Thorough characterization of sputtered CuO thin films used as conversion material electrodes for lithium batteries.

CuO thin films were prepared by radio frequency magnetron sputtering using a copper target in a (Ar + O2) reactive mixture. Different sputtering parameters were varied including oxygen flow rate, total pressure, target-substrate distance, substrate temperature and target orientation. As expected, the thin film chemical composition is strongly dependent on the oxygen flow rate.

A tunable multicolour 'rainbow' filter for improved stress and dislocation density field mapping in polycrystals using X-ray Laue microdiffraction.

White-beam X-ray Laue microdiffraction allows fast mapping of crystal orientation and strain fields in polycrystals, with a submicron spatial resolution in two dimensions. In the well crystallized parts of the grains, the analysis of Laue-spot positions provides the local deviatoric strain tensor. The hydrostatic part of the strain tensor may also be obtained, at the cost of a longer measuring time, by measuring the energy profiles of the Laue spots using a variable-energy monochromatic beam.