A fundamental strategy is developed to enhance the light-matter interaction of ultra-thin films based on a strong interference effect in planar nanocavities, and overcome the limitation between the optical absorption and film thickness of energy harvesting/conversion materials. This principle is quite general and is applied to explore the spectrally tunable absorption enhancement of various ult...

The fabrication and performance of an ultra-thin-film integrated gas sensor for detecting impurities in semiconductor process gases are described. Detector responses are based on gas-induced resistance changes in an ultra-thin Ti-P film mounted on a thin dielectric window supported by a silicon rim. The window temperature can be shifted several hundred degrees Celsius in less than one second. G...

Large-area graphene thin films are prized in flexible and transparent devices. We report on a type of glassy graphene that is in an intermediate state between glassy carbon and graphene and that has high crystallinity but curly lattice planes. A polymer-assisted approach is introduced to grow an ultra-smooth (roughness, <0.7 nm) glassy graphene thin film at the inch scale. Owing to the advantag...

The polarity of the ZnO film grown on sapphire using an ultra-thin Ga wetting layer has been investigated by electron energyloss spectroscopy (EELS). The intensity of the oxygen K-edge in electron energy-loss spectrum from the ZnO film shows a prominent difference when the film orientation changes from the (0002) Bragg condition to the (0002̄) Bragg condition. The EELS study reveals that the ZnO...

In recent years, the demand for thin film coatings on large area substrates has been rapidly increasing. Coating is some times required to make an object harder, or to provide the surface with particular electrical and optical properties. Hence, research on thin film science has received much attention due to its tremendous applications in modern technology. The importance of coatings and the s...

The catalytic effect of gold seed particles deposited on a substrate prior to zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film growth by magnetron sputtering was investigated. For this purpose, selected ultra thin gold layers, with thicknesses close to the percolation threshold, are deposited by thermal evaporation in ultra high vacuum (UHV) conditions and subsequently annealed to form gold nanodroplets. The ZnO str...

X-ray diffraction has been a standard technique for investigating structural properties of materials. However, most common applications in the organic materials community have been restricted to either chemical identification or qualitative strain analysis. Moreover, its use for polymeric thin films has been challenging because of the low structure factor of carbon and the thin film nature of t...

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