The focus of this thesis is to analyze cost trends and government incentives in the California PV market during 2007-2008. The data show that pre-rebate system costs increased in California during this time period and that this was driven by a surge in worldwide module cost. Systems employing thin film technology did not exhibit a downward impact on cost, which contradicts historical and techno...

Fatigue compromises the reliability of macroscopic metallic components utilized in a variety of technological applications. However, the fatigue behavior of thin metal films and smallscale components used in microelectronics and mechanical microdevices has yet to be explored in detail. The fatigue behavior in (sub)micron thin films is likely to differ from that in bulk material, since the volum...

We analyse the reflection of a TM electromagnetic field first on a flat dielectric film and second on a Veselago film with negative refractive index, both films being deposited on a metallic substrat acting as a mirror. An incident harmonic plane wave generates inside a conventional dielectric film a refracted propagating wave and an evanescent wave that does not contribute to reflection on the...

The progress in high technology has led to the wide use of thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFTLCD). The evolution of the manufacturing technology of TFT-LCD keeps increasing the size of TFT-LCD since a larger TFT-LCD allows a larger display application and an improved productivity. However, as the size of TFT-LCD increases, the size of TFT-array substrates and color filter substrat...

in this paper a chemical deposition procedure for the preparation of lead sulfide thin film ispresented. the details of the preparation method are described. the influence of hydrazine hydrate onthe microstructure and deposition rate of lead sulfide thin film has been investigated. the concentrationof the lead ions in the deposition bath decreases more slowly when the hydrazine hydrate is added...

copper films (250 nm) deposited on glass substrates, at different substrate temperatures. their optical properties were measured by ellipsometery (single wavelength of 589.3 nm) and spectrophotometery in the spectral range of 200–2600 nm. kramers kronig method was used for the analysis of the reflectivity curves of cu films to obtain the optical constants of the films, while ellipsometery measu...

We report on the first observation of superconductivity in a double atomic layer of Tl on Si(1 1 1) using in situ electrical resistivity measurements in ultrahigh vacuum. The structure of the Tl bilayer was characterized by a set of techniques, including scanning tunneling microscopy, electron diffraction and photoemission spectroscopy, which confirmed the metastability and metallic nature of t...

AlNxOy thin films were produced by DC reactive magnetron sputtering, using an atmosphere of argon and a reactive gas mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, for a wide range of partial pressures of reactive gas. During the deposition, the discharge current was kept constant and the discharge parameters were monitored. The deposition rate, chemical composition, morphology, structure and electrical resis...

Composite thin films are a new area of study with many applications, e.g. metal + oxide thin films in high density magnetic recording media. Engineering the processing, microstructure and properties of these thin films is of great importance. It has been found that microstructures of the thin films depend strongly on the oxide volume fraction and pressure during sputtering. Surface diffusion an...