Thin silicon films of varying thickness were deposited on foreign substrates by electron-cyclotron resonance chemical vapor deposition from SiH4-H2 mixtures at 600 K. Optical thickness measurements, Rutherford backscattering, and transmission electron microscopy reveal that a thin amorphous interlayer of some 10 nm thickness has formed upon the substrate, before the growth of a microcrystalline...

A photochromic diarylethene was found to crystallize rapidly from the amorphous state in poly(methyl methacrylate) by heating at 130 degrees C. The diarylethene amorphous film was successfully patterned to form microcrystals upon ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation through a photomask, showing a high resolution as good as approximately 4 microm under optimal conditions.

We demonstrate a mechanism of solid-phase crystallization (SPC) enabled by nanoscale cavities formed at the interface between an hydrogenated amorphous silicon film and embedded 30 to 40 nm Si nanocrystals. The nanocavities, 10 to 25 nm across, have the unique property of an internal surface that is part amorphous and part crystalline, enabling capillarity-driven diffusion from the amorphous to...

Our primary goal is to increase the stabilized efficiency of thin film silicon solar cells in the substrate (nip) configuration by using textured substrates and tandem structures, based on amorphous (a-Si:H) and microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H). In order to reduce costs of mass-produced thin film solar modules, special attention has been paid in developing processes compatible with plastic fo...

Laser pulse processing of surfaces and thin films is a useful tool for amorphous thin films crystallization, surface nanostructuring, phase transformation and modification of physical properties of thin films. Here we show the effects of nanostructuring produced at the surface and under the surface of amorphous GeTiO films through laser pulses using fluences of 10-30 mJ/cm(2). The GeTiO films w...

In the present study, we investigated the role of an aliovalent dopant upon stabilizing the amorphous oxide film. We added beryllium into the Zr50Cu50 metallic glass system, and found that the amorphous oxide layer of Be-rich phase can be stabilized even at elevated temperature above Tg of the glass matrix. The thermal stability of the amorphous oxide layer is substantially enhanced due to Be a...

0167-9317/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.mee.2010.08.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Kanick We report on the effects of back channel etch depth and etchant chemistry on the electrical characteristics of inverted staggered advanced amorphous silicon thin-film transistors. We found that the optimum amorphous silicon film thickness in t...

The thin-film limit is derived by a nonconventional approach and equations for transmittance, reflectance and absorptance are presented in highly versatile and accurate form. In the thin-film limit the optical properties do not depend on the absorption coefficient, thickness and refractive index individually, but only on their product. We show that this formalism is applicable to the problem of...

The growth of amorphous carbon (a-C) thin film on a [1 1 1] diamond surface has been studied by a tight-binding (TB) molecular dynamics (MD) technique. Six different three-dimensional networks were constructed with periodic boundary conditions in two dimensions. Time-dependent non-equilibrium growth was simulated with atom-by-atom deposition and it was described as in real experiments without a...

We employ atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to predict the alignment and anchoring strength of a typical nematic liquid crystal, 4-n-pentyl-4'-cyano biphenyl (5CB), on different forms of silica. In particular, we study a thin (~20 nm) film of 5CB supported on surfaces of crystalline (cristobalite) and amorphous silica of different roughness. We find that the orientational order at the su...