Sharif Digital Repository

Gold and copper thin films are widely used in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) devices. Nanoindentation has been developed in mechanical characterization of thin films in recent years. Several researchers have examined the effect of surface roughness on nanoindentation results. It is proved that the surface roughness has great importance in nanoindentation of thin films. In this paper, the surface topography of thin films is simulated using the extracted data from the atomic force microscopy (AFM) images. Nanoindentation on a rough surface is simulated using a three-dimensional finite-element model. The results are compared with the results of... 

Application of corrosion resistant coatings is one of the most widely used means of protecting steel. Zinc coated (galvanize) steel, is well known for galvanic protection of steel substrates and nowadays, particular attention has been paid to the coupling of graphene oxide (GO) with metallic materials, in order to lessen corrosion rate. In this research, an isopropanol supercritical reducing environment prepared to make zinc ions bond directly with graphene oxides, to form a button shape hybrids of ZnO-Graphene (ZnOG). The hybridized bonding between zinc and graphene oxide is confirmed by Fourier Transform Infra-Red analysis. And the morphology revealed, using a Field Emission Scanning... 

Electrochemical exfoliation of graphite has recently attracted a big attention as a simple, fast and scalable method for the preparation of high quality graphene, but there are some drawbacks that hinder its application. Direct deposition is one of the most critical challenges that makes it difficult to deposit uniform, compact and large scale graphene thin films. This work develops a facile electrophoretic deposition route to fabricate exfoliated graphene (EG) film on Ag nanowires (NWs) networks with a controllable film thickness in nanometers scale. EG thin films are deposited with different applied potentials and times from an EG dispersion in N, N-dimethylformamide solvent. Since... 

Hierarchical TiO 2 nanorod/nanoflower thin film was synthesized on fluorine doped tin oxide glass via hydrothermal and aqueous chemistry methods. According to field emission scanning electron microscopy results, the thin film was crack-free and uniform. Primary nanorods had an average diameter of 95 nm and a length of 2 µm. They were perpendicular to the substrate owing to the TiO 2 prenucleation. Growth of the nanoflowers on the nanorods could increase both the specific surface area and roughness. X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy showed that the nanorods were rutile; while the nanoflowers were anatase. Efficient electron transfer from anatase to rutile could therefore occur.... 

A modeling approach is presented for the first time to model the dependence of short-circuit current density (J sc ) and open-circuit voltage (V oc ) on the grain size g in three thin film solar cells including the emerging perovskites. The variation of J sc and V oc with the grain size (g) of three different solar cells with CdTe, CZTS and perovskite absorber layers are modelled and fitted with the experimental dataset collected from relevant literature. The experimental literature suggested that the grain size of absorber layers in solar cells is controlled during the deposition process by adjusting the growth rate, temperature and ambient. The model has been successfully applied to the... 

In the present work the effect of simultaneous doping of carbon and nickel on the microstructural, optical, and electrical properties of barium strontium titanate (BST) is investigated. Thin films of BST were prepared by the sol-gel method in six different compositions ((Ba0.6Sr0.4)(NixCyTi1-x-y)O3): x = y = 0.00 (BST), x = 0.04 y = 0.00 (BST4N), x = 0.04 y = 0.01 (BST4N-1C), x = 0.04 y = 0.02 (BST4N-2C), x = 0.04 y = 0.03 (BST4N-3C), and x = y = 0.04 (BST4N-4C). Structural features and chemical bonds of the films were studied by TGA/DSC, XRD, FT-IR, and FE-SEM. The electrical and optical properties of the films were analysed by impedance spectroscopy and UV–VIS spectroscopy. The results... 

Reverse Osmosis (RO) is a rapid-developing desalination technology; however, it suffers from inefficient energy consumption. To reduce energy consumption, in this study, reverse osmosis thin-film composite membrane (TFC) module was prepared and composed of m-phenylenediamine (MPD), graphene oxide, and 1,3,5-benzenetricarbonyl chloride (TMC) by interfacial polymerization on the surface of a polysulfone substrate. The graphene oxide was embedded in the mentioned thin-film composite by adding it to MPD aqueous solution to enhance permeation flux and, thus, reduce energy consumption. This study assessed the performance of the membrane using a lab-scale RO setup and evaluated permeability and... 

The control of thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes cross-linking degree is an important factor to design new membranes and optimizing permeation characteristics. The Fe3O4 nanoparticle's based TFN membranes due to potentially added magnetic responsive properties to the membrane has a great importance in developing membrane architectures. Fe3O4/polyamide (PA) TFN membranes filled with nanoparticles in different sizes and concentrations have been synthesized. Cross-linking degree of PA layer characterized with Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTIR) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) methods to evaluate size dependency of the cross-linking degree of PA layer network. Obvious... 

Three independent elastic constants C 11, C 12, and C 44 were calculated and compared using available potentials of eight different metals with FCC crystal structure; Gold, Silver, Copper, Nickel, Platinum, Palladium, Aluminum and Lead. In order to calculate the elastic constants, the second derivative of the energy density of each system was calculated with respect to different directions of strains. Each set of the elastic constants of the metals in bulk scale was compared with experimental results, and the average relative error was for each was calculated and compared with other available potentials. Then, using the Voigt-Reuss-Hill method, approximated values for Young and shear moduli... 

Tin sulfide (SnS2) has recently attracted considerable attention due to its layered structure that may form two dimensional morphologies. It is an n-type semiconductor with band gap and electron affinity similar to CdS and In2S3; therefore can be regarded as an alternative for these materials in thin film solar cells. Here, we synthesis of SnS2 nanoparticles with different morphology in different ratio of water-ethanol mixed solution by solvothermal method, and observe that more ethanol leads to large sheet like morphologies, while water based synthesis results in very small nanosheets. A challenge in wet deposition of device-quality thin films of SnS2 is the requirement for highly dispersed... 

