National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

Lead-free piezoelectric (Bi0.5Na0.5)(0.92)Ba0.08TiO3, doped with 5 mol %BiFeO3 (BNT-BT-BFO) nanowires was prepared from its corresponding precursor sol. A polycarbonate membrane with the thickness of 30 mu m and the pore diameter of 100 nm was used as template. Nanowires with average diameter of similar to 80 nm and different lengths of a few microns were prepared from BNT-BT-BFO precursor sol with similar to 0.03 M concentration. Ferroelectric and piezoelectric characterizations of BNT-BT-BFO nanowires were performed using AFM-PFM equipment. The HR-TEM micrograph of nanocrystals, SAED patterns, and XRD pattern indicated that BNT-BT-BFO nanowires crystallized on the lattice of rhombohedral (Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3) phase. The BNT-BT-BFO nanowires showed a significant piezoelectric response, suggesting a good piezoelectric behavior. The saturation magnetization of the nanowires, measured at room temperature and at 5 kOe magnetic field, was Ms = 0.061 emu/g. A saturated ferromagnetic hysteresis loop has been also obtained.

A new method to fabricate an Fe-PZT core-shell wire arrays developed in three steps is reported in this paper. This involves the electrochemical growth of an iron wire array by template method, deposition by spin coating of the PZT precursor prepared by sol-gel technique on the iron wires surface and annealing treatment to obtain Fe-PZT core-shell structures. The structure of the Fe-PZT core-shell wire array was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Raman scattering. Raman lines situated at 372 and 575cm(-1) indicate the formation of the FeO particles on the Fe wires surface as a result of the use of an aqueous solution for electrochemical synthesis. An upshift of Raman lines of Fe decorated with FeO wires was observed after formation of Fe-PZT core-shell structure. The annealing treatment of this structure involves a partial transformation of the FeO into Fe2O3 particles both with structure rhombohedral and cubic that were evidenced by Raman lines peaked at 243 and 497cm(-1), respectively. (C) 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Investigations on compact dielectric resonator antennas arc presented. Low-loss, high dielectric constant zirconium tin titanate (ZST) material was prepared by using solid state reaction method. The ZST resonators exhibit 36 dielectric relative permittivity, dielectric loss tangent 5x10(-4) and resonant frequency temperature coefficient between -4 to +4 ppm/degrees C. The developed resonators are very attractive for probe-fed resonator antenna for 2.66 GHz.

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses of lead zirco-titanate Pb(Zr,Ti)O-3(001) single crystal thin layers as a function of the time spent between sample preparation by pulsed laser deposition and introduction in to a ultrahigh vacuum revealed the fact that freshly prepared samples showed a shift of the C 1s towards a higher binding energy, together with shifts of core levels originating from the substrate (particularly Ti 2p and O 1s) towards a lower binding energy. This behaviour is explained by considering that the molecules of contaminants (fatty acids, alcohols, esters) are adsorbed preferentially on areas exhibiting outwards polarization P(+). Thus, photoelectrons originating from contaminants will have larger binding energies because of the charge state of the P(+) areas, whereas the substrate XPS signals from these P(+) areas are attenuated by the contaminants, with the consequence of a prevalence of XPS substrate signals originating from the P(-) areas, shifted towards lower binding energies. Piezoresponse force microscopy confirmed the assumptions derived from XPS results and suggests the existence of an interplay between the adsorption of contaminants and the surface polarization state.

In this letter, we study the higher-order modes excited in a high-permittivity cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (DRA), situated asymmetrically on top of a rectangular slot in the ground plane of a microstrip line. Besides the modes excited by a symmetric positioning of the DRA above the feeding slot, we identified five new modes: TEme(010), TEme(011), TEme(210), TEme(020), and TM212 respectively. The higher-order modes offer to the DRA antenna some interesting features: They have different radiation patterns for different operating modes; modes with close resonance frequency give wideband capabilities; and sometimes, when a mode has poor performance in one polarization, it is possible that another mode with close frequency can compensate it.

New findings on the formation and annealing of interstitial boron-interstitial oxygen complex (BiOi) in p-type silicon are presented. Different types of n(+)-p structures irradiated with electrons and alpha-particles have been used for DLTS and MCTS studies. Electronic excitation essentially changes the formation rate of BiOi. It has been found that the increase of oxygen content slows the BiOi annealing rate down. The activation energy of the BiOi dissociation has been determined and it was found that germanium doping does not change the activation energy.

Europium doped zinc oxide (Eu:ZnO) thin films have been obtained by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). 002 textured thin films were achieved on glass and silicon substrates, while hetero-epilayers and homo-epilayers have been attained on single crystal SrTiO3 and ZnO, respectively. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) was employed to characterize the Eu:ZnO thin films. Extended XRD studies confirmed the different thin film structural properties as function of chosen substrates.

The aim of the paper is to identify the modes that can be excited by a wide microstrip line, in a cylindrical DRA situated symmetrically above it, to study the radiating performances of these modes and to present their radiating patterns. We managed to identify thirteen high-order modes; among these modes, four of them: HEM112, TMme(311), TEme(112), and TEme(121) have high transmission performances.

In this work we report our studies concerning the synthesis and characterisation of a series of imine derivatives that incorporate the 2-phenylpyridine (2-ppy) core. These derivatives were used in the cyclo-metalating reactions of platinum(II) or palladium(II) in order to prepare several complexes with liquid crystalline properties. Depending on the starting materials used as well as the solvents employed, different metal complexes were obtained, some of them showing both liquid crystalline behaviour and luminescence properties at room temperature. It was found that, even if there are two competing coordination sites, the cyclometalation process takes place always at the 2-ppy core with (for Pt) or without (for Pd) the imine bond cleavage. We successfully showed that it is possible to prepare emissive room temperature liquid crystalline materials based on double cyclopalladated heteroleptic complexes by varying the volume fraction of the long flexible alkyl tails on the ancillary benzoylthiourea (BTU) ligands.

Oxide materials are becoming of increasing interest due to their large variety of physical properties such as dielectric, magnetism, superconductivity, conductivity, ferroelectricity, multiferroism, etc. In addition, interfacing oxides with other materials is conferring new or better device functionalities. The main physical properties of oxides interfaces and their impact on the electrical properties of interest for microelectronic applications are presented. Further on, this subchapter is also devoted to the investigation and understanding of interface effects observed in heterostructures containing linear (SiO2) and non-linear (ferroelectrics) dielectrics in combination with wide-band gap semiconductor materials (e.g. ZnO and SiC) with special emphasis on size effects, interface quality and the opportunity to control the emergent phenomena in Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) and Metal-Ferroelectric-Semiconductor (MFS) materials systems.