 piezoelectric coefficient. Ma...

Metathesis (exchange) reactions offer the possibility of controlling temperature through a judicious choice of precursors. Here, a reaction between AlCl(3) and Ca(3)N(2) is found to produce phase-pure aluminum nitride (AlN) in seconds. The CaCl(2) byproduct salt, whose formation drives this highly exothermic reaction, is simply washed away after reaction completion. SEM images demonstrate that ...

We experimentally demonstrated a free-standing two-dimensional (2-D) photonic crystal (PhC) aluminum nitride (AlN) membrane to function as a free space (or out-of-plane) reflector working in the mid infrared region. By etching circular holes of radius 620nm in a 330nm thick AlN slab, greater than 90% reflection was measured from 3.08μm to 3.78μm, with the peak reflection of 96% at 3.16μm. Due t...