Fiber-textured and epitaxial NiO thin films were deposited on Si(100), c-Al₂O₃, and muscovite mica(001) sub-strates using reactive magnetron sputtering at substrate temperatures of 300 °C and 400 °C, to investigate theeffect of film thickness and substrate temperature on epitaxial growth of NiO films. The as-deposited filmsexhibited a face-centered cubic structure with a larger lattice constant, attributed to strain induced during thesputtering process. With an increase in substrate temperature to 400 °C, the d-spacing decreased due to strainrelease, approaching the NiO bulk value for the thickest film. The NiO film grown on Si(100) displayed fibertexture. On c-plane sapphire, NiO thin films exhibited twin domains and three-fold symmetry, consistent withexpected crystallographic orientation relationship for NaCl-structured materials onsapphire: (111)_NiO ‖ (0001)_Al2O3 and [011]_NiO ‖ [1010]_Al2O3, [011]_NiO ‖[1010]_Al2O3. On muscovite mica(001)substrates, the observed epitaxial shows that the mechanism is conventional epitaxy, rather than van der Waalsepitaxy, consistent with the epitaxial growth of the non-layered non-van-der-Waals compound NiO. The epitaxialrelationship was identified as of (111)_NiO‖(001)_Mica and [011]_NiO ‖[010]_Mica, [011]_NiO ‖[010]_Mica.

CaMnO3 is a perovskite with attractive magnetic and thermoelectric properties. CaMnO3 films are usually grown by pulsed laser deposition or radio frequency magnetron sputtering from ceramic targets. Herein, epitaxial growth of CaMnO3-y (002) films on a (112 over bar 0)-oriented LaAlO3 substrate using pulsed direct current reactive magnetron sputtering is demonstrated, which is more suitable for industrial scale depositions. The CaMnO3-y shows growth with a small in-plane tilt of <approximate to 0.2 degrees toward the (200) plane of CaMnO3-y and the (1 over bar 104) with respect to the LaAlO3 (112 over bar 0) substrate. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the electronic core levels shows an oxygen deficiency described by CaMnO2.58 that yields a lower Seebeck coefficient and a higher electrical resistivity when compared to stoichiometric CaMnO3. The LaAlO3 (112 over bar 0) substrate promotes tensile-strained growth of single crystals. Scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy reveal antiphase boundaries composed of Ca on Mn sites along and , forming stacking faults.

Controllable engineering of the nanoporosity in layered Ca3Co4O9 remains a challenge. Here, we show the synthesis of discontinuous films with islands of highly textured Ca3Co4O9, effectively constituting distributed nanoparticles with controlled porosity and morphology. These discontinuously dispersed textured Ca3Co4O9 nanoparticles may be a candidate for hybrid thermoelectrics.

Thin films in the aluminosilicate (AlSiO) system containing up to 31 at. % Al and 23 at. % Si were prepared by reactive RF magnetron co-sputtering in order to investigate the dependence of film formation and optical properties on substrate temperature and Si and Al contents. The obtained films were amorphous with smooth microstructure. The growth rate at different substrate temperatures ranged from 1.2 to 3.3 nm/min and increase with increasing the Si target power. The roughness decreases and thickness increases with increasing Si content. The thickness of the films grown at a deposition temperature of 100 °C is found to be higher than the films deposited at 300 and 500 °C. The AlSiO-coated glasses have a higher transmission in the visible region than the uncoated glass. The spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis reveals that the refractive index value decreased with decreasing the Al content, having extinction coefficient values of zero in the measured spectral region and band gap values ≥ 3.4 eV. The obtained thin films have over 90% transmittance in the visible range and no systematic variation of transmittance was observed with substrate temperature. The results suggest that glass substrate coated with AlSiO thin films have improved optical properties.

The development of high-performance and transferable thin-film thermoelectric materials is important for low-power applications, e.g., to power wearable electronics, and for on-chip cooling. Nanoporous films offer an opportunity to improve thermoelectric performance by selectively scattering phonons without affecting electronic transport. Here, we report the growth of nanoporous Ca3Co4O9 thin films by a sequential sputtering-annealing method. Ca3Co4O9 is promising for its high Seebeck coefficient and good electrical conductivity and important for its nontoxicity, low cost, and abundance of its constituent raw materials. To grow nanoporous films, multilayered CaO/CoO films were deposited on sapphire and mica substrates by rf-magnetron reactive sputtering from elemental Ca and Co targets, followed by annealing at 700 C to form the final phase of Ca3Co4O9. This phase transformation is accompanied by a volume contraction causing formation of nanopores in the film. The thermoelectric propoperties of the nanoporous Ca3Co4O9 films can be altered by controlling the porosity. The lowest electrical resistivity is ~7 mO cm, yielding a power factor of 2.32 × 10-4 Wm-1K-2 near room temperature. Furthermore, the films are transferable from the primary mica substrates to other arbitrary polymer platforms by simple dry transfer, which opens an opportunity of low-temperature use these materials.

The 4-probe method has so far been the most popular method for concurrent measurement of Seebeck coefficient and electrical resistivity of bulk samples. However, for Seebeck measurement with higher accuracy, the 2-probe method is becoming preferred over 4-probe method. The problem with the previous apparatus designs is that they do not allow 2-probe arrangement for Seebeck measurement simultaneously with linear 4-probe arrangement for electrical resistivity measurement. So, the challenge is find a design where two different probe arrangements become possible at the same time in a single measurement run. Here, we report design and fabrication of an apparatus that allows Seebeck measurement by 2-probe method concurrently with electrical resistivity by 4-probe method of bar and disc samples in the temperature range from 300 to 1000 K. The uniqueness of the present design is that it does not require heating the entire sample chamber for temperature dependent measurements. This is because a small cylindrical furnace inside the sample chamber is used to control the sample background temperature. This internal furnace arrangement results in readily achievable set temperature with desired uniformity. Thus, it allows faster thermoelectric evaluation of samples. The design includes several preventive steps to negate the effect of off-axial heat flows on the measurement accuracy. The measurement error in Seebeck coefficient and electrical resistivity of PbTe sample is estimated to be smaller than 5%. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The layered cobaltate Ca₃Co₄O₉ is of interest for energy-harvesting and heat-conversion applications because of its good thermoelectric properties and the fact that the raw materials Ca and Co are nontoxic, abundantly available, and inexpensive. While single-crystalline Ca₃Co₄O₉ exhibits high Seebeck coefficient and low resistivity, its widespread use is hampered by the fact that single crystals are too small and expensive. A promising alternative approach is the growth of highly textured and/or epitaxial Ca₃Co₄O₉ thin films with correspondingly anisotropic properties. Here, we present a two-step sputtering/annealing method for the formation of highly textured virtually phase-pure Ca₃Co₄O₉ thin films by reactive cosputtering from Ca and Co targets followed by an annealing process at 730 °C under O₂-gas flow. The thermally induced phase transformation mechanism is investigated by in situ time-resolved annealing experiments using synchrotron-based 2D X-ray diffraction (XRD) as well as ex situ annealing experiments and standard lab-based XRD. By tuning the proportion of initial CaO and CoO phases during film deposition, the method enables synthesis of Ca₃Co₄O₉ thin films as well as Ca_xCoO₂. With this method, we demonstrate production of epitaxial Ca₃Co₄O₉ thin films with in-plane electrical resistivity of 6.44 mΩ cm and a Seebeck coefficient of 118 μV K⁻¹ at 300 K.