WEvaporation suppressing monolayers are materials that when applied to the air/water interface, will spread and form a thin film across the surface of the water. The purpose of these materials is to reduce evaporative water loss from dams and reservoirs.
WFrank–Van der Merwe growth is one of the three primary modes by which thin films grow epitaxially at a crystal surface or interface. It is also known as 'layer-by-layer growth'. It is considered an ideal growth model, requiring perfect lattice matching between the substrate and the layer growing on to it, and it is usually limited to homoepitaxy. For FM growth to occur, the atoms that are to be deposited should be more attracted to the substrate than to each other, which is in contrast to the layer-plus-island growth model. FM growth is the preferred growth model for producing smooth films.
WA Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) film is a nanostructured system formed when Langmuir films—or Langmuir monolayers (LM)—are transferred from the liquid-gas interface to solid supports during the vertical passage of the support through the monolayers. LB films can contain one or more monolayers of an organic material, deposited from the surface of a liquid onto a solid by immersing the solid substrate into the liquid. A monolayer is adsorbed homogeneously with each immersion or emersion step, thus films with very accurate thickness can be formed. This thickness is accurate because the thickness of each monolayer is known and can therefore be added to find the total thickness of a Langmuir–Blodgett film.
WThe nanomesh is an inorganic nanostructured two-dimensional material, similar to graphene. It was discovered in 2003 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
WPlasma-immersion ion implantation (PIII) or pulsed-plasma doping is a surface modification technique of extracting the accelerated ions from the plasma by applying a high voltage pulsed DC or pure DC power supply and targeting them into a suitable substrate or electrode with a semiconductor wafer placed over it, so as to implant it with suitable dopants. The electrode is a cathode for an electropositive plasma, while it is an anode for an electronegative plasma. Plasma can be generated in a suitably designed vacuum chamber with the help of various plasma sources such as Electron Cyclotron Resonance plasma source which yields plasma with the highest ion density and lowest contamination level, helicon plasma source, capacitively coupled plasma source, inductively coupled plasma source, DC glow discharge and metal vapor arc(for metallic species). The vacuum chamber can be of two types - diode and triode type depending upon whether the power supply is applied to the substrate as in the former case or to the perforated grid as in the latter.
WSelf-assembled monolayers (SAM) of organic molecules are molecular assemblies formed spontaneously on surfaces by adsorption and are organized into more or less large ordered domains. In some cases molecules that form the monolayer do not interact strongly with the substrate. This is the case for instance of the two-dimensional supramolecular networks of e.g. perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) on gold or of e.g. porphyrins on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG). In other cases the molecules possess a head group that has a strong affinity to the substrate and anchors the molecule to it. Such a SAM consisting of a head group, tail and functional end group is depicted in Figure 1. Common head groups include thiols, silanes, phosphonates, etc.
WA Tauc plot is used to determine the optical bandgap, or Tauc bandgap, of either disordered or amorphous semiconductors.
WThin-film drug delivery uses a dissolving film or oral drug strip to administer drugs via absorption in the mouth and/or via the small intestines (enterically). A film is prepared using hydrophilic polymers that rapidly dissolves on the tongue or buccal cavity, delivering the drug to the systemic circulation via dissolution when contact with liquid is made.
WThe thin film lithium-ion battery is a form of solid-state battery. Its development is motivated by the prospect of combining the advantages of solid-state batteries with the advantages of thin-film manufacturing processes.
WA thin-film transistor (TFT) is a special type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) made by depositing thin films of an active semiconductor layer as well as the dielectric layer and metallic contacts over a supporting substrate. A common substrate is glass, because the primary application of TFTs is in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). This differs from the conventional bulk MOSFET transistor, where the semiconductor material typically is the substrate, such as a silicon wafer.