TiC/TiN thin films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering on Si (100) substrates were investigated by transmission electron microscopy for microstructure and by deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) for diffusion barrier against copper. TiN thin films deposited on Si substrates at a substrate temperature of 600 °C were textured, and TiC thin films deposited at the same temperature were polycrystalline. TiC/TiN multilayer films also showed the same characteristics with the formation of an additional interaction layer. The diffusion barrier characteristics of the TiC/TiN/Si were determined by DLTS and the results showed that the films completely prevented diffusion of copper into Si.

Thin films of monoclinic nanostructured vanadium dioxide are notoriously difficult to produce in a selective manner. To date, post-annealing, after pulsed laser deposition (PLD), has been used to revert the crystal phase or to remove impurities, and non-glass substrates have been employed, thus reducing the efficacy of the transparency switching. Here, we overcome these limitations in PLD by optimizing a laser-ablation and deposition process through optical imaging of the laser-induced plasma. We report high quality monoclinic rutile-type vanadium dioxide (VO2) (M1) nanoparticles without post-annealing, and on a glass substrate. Our samples demonstrate a reversible metal-to-insulator transition at ∼43 °C, without any doping, paving the way to switchable transparency in optical materials at room temperature.

We report on a polarization mode dispersion (PMD) emulator with a fixed root-mean-square differential group delay (RMS-DGD) but varying second-order PMD (SO-PMD) using only a combination of polarization maintaining fibers and a polarization controller. The SO-PMD control mechanism is not completely in real time. Besides controlling the mean PMD values of the emulator, simultaneous adjustments in the maximum and minimum values of PMD statistics can be performed. We therefore illustrate irregular fluctuations that occur around the RMS-DGD due to SO-PMD. This novel design can be used to further show the impact of a high first-order PMD segment on the DGD and SO-PMD statistical distributions that might occur in an optical network system.

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