Titanium films of 120 nm thickness were magnetron sputtered on glass substrates at room temperature, and subsequently they were annealed under flowing oxygen atmosphere at different temperatures and time. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to study topographic characteristics of the films,...

The self-assembling behavior and inhibition effect of dodecanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on copper surface were investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electrochemical methods. The assembling process was monitored by AFM phase images. The assembling time influences the...

In this paper, we report our investigation on the monolayer characteristics of a nontoxic, biocompatible, and biodegradable polymer chitosan (CHS) using Langmuir–Blodgett technique. It has been observed that pure CHS do not form stable monolayer. However, when CHS is mixed with arachidic acid...

The evolution of compact surface of the 100 nm copper film deposited on the glass-ceramics doped with vanadium coating in the course of the oxidation by the CCl4–L (L = dimethylformamide (DMF), tetrahydrofuran (THF), dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), CCl4 concentration ≈ 1 mol/L) was studied by...

HfN and VN thin films were deposited onto silicon and 4140 steel substrates with r.f. reactive magnetron sputtering by using Hf and V metallic targets with 4-inch diameter and 99.9% purity in argon/nitrogen atmosphere, applying a substrate temperature of 250°C and a pressure of 1.2 × 10-3...

Both ferroelectric Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3 (NBT) and K0.5Bi0.5TiO3 (KBT) are considered as the best known lead-free materials. In this experiment, we prepared NBT and KBT thin films on Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si substrates by metalorganic solution deposition. The structural properties and surface morphologies were...

Thin films of pure silver were deposited on glass substrate by thermal evaporation process at room temperature. Surface characterization of the films was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Thickness of the films varied between 20 nm and 60 nm. XRD analysis...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been used to study the hollow cavity formation mechanisms of the L-arginine phosphate monohydrate (LAP) crystals. Hollow cavities are formed through three modes. During 2D nucleation growth, initially formed 2D cavity prevents the growth around it layer-by-layer...

High-quality Nd:LuVO4 thin films have been grown on silica glass substrates by using a pulsed laser deposition technique. X-ray diffraction results show that the as-deposited Nd:LuVO4 film is basically oriented polycrystalline, and strong (200) peak was revealed. The waveguide property was...

Tunneling effect of graphite is studied by atomic force microscopy. The tunneling current in the gap between a conductive tip and a newly cleaved graphite surface at a given voltage keeps almost constant when the gap-distance varies within 1 μm, which cannot be explained by the commonly...