Scale-up deposition methods in perovskite solar cell research, are mostly used under humidity environment outside the glove-box. Also, the as-printed absorbing layer before the post-annealing process is always wet. Thus, controlling the morphology and crystallization of perovskite thin-films in up-scaled deposition systems is difficult and strongly investigated by the researchers. In this work, we introduce an anti-solvent-free meniscus printing method in which, the absorbing perovskite film with optimal performance is achieved. To this end, we check the printing parameters to get to the optimized film characteristics. Also, a vacuum chamber (<100 Pa) is used for 30 s to remove the solvent... 

Thin-film solar cells based on hybrid organo-halide lead perovskites achieve over 22% power conversion efficiency (PCE). A photovoltaic technology at such high performance is no longer limited by efficiency. Instead, lifetime and reliability become the decisive criteria for commercialization. This requires a standardized and scalable architecture which does fulfill all requirements for larger area solution processing. One of the most highly demanded technologies is a low temperature and printable conductive ink to substitute evaporated metal electrodes for the top contact. Importantly, that electrode technology must have higher environmental stability than, for instance, an evaporated silver... 

Progress in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine necessitates the use of novel materials with promising bio-surface for biomedical applications. In this work, TixNy thin films are applied on biological TC4 substrates in a mixed atmosphere of Ar and N2 via magnetron sputtering system for the protection of TC4 alloy. The effects of N/Ti ratio on the phase structure, growth orientation, contact angle, and the mechanical and corrosion performances of thin films are discussed by implementation of composition-microstructure-property interrelationships. The phase structure of TixNy thin films is changed from amorphous-like to single phase Ti2N structure with increasing N/Ti ratio. In the... 

Nanocomposite thin film of N-doped ZnO-CuO was deposited on glass substrate using ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method. Zinc acetate, copper acetate and ammonium acetate with different molar ratios were dissolved in water and used as precursors. A crumpled-shape morphology consisting of nanometer-sized particles was observed with FESEM. The elemental composition was evaluated with EDX analysis and the presence of nitrogen, oxygen, copper and zinc was confirmed. XRD analysis revealed the presence of ZnO and CuO crystalline phases with crystallite size of about 18 nm. The prepared nanocomposites exhibited high photocatalytic activity in degradation of methyl orange under UV light irradiation. ©... 

The direct growth of self-supported metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) thin film can be considered as an effective strategy for fabrication of the advanced modified electrodes in sensors and biosensor applications. However, most of the fabricated MOFs-based sensors suffer from some drawbacks such as time consuming for synthesis of MOF and electrode making, need of a binder or an additive layer, need of expensive equipment and use of hazardous solvents. Here, a novel free-standing MOFs-based modified electrode was fabricated by the rapid direct growth of MOFs on the surface of the glassy carbon electrode (GCE). In this method, direct growth of MOFs was occurred by the formation of vertically... 

Ultrafiltration (UF) membranes were prepared from poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) as main polymer, poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) as additive, and 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvent using Design Expert software for designing the experiments. The membranes were characterized by SEM, contact angle measurement, and atomic force microscopy. The performance of UF membranes was evaluated by pure water flux (PWF) and blue indigo dye particle rejection. In addition, the molecular weight cutoff of UF membranes was determined by poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) rejection. The UF membranes were used as substrates for fabrication of polyamide thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The... 

Today, Li-ion batteries (LIBs) are the most common rechargeable batteries used in electronic devices. SnO2 with theoretical specific capacity of 782 mAh/g is among the best anode materials for LIBs. In this report, Threedimensional SnO2 nanowires (NWs) on carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film (SnO2 / CNT) is fabricated using a combination of vacuum filtration and thermal evaporation techniques. The resulting 3D heterostructure SnO2/CNT was characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This fabricated SnO2/CNT electrode has been tested as a flexible and binderfree anode for LIB, which exhibits high initial discharge/charge... 

CH3 NH3 PbI3 (MAPbI3) thin film solar cells, which are reported at laboratory efficiency scale of nearly 22%, are the subject of much attention by energy researchers due to their low cost buildup, acceptable efficiency, high absorption coefficient and diffusion length. The main purpose of this research is to simulate the structure of thin film perovskite solar cells through numerical simulation of SCAPS based on the empirical data for different hole transport layers. After simulating the initial structure of FTO/TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3/Spiro-OMeTAD solar cell, the hole transport layer Spiro-OMeTAD thickness was optimized on a small scale using modeling. The researchers also sought to reduce the... 

We investigate the underlying physics of degradation/recovery of a metal/n-CdTe Schottcky junction under reverse or forward bias stressing conditions. We used Sah-Noyce-Shockley (SNS) theory to investigate if the swept of Fermi level pinning at different levels (under forward/reverse bias) is the origin of change in current-voltage characteristics of the device. This theory is based on Shockley-Read-Hall recombination within the depletion width and takes into account the interface defect levels. Fermi Level Pinning theory was primarily introduced by Ponpon and developed to thin film solar cells by Dharmadasa's group in Sheffield University-UK. The theory suggests that Fermi level pinning at... 

The solar to electric power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has recently reached 22.7%, exceeding that of competing thin film photovoltaics and the market leader polycrystalline silicon. Further augmentation of the PCE toward the Shockley-Queisser limit of 33.5% warrants suppression of radiationless carrier recombination by judicious engineering of the interface between the light harvesting perovskite and the charge carrier extraction layers. Here, we introduce a mesoscopic oxide double layer as electron selective contact consisting of a scaffold of TiO2 nanoparticles covered by a thin film of SnO2, either in amorphous (a-SnO2), crystalline (c-SnO2), or...