Indium tin oxide (ITO) films have been prepared by the magnetron sputtering technique from a target of a mixture of In2O3 and SnO2 in the proportion 9:1 by weight. By optimizing the deposition conditions it has been possible to produce highly transparent (transmission ∼90%) and conducting (resistivity ∼10−5 Ω cm) ITO films. A resistivity ∼10−4 Ω cm has been obtained for films of thickness ∼1000 Å at a comparatively low substrate temperature of 50 °C and without using oxygen in the sputtering chamber. To characterize the films, the following properties have been studied, viz., electrical conductivity, thermoelectric power, Hall effect, optical transmission, and band gap. The effect of annealing in air and vacuum on the properties of the films have also been studied.
The degradation of tin-doped indium-oxide (ITO) films in glow-discharge plasmas of hydrogen and argon have been investigated. Parameters which have been varied for the study include the temperature of ITO under ion bombardment, the rf power density, the time of exposure to plasma, and the gas flow rate. After bombardment, scanning electron micrograph observation, measurement of sheet resistance, transmittance and reflectance, and Auger analysis have been carried out to decide the extent of degradation. Magnetron-sputtered ITO films have been found to be more resistant to ion bombardment damage compared to electron-beam evaporated films. The degradation of ITO under the plasma of the reducing species such as hydrogen has been found to take place at lower temperature and power density compared to argon plasma.
Food adulteration is an alarming concern in developing countries causing an increased rate of cancer incidents. This study aims to address this concern by detecting adulteration in green vegetables. A facile green one-step and cost-effective strategy to synthesize carbon quantum dots derived from a herbal source has been utilized to design a fluorescence-based sensor for detecting malachite green (MG), a toxic carcinogenic dye, commonly used as an adulterant to give a fresh green look to green vegetables. The leaf-extract of Ocimum tenuiflorum has been used to synthesize highly photostable carbon dots for detecting MG with a limit of detection (LOD) as low as 18 nM. Further, this principle has been utilized to design a prototype calorimetric sensor. The mechanism of the interaction between malachite green and carbon dots has been probed using DFT by employing the SMD solvation model. In addition, CQDs also possess strong antioxidant activity and minimal cytotoxicity enabling their utilization in many biological and sensing applications. This shows the versatility of these easily scalable carbon dots.
Increasingly, two-dimensional (2D) materials are being investigated for their potential use as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) active substrates. Hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN), a layered 2D material analogous to graphene, is mostly used as a passivation layer/dielectric substrate for nanoelectronics application. We have investigated the SERS activity of few-layer hBN film synthesized on copper foil using atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition. We have drop casted the probe molecules onto the hBN substrate and measured the enhancement effect due to the substrate using a 532 nm excitation laser. We observed an enhancement of ≈103 for malachite green and ≈104 for methylene blue and rhodamine 6G dyes, respectively. The observed enhancement factors are consistent with the theoretically calculated interaction energies of MB > R6G > MG with a single layer of hBN. We also observed that the enhancement is independent of the film thickness and surface morphology. We demonstrate that the hBN films are highly stable, and even for older hBN films prepared 7 months earlier, we were able to achieve similar enhancements when compared to freshly prepared films. Our detailed results and analyses demonstrate the versatility and durability of hBN films for SERS applications.
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