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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 595 records · Page 33
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1984

Space-charge behavior of 'Thin-MOS' diodes with MBE-grown silicon films

Basic theoretical and experimental characteristics of a novel 'Thin-MOS' technology, which has promising aspects for integrated high-frequency devices up to several hundred gigahertz are presented. The operation of such devices depends on charge injection into undoped silicon layers of about 1000-A thickness, grown by molecular beam epitaxy on heavily doped substrates, and isolation by thermally grown oxides of about 100-A thickness. Capacitance-voltage characteristics measured at high and low frequencies agree well with theoretical ones derived from uni and ambipolar space-charge models. It is concluded that after oxidation the residual doping in the epilayer is less than approximately 10 to the 16th/cu cm and rises by 3 orders of magnitude at the substrate interface within less than 100 A and that interface states at the oxide interface can be kept low.

Lieneweg, U.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Thermally Assisted Adhesion Enhancement in High-Phosphorous Electroless Nickel Plating

High-phosphorus electroless nickel is a widely recognized protective plating for oilfield metallic parts subject to corrosion and wear. In the present investigation, thermally activated diffusion treatment was applied to enhance electroless nickel (10-13 wt.% P) plating adhesion on low-alloy steel (UNS G41400) and reduce the risks of spalling. High-phosphorus electroless nickel (10-13 wt.% P) was applied to a variety of UNS G41400 low-alloy steel test samples as per ASTM B733 that were subsequently heat-treated in air for four distinct temperatures, i.e., 510, 540, 570, and 600 °C for 2-10 h. Following post-plating diffusion heat treatments, the initial amorphous electroless nickel was replaced by Ni{sub 3}P precipitates dispersed in a crystalline nickel-rich phase, with an average hardness improvement from 500 to 700 HK. An increased atomic interdiffusion (from 400 to 3.5 µm) was observed at plating–substrate interfaces, resulting in enhanced adhesion and reduced susceptibility toward spalling. This improvement in adhesion was measured repeatedly through post-bending crack analyses and subsequently validated by interface microindentation. Along with diffusion across plating–substrate interface, nickel oxide formation on surface by oxidation was observed to grow at quasi-parabolic rate with no detrimental impact on spalling. In all cases, plating adhesion was improved by heat treatments due to the diffusion-controlled formation of a seemingly ductile layer.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Analysis of the energy distribution of interface traps related to tunnel oxide degradation using charge pumping techniques for 3D NAND flash applications

Graphical abstract: The degradation tendency extracted by CP technique was almost the same in both the bulk-type and TFT-type cells. - Highlights: • D{sub it} is directly investigated from bulk-type and TFT-type CTF memory. • Charge pumping technique was employed to analyze the D{sub it} information. • To apply the CP technique to monitor the reliability of the 3D NAND flash. - Abstract: The energy distribution and density of interface traps (D{sub it}) are directly investigated from bulk-type and thin-film transistor (TFT)-type charge trap flash memory cells with tunnel oxide degradation, under program/erase (P/E) cycling using a charge pumping (CP) technique, in view of application in a 3-demension stackable NAND flash memory cell. After P/E cycling in bulk-type devices, the interface trap density gradually increased from 1.55 × 10{sup 12} cm{sup −2} eV{sup −1} to 3.66 × 10{sup 13} cm{sup −2} eV{sup −1} due to tunnel oxide damage, which was consistent with the subthreshold swing and transconductance degradation after P/E cycling. Its distribution moved toward shallow energy levels with increasing cycling numbers, which coincided with the decay rate degradation with short-term retention time. The tendency extracted with the CP technique for D{sub it} of the TFT-type cells was similar to those of bulk-type cells.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Evaluation of a single cell and candidate materials with high water content hydrogen in a generic solid oxide fuel cell stack test fixture, Part II: materials and interface characterization

A generic solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) test fixture was developed to evaluate candidate materials under realistic conditions. A commerical 50 mm x 50 mm NiO-YSZ anode supported thin YSZ electrolyte cell with lanthanum strontium manganite (LSM) cathode was tested to evaluate the stability of candidate materials. The cell was tested in two stages at 800oC: stage I of low (~3% H2O) humidity and stage II of high (~30% H2O) humidity hydrogen fuel at constant voltage or constant current mode. Part I of the work was published earlier with information of the generic test fixture design, materials, cell performance, and optical post-mortem analysis. In part II, detailed microstructure and interfacial characterizations are reported regarding the SOFC candidate materials: (Mn,Co)-spinel conductive coating, alumina coating for sealing area, ferritic stainless steel interconnect, refractory sealing glass, and their interactions with each other. Overall, the (Mn,Co)-spinel coating was very effective in minimizing Cr migration. No Cr was identified in the cathode after 1720h at 800oC. Aluminization of metallic interconnect also proved to be chemically compatible with alkaline-earth silicate sealing glass. The details of interfacial reaction and microstructure development are discussed.

