Publications by authors named "F Soldera"

Due to their applicability for manufacturing dense, hard and stable coatings, Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) techniques, such as High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS), are currently used to deposit transition metal nitrides for tribological applications. Cr-Al-N is one of the most promising ceramic coating systems owing to its remarkable mechanical and tribological properties along with excellent corrosion resistance and high-temperature stability. This work explores the possibility of further improving Cr-Al-N coatings by modulation of its microstructure.

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Apatitic bone cements have been used as a clinical bone substitutes and drug delivery vehicles for therapeutic agents in orthopedic applications. This has led to their combination with different drugs with known ability to foster bone formation. Recent studies have evaluated Simvastatin for its role in enhanced bone regeneration, but its lipophilicity hampers incorporation and release to and from the bone graft.

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Article Synopsis
  • Area-selective atomic layer deposition (AS-ALD) is gaining popularity for creating precise nanoscale patterns suitable for advanced nanoelectronic devices.
  • A new method is proposed where altering the substrate's properties enables the localized growth of different materials, illustrated by the successful growth of metallic Cu and semiconducting CuO on a patterned ZnO substrate.
  • This technique not only enhances material diversity in selective deposition but also paves the way for innovative applications in areas like transparent electronics, catalysis, and photovoltaics.
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Plasmon resonance heterogeneities were identified and studied along Ag and TiAlN layers within a multilayer stack in nanolaminate TiAlN/Ag coatings. For this purpose, a high-resolution plasmon microscopy was used. The plasmons intensity, energy, and depth of interface plasmon-polariton penetration were studied by scanning reflected electron energy loss spectroscopy.

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In this work, we report the self-assembled growth of vertically aligned columnar CuO + CuO nanocomposite thin films on glass and silicon substrates by reactive sputtering at room temperature. Microstructure analyses show that each phase in nanocomposite films has the columnar growth along the whole thickness, while each column exhibits the single phase characteristics. The local epitaxial growth behavior of CuO is thought to be responsible for such an unusual microstructure.

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