Substrate biasing effect on the physical properties of reactive RF-magnetron-sputtered aluminum oxide dielectric films on ITO glasses.

High dielectric constant (high-k) Al2O3 thin films were prepared on ITO glasses by reactive RF-magnetron sputtering at room temperature. The effect of substrate bias on the subband structural, morphological, electrode/Al2O3 interfacial and electrical properties of the Al2O3 films is systematically investigated. An optical method based on spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement and modeling is adopted to probe the subband electronic structure, which facilitates us to vividly understand the band-tail and deep-level (4.

[Synergistic effects of nano-sized magnetic particles and uncoupler to the characteristics of activated sludge].

For improving the performance and sludge settling property of an activated sludge reduction process with uncoupler, in this investigation, uncoupler and nano-sized magnetic particles were added simultaneously to a sequencing batch reactor for exploring their synergistic effects to the characteristics of activated sludge. The results showed that the volume reduction of sludge reached 41% with single 2,4,5-Trichlorophenol (TCP) Comparing with the control experiment, the biodegradability and settling properties of the activated sludge decreased. Under the actions of TCP combined with nano-sized magnetic particles, the volume reduction of sludge reached 34%, the removal efficiencies of COD, nitrogen, and phosphorus as well as the sludge settling property were not significantly influenced.

Structural, chemical, optical, and electrical evolution of SnO(x) films deposited by reactive rf magnetron sputtering.

In this paper, SnO(x) films were produced by reactive radio frequency magnetron sputtering under various oxygen partial pressure (P(O)) in conjunction with a thermal annealing at 200 °C afterwards. The obtained SnO(x) films were systematically studied by means of various techniques, including X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and Hall-effect measurement. The structural, chemical, and electrical evolution of the SnO(x) films was found to experience three stages: polycrystalline SnO phase dominated section with p-type conduction at P(O) ≤ 9.

Improvement of phase stability and accurate determination of optical constants of SnO thin films by using Al2O3 capping layer.

In this letter, it is proposed that the usage of Al(2)O(3) capping layer can tremendously improve the phase stability of SnO thin films, which allows the accurate determination of the optical constants of the SnO films without the perturbation arising from impurity phases. For the SnO films, the refraction index and extinction coefficient are significantly influenced by the crystallinity. The nondirect optical bandgap of the amorphous SnO films is determined to be 2.

Microstructural, optical, and electrical properties of SnO thin films prepared on quartz via a two-step method.

A simple, cost-effective, two-step method was proposed for preparing single-phase SnO polycrystalline thin films on quartz. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis demonstrated that the annealed films were consisted of polycrystalline alpha-SnO phase without preferred orientation, and chemical composition analysis of the single phase in nature was analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Transmittance spectra in UV-vis-IR range indicated that the average transmittance of both the as-deposited and the annealed SnO thin films was up to 70%.