(Mn,Co)-spinel↗
DOE OSTI2016

High Performance Nano-Crystalline Oxide Fuel Cell Materials. Defects, Structures, Interfaces, Transport, and Electrochemistry

This project addresses fundamental materials challenges in solid oxide electrochemical cells, devices that have a broad range of important energy applications. Although nano-scale mixed ionically and electronically conducting (MIEC) materials provide an important opportunity to improve performance and reduce device operating temperature, durability issues threaten to limit their utility and have remained largely unexplored. Our work has focused on both (1) understanding the fundamental processes related to oxygen transport and surface-vapor reactions in nano-scale MIEC materials, and (2) determining and understanding the key factors that control their long-term stability. Furthermore, materials stability has been explored under the “extreme” conditions encountered in many solid oxide cell applications, i.e, very high or very low effective oxygen pressures, and high current density.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Helium trapping at erbium oxide precipitates in erbium hydride

The formation of He bubbles in erbium tritides is a significant process in the aging of these materials. Due to the long-standing uncertainty about the initial nucleation process of these bubbles, there is interest in mechanisms that can lead to the localization of He in erbium hydrides. Previous work has been unable to identify nucleation sites in homogeneous erbium hydride. This work builds on the experimental observation that erbium hydrides have nano- scale erbium oxide precipitates due to the high thermodynamic stability of erbium oxide and the ubiquitous presence of oxygen during materials processing. Fundamental DFT calculations indicate that the He is energetically favored in the oxide relative to the bulk hydride. Activation energies for the motion of He in the oxide and at the oxide-hydride interface indicate that trapping is kinetically feasible. A simple kinetic Monte Carlo model is developed that demonstrates the degree of trapping of He as a function of temperature and oxide fraction.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Monodispersed Zinc Oxide Nanoparticle-Dye Dyads and Triads

The overall energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells depends on the combined efficiencies of light absorption, charge separation and charge transport. Dye-sensitized solar cells are photovoltaic devices in which a molecular dye absorbs light and uses this energy to initiate charge separation. The most efficient dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) use nanocrystal titanium dioxide films to which are attached ruthenium complexes. Numerous studies have provided valuable insight into the dynamics of these and analogous photosystems, but the lack of site homogeneity in binding dye molecules to metal oxide films and nanocrystals (NCs) is a significant impediment to extracting fundamental details about the electron transfer across the interface. Although zinc oxide is emerging as a potential semiconducting component in DSSCs, there is less known about the factors controlling charge separation across the dye/ZnO interface. Zinc oxide crystallizes in the wurtzite lattice and has a band gap of 3.37 eV. One of the features that makes ZnO especially attractive is the remarkable ability to control the morphology of the films. Using solution deposition processes, one can prepare NCs, nanorods and nanowires having a variety of shapes and dimensions. This project solved problems associated with film heterogeneity through the use of dispersible sensitizer/ZnO NC ensembles. The overarching goal of this research was to study the relationship between structure, energetics and dynamics in a set of synthetically controlled donor-acceptor dyads and triads. These studies provided access to unprecedented understanding of the light absorption and charge transfer steps that lie at the heart of DSSCs, thus enabling significant future advances in cell efficiencies. The approach began with the construction of well-defined dye-NC dyads that were sufficiently dispersible to allow the use of state of the art pulsed laser spectroscopic and kinetic methods to understand the charge transfer events at a fundamental level. This was combined with the synthesis of a broad range of sensitizers that provide systematic variation of the energetics, excited state dynamics, structure and interfacial bonding. The key is that the monodisperse nature and high dispersibility of the ZnO NCs made these experiments reproducible; in essence, the measurements were on discrete molecular species rather than on the complicated mixtures that resulted from the typical fabrication of functional photovoltaic cells. The monodispersed nature of the NCs also allowed the use of quantum confinement to investigate the role of donor/acceptor energetic alignment in chemically identical systems. The results added significantly to our basic understanding of energy and charge transfer events at molecule-semiconductor interfaces and will help the R&D community realize zinc oxide's full potential in solar cell applications.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

EFFECT OF METALLIC INTERCONNECT THICKNESS ON ITS LONG-TERM PERFORMANCE IN SOFCS

At the operating environment of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), oxide scale will grow on the ferritic interconnect (IC) surface unavoidably and furfures induce growth stress in oxide scale and along the interface of the oxide scale and IC substrate. A combination of growth stress with thermal stresses may lead to scale delamination/buckling and eventual spallation during SOFC stack cooling, even leading to serious degradation of cell performance. In this paper, the effect of the ferritic IC thickness on the delamination/spallation of the oxide scale was investigated numerically. The predicted results show that the interfacial shear stresses increase with the growth of the oxide scale and also with the thickness of the ferritic substrate; i.e., the thick ferritic substrate can easily lead to scale delamination and spallation.

