A 3D carbon/ZnO nanomembrane foam anode with practical ZnO loading leads to high areal capacity and long term stability.

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In this paper, polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) films with and without plasma pretreatment were modified by atomic layer deposition (ALD) and plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (PA-ALD). It demonstrates that the Al2O3 films are successfully deposited onto the surface of PET films. The cracks formed on the deposited Al2O3 films in the ALD, plasma pretreated ALD, and PA-ALD were attributed to the energetic ion bombardment in plasmas. The surface wettability in terms of water contact angle shows that the deposited Al2O3 layer can enhance the wetting property of modified PET surface. Further characterizations of the Al2O3 films suggest that the elevated density of hydroxyl -OH group improve the initial growth of ALD deposition. Chemical composition of the Al2O3-coated PET film was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, which shows that the content of C 1s reduces with the growing of O 1s in the Al2O3-coated PET films, and the introduction of plasma in the ALD process helps the normal growth of Al2O3 on PET in PA-ALD.

Germanium-Tin (GeSn) alloys have attracted great amounts of attention as these group IV semiconductors present direct band-gap behavior with high Sn content and are compatible with current complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. In this work, three dimensional tubular GeSn/Ge micro-resonators with a diameter of around 7.3 μm were demonstrated by rolling up GeSn nanomembranes (NM) grown on a Ge-on-insulator wafer via molecular beam epitaxy. The microstructural properties of the resonators were carefully investigated and the strain distributions of the rolled-up GeSn/Ge microcavities along the radial direction were studied by utilizing micro-Raman spectroscopy with different excitation laser wavelengths. The values of the strains calculated from Raman shifts agree well with the theoretical prediction. Coupled with fiber tapers, as-fabricated devices present a high quality factor of up to 800 in the transmission spectral measurements. The micro-resonators fabricated via rolled-up nanotechnology and GeSn/Ge NMs in this work may have great potential in photonic micro- and nanodevices.

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In this study, TiO2 and TiO2-ZnO nanomembranes were fabricated by atomic layer deposition using the three-dimensionally porous template and their photocatalytic properties were investigated. The nanomembranes were firstly deposited onto the surface of polyurethane porous sponge templates (sacrificial templates), followed by a calcination at 500 or 800 °C. Three-dimensionally porous structures as a replica of the porous sponge templates were thus achieved. By a pulverizing process, the porous structures were broken into small pieces, which were then employed as photocatalyst. Experimental results show that the degree of crystallinity is raised by increasing of the nanomembrane thickness due to the increase of the grain size with minimizing the number of grain boundaries in the thicker nanomembrane, which is beneficial to enhance the photocatalysis efficiency. On the other hand, the photocatalytic activity can also be improved by TiO2-ZnO composite, due to lower electron-hole recombination possibility and better carrier conductivity.

In this review, the discussion emphasized on the growth mechanisms of atomic layer deposition which consists of a theoretical model and experimentally growth as well as the measurement testing as evidences. The deposition process description with some testing evidences can be used to facilitate in the effort to understand the basic concept of ALD growth mechanisms. Some metal oxides like Al2O3, HfO2, and TiO2 with these employed precursors are typically used for the detailed illustration during the reaction steps. Although the surface chemistry of ALD process has been well understood, systematic description which combine a theoretical and experimentally growth mechanism is still missing. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of ALD growth mechanisms and surface chemistry which eventually able to contribute on the thin film growth processing.