The mechanical properties of interfaces and more precisely the adhesion are of great importance to understand the reliability of thin film devices. Organic thin film transistors (OTFT) on flexible substrate are a new class of electronic components. Since these devices are flexible and intended for different fields of application like sensors and displays, they will undergo a lot of mechanical a...

Modern devices require the production and characterization of state-of-the-art-ultra-thin films under 10-nanometers thick. Examples can be found in integrated circuits, magnetic pickup heads and high effi-ciency solid state lasers. In “thin films” with thickness greater than 10 nanometers, the crystallographic properties (crystalline quality, orientation relationship between films and substrate...

Ultra-thin p-type chalcogenide glass Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) semiconductor layers are employed to form flexible thin-film transistors (TFTs). For the first time, TFTs based on GST show saturating output characteristics and an ON/OFF ratio up to 388, exceeding present reports by a factor of ~20. The channel current modulation is greatly enhanced by using ultra-thin 5 nm thick amorphous GST layers and 20...

The design and fabrication of our compact precision optical displacement sensor (PODS) are based on the newly developed ultra-thin film photodiode with its active layer thinner than a half of the incident light wavelength. In this paper, a detailed description of the principle, design, fabrication process and performance of PODS for application in both smooth and rough surfaces will be given.

Molecular-dynamics simulations were used to study the response of a nanometer thin polymer film to oscillatory shear. Several types of response occur, depending on the amplitude of the shear. At low amplitude, the film deforms elastically. At intermediate ones it deforms plastically. Short-range stress-induced structured crystalline domains occur. This flexible elastic state is very dynamic. Th...

Work presented here measures and interprets the electrical and thermal conductivities of atomic layer deposited (ALD) free-standing single film and periodic tungsten and aluminum oxide nanobridges with thicknesses from ∼5-20 nm and ∼3-13 nm, respectively. Electrical conductivity of the W films is reduced by up to 99% from bulk, while thermal conductivity is reduced by up to 91%. Results indicat...

Accurate optical methods are required to determine the energy bandgap of amorphous semiconductors and elucidate the role of quantum confinement in nanometer-scale, ultra-thin absorbing layers. Here, we provide a critical comparison between well-established methods that are generally employed to determine the optical bandgap of thin-film amorphous semiconductors, starting from normal-incidence r...

Ultra-short pulsed laser sources, with pulse durations in the ps and fs regime, arecommonly exploited for cold ablation. However, operating ultra-short pulsed lasersources at fluence levels well below the ablation threshold allows for fast and selectivethermal processing. The latter is especially advantageous for the processing of thinfilms. A precise control of the heat affecte...

The subband structure in thin silicon films under stress is rigorously analyzed. Calculations of the effective masses in the subbands show a dependence on shear strain and film thickness simultaneously. Both, the effective masses and the subband splitting determine the transport properties in silicon films. A decrease of the transport effective mass controlled by the shear strain component lead...