delamination and spallation↗
DOE OSTI2012

Structural properties of InN films grown on O-face ZnO(0001) by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

We study the impact of substrate temperature and layer thickness on the morphological and structural properties of InN films directly grown on O-face ZnO(0001) substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. With increasing substrate temperature, an interfacial reaction between InN and ZnO takes place that eventually results in the formation of cubic In{sub 2}O{sub 3} and voids. The properties of the InN films, however, are found to be unaffected by this reaction for substrate temperatures less than 550 deg. C. In fact, both the morphological and the structural quality of InN improve with increasing substrate temperature in the range from 350 to 500 deg. C. High quality films with low threading dislocation densities are demonstrated.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2011

Structural and electrical characterization of HBr/O{sub 2} plasma damage to Si substrate

Silicon substrate damage caused by HBr/O{sub 2} plasma exposure was investigated by spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), high-resolution Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The damage caused by H{sub 2}, Ar, and O{sub 2} plasma exposure was also compared to clarify the ion-species dependence. Although the damage basically consists of a surface oxidized layer and underlying dislocated Si, the damage structure strongly depends on the incident ion species, ion energy, and oxidation during air and plasma exposure. In the case of HBr/O{sub 2} plasma exposure, hydrogen generated the deep damaged layer ({approx}10 nm), whereas ion-enhanced diffusion of oxygen, supplied simultaneously by the plasma, caused the thick surface oxidation. In-line monitoring of damage thicknesses by SE, developed with an optimized optical model, showed that the SE can be used to precisely monitor damage thicknesses in mass production. Capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of a damaged layer were studied before and after diluted-HF (DHF) treatment. Results showed that a positive charge is generated at the surface oxide-dislocated Si interface and/or in the bulk oxide after plasma exposure. After DHF treatment, most of the positive charges were removed, while the thickness of the ''Si recess'' was increased by removing the thick surface oxidized layer. As both the Si recess and remaining dislocated Si, including positive charges, cause the degradation of electrical performance, precise monitoring of the surface structure and understanding its effect on device performance is indispensable for creating advanced devices.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations reaching the quantum limit in two-dimensional electron systems at SrTi⁢O 3 (111) interfaces

Transition metal oxides in the (111) orientation have been predicted to harbor topological phases and unconventional quantum states because of their hexagonal crystal symmetry and strong interactions between charge, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom. We report Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations into the quantum limit at magnetic fields up to 35 T in high-mobility (>20 000 c⁢m 2 V −1 s −1 ) two-dimensional electron liquids at (111)-oriented SrTi⁢O 3 interfaces with controllable carrier densities. Spin splitting is observed at low Landau levels, which is attributed to the interplay between the Zeeman splitting and Rashba spin-orbit coupling according to our theoretical modeling, yielding Landé factor 𝑔 = 0.29 and Rashba coefficient 𝛼 = 0.6 meV nm. Furthermore, at high magnetic field after the system reaches the lowest Landau level, the temperature dependence of the resistance shows a metallic to insulating state transition with the magnetoresistance changing significantly from a primarily quadratic to a large linear field dependence.

Magnetoresistance↗
DOE OSTI2011

Impact of post deposition annealing in the electrically active traps at the interface between Ge(001) substrates and LaGeO{sub x} films grown by molecular beam deposition

Changes in the electron trapping at the interface between Ge substrates and LaGeO{sub x} films grown by atomic O assisted molecular beam deposition are inferred upon post deposition annealing treatment on the as-deposited films from electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) spectroscopy and from the electrical response of Pt/LaGeO{sub x}/Ge metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. The improved electrical performance of the MOS capacitors upon annealing is consistent with the EDMR detected reduction of oxide defects which are associated with GeO species in the LaGeO{sub x} layer as evidenced by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1993

On-Chip p-MOSFET Dosimetry

On-chip p-FETs were developed to monitor the radiation dose of n-well CMOS ICs by monitoring threshold voltage shifts due to radiation induced oxide and interface charge.

FETs↗
NASA NTRS1979

Some TEM observations of Al2O3 scales formed on NiCrAl alloys

The microstructural development of Al2O3 scales on NiCrAl alloys has been examined by transmission electron microscopy. Voids have been observed within grains in scales formed on a pure NiCrAl alloy. Both voids and oxide grains grew measurably with oxidation time at 1100 C. The size and amount of porosity decreased towards the oxide-metal growth interface. It was postulated that the voids resulted from an excess number of oxygen vacancies near the oxide-metal interface. Short-circuit diffusion paths were discussed in reference to current growth stress models for oxide scales. Transient oxidations of pure, Y-doped, and Zr-doped NiCrAl was also examined. Oriented alpha-(Al,Cr)2O3 and Ni(Al,Cr)2O4 scales often coexisted in layered structures on all three alloys. Close-packed oxygen planes and directions in the corundum and spinel layers were parallel. The close relationships between oxide layers provided a gradual transition from initial transient scales to steady state Al2O3 growth.

Smialek, J.↗
DOE OSTI2013

Influence of plasma-based in-situ surface cleaning procedures on HfO{sub 2}/In{sub 0.53}Ga{sub 0.47}As gate stack properties

We report on the influence of variations in the process parameters of an in-situ surface cleaning procedure, consisting of alternating cycles of nitrogen plasma and trimethylaluminum dosing, on the interface trap density of highly scaled HfO{sub 2} gate dielectrics deposited on n-In{sub 0.53}Ga{sub 0.47}As by atomic layer deposition. We discuss the interface chemistry of stacks resulting from the pre-deposition exposure to nitrogen plasma/trimethylaluminum cycles. Measurements of interface trap densities, interface chemistry, and surface morphology show that variations in the cleaning process have a large effect on nucleation and surface coverage, which in turn are crucial for achieving low interface state densities.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Work function tuning at Au-HfO{sub 2} interfaces using organophosphonate monolayers

We show that introducing organophosphonate nanomolecular monolayers (NMLs) at Au-HfO{sub 2} interfaces shift the effective work function by 0.2 eV ≥ ΔΦ{sub eff} ≥ −0.6 eV, due to NML body and bonding dipoles. Electron spectroscopy of NML-Au, NML-HfO{sub 2,} and Au-NML-HfO{sub 2} structures indicate that the Au-NML bond strength is the major factor. Au-NML covalent bonding yields ΔΦ{sub eff} ∼ − 0.2 eV, while weak bonding yields ΔΦ{sub eff} ∼ 0.6 eV. In contrast, NMLs on HfO{sub 2} decrease Φ{sub eff} by ∼0.4 eV due to competing contributions from NML-HfO{sub 2} bonding strength and NML orientation. These findings are relevant for nanomolecularly tailoring the electronic properties of metal–ceramic interfaces for applications.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

On the Development of Order and Interfaces during the Growth of Ultrathin La 2 CuO 4 Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

While the atomic structure of interfaces in complex oxide heterostructures created by epitaxial growth has been investigated extensively, few studies have been conducted on how interfaces form and restructure at the initial stage of film growth. The dynamic aspects of the growth behavior can strongly influence the final interfacial atomic structure, which may lead to the emergence of interface-specific properties, such as the rise of interfacial superconductivity between certain Ruddlesden-Popper oxide materials. In this report, the structural development of La2CuO 4 thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a LaSrAlO 4 substrate is investigated by X-ray diffraction measurements with rapid scans over a volume of reciprocal space. This method provides far more detailed information on interface formation than traditional fixed-point measurements. The results show that the atomic structure of the interface becomes fully established after just a single unit cell of growth. Interestingly, restructuring continues to occur within the topmost half to one unit cell of the film during the deposition process. However, diffraction intensity oscillations from both reflection high-energy electron and X-ray measurements stabilize only after the growth of two unit cells, indicating that the growth front morphology continues to evolve until the start of the third unit cell. This multimodal investigation provides insights into the atomic processes taking place during layered oxide interface formation, including the dynamical rearrangement of LaO and CuO 2 layers. Such information is not only relevant to the engineering and optimization of functional layer structures but can also be critical for ultrathin films.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Atomic and electronic structures of lattice mismatched Cu 2 O/TiO 2 interfaces

Heterojunction interfaces between metal oxides are often highly lattice mismatched. The atomic and electronic structures of such interfaces, however, are not well understood. Here, we have synthesized Cu 2 O/TiO 2 heterojunction thin films with 13% lattice mismatch and studied the interface via experimental methods and large-scale density function theory calculations of supercells containing 1300 atoms. We find that an interface of epitaxial quality is formed via a coincidence site lattice of 8 Cu 2 O unit cells matching 9 TiO 2 unit cells. Calculations reveal the existence of a dislocation core of the O sublattices at the interface and a random arrangement of one layer of interfacial Cu atoms. The interfacial electronic structure is found to be mostly determined by the interfacial Cu distribution, rather than by the O dislocation core. The conduction band minimum and valence band maximum states are spatially separated, and there is no strongly localized state near the core.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