Development and properties of all-dielectric and metal-dielectric heterostructures at atomic scale

Heterostructures have increasingly attracted attention in recent times to enable various optoelectronic and photonic applications. In this Dissertation, atomic scale heterostructures of two technologically relevant oxides, such as, Al2O3 and TiO2 were developed by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) technology. Their growth, composition, dispersion relation, and optical bandgap were systematically studied by means of various state of the art characterization methods. The dispersion spectra and the indirect optical bandgap of the heterostructures depend on the ratio of the two oxides, while the bandgap is very sensitive to the thicknesses of the barrier and quantum well layers. A significant blue shift of the absorption edge has been obtained by decreasing the TiO2 (quantum well) thickness down to about 0.5 nm. This study unfolds the possibility of achieving quantizing effects using dielectric heterostructures enabled by the control of layer thickness and properties down to an atomic scale. Furthermore, a unique combination of metal-dielectric heterostructure using Ir and Al2O3 are introduced. Their structural-property relationships were determined by various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. Precisely tuning the ratio of the constituents provided by the ALD technology ensures the tailoring of the dispersion spectra along with a transition from effective dielectric to metallic heterostructures. Following this, the development of epsilon-near-zero metamaterials with tunable dielectric constants was explored by precisely varying the composition ratio of such heterostructures. The impact of such heterostructures in nonlinear optical processes, such as, second harmonic generation has also been examined. Altogether, this Dissertation enables a path towards atomic scale processing of tailored heterostructures demonstrating an extension of the material basis available for novel optical functionalities

Antireflection coating on PMMA substrates by atomic layer deposition

Antireflection coatings (ARC) are essential for various optical components including such made of plastics for high volume applications. However, precision coatings on plastics are rather challenging due to typically low adhesion of the coating to the substrate. In this work, optimization of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes towards conformal optical thin films of Al2O3, TiO2 and SiO2 on poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) has been carried out and a five-layer ARC is demonstrated. While the uncoated PMMA substrates have a reflectance of nearly 8% in the visible (VIS) spectral range, this is reduced below 1.2% for the spectral range of 420–670 nm by applying a double-side ARC. The total average reflectance is 0.7%. The optimized ALD coatings show a good adhesion to the PMMA substrates even after the climate test. Microscopic analysis on the cross-hatch areas on PMMA after the climate test indicates very good environmental stability of the ALD coatings. These results enable a possible route by ALD to deposit uniform, crack free, adhesive and environmentally durable thin film layers on sensitive thermoplastics like PMMA

Influence of substrate materials on nucleation and properties of iridium thin films grown by ALD

Ultra-thin metallic films are widely applied in optics and microelectronics. However, their properties differ significantly from the bulk material and depend on the substrate material. The nucleation, film growth, and layer properties of atomic layer deposited (ALD) iridium thin films are evaluated on silicon wafers, BK7, fused silica, SiO2 , TiO2 , Ta2O5 , Al2O3 , HfO2 , Ru, Cr, Mo, and graphite to understand the influence of various substrate materials. This comprehensive study was carried out using scanning electron and atomic force microscopy, X-ray reflectivity and diffraction, four-point probe resistivity and contact angle measurements, tape tests, and Auger electron spectroscopy. Within few ALD cycles, iridium islands occur on all substrates. Nevertheless, their size, shape, and distribution depend on the substrate. Ultra-thin (almost) closed Ir layers grow on a Ta2O5 seed layer after 100 cycles corresponding to about 5 nm film thickness. In contrast, the growth on Al2O3 and HfO2 is strongly inhibited. The iridium growth on silicon wafers is overall linear. On BK7, fused silica, SiO2 , TiO2 , Ta2O5 , Ru, Cr, and graphite, three different growth regimes are distinguishable. The surface free energy of the substrates correlates with their iridium nucleation delay. Our work, therefore, demonstrates that substrates can significantly tailor the properties of ultra-thin films

Enhanced Surface Second Harmonic Generation in Nanolaminates

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is a second-order nonlinear optical process that is not allowed in media with inversion sym-metry. However, due to the broken symmetry at the surface, surface SHG still occurs, but is generally small. We experimentally investi-gate the surface SHG in periodic stacks of alternating, subwave-length dielectric layers, which have a large number of surfaces, thus enhancing surface SHG considerably. To this end, multilayer stacks of SiO2/TiO2 were grown by Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (PEALD) on fused silica substrates. With this technique individual layers of a thickness of less than 2 nm can be fabricated. We experimentally show that under large angles of incidence (> 20 degrees) there is substantial SHG, well beyond the level, which can be observed from simple interfaces. We perform this experiment for samples with different periods and thickness of SiO2/TiO2 and our results are in agreement with theoretical calculations

Nonlinear polarization holography of nanoscale iridium films

The phasing problem of heterodyne-detected nonlinear spectroscopy states that the relative time delay between the exciting pulses and a local oscillator must be known with subcycle precision to separate absorptive and dispersive contributions. Here, a solution to this problem is presented which is the time-domain analogue of holographic interferometry, in which the comparison of two holograms reveals changes of an objects size and position with interferometric precision (i.e. to fractions of a wavelength of light). The introduced method, called nonlinear polarization holography, provides equivalent information as attosecond nonlinear polarization spectroscopy but has the advantage of being all-optical instead of using an attosecond streak camera. Nonlinear polarization holography is used here to retrieve the time-domain nonlinear response of a nanoscale iridium film to an ultrashort femtosecond pulse. Using density matrix calculations it is shown that the knowledge of the nonlinear response with subcycle precision allows to distinguish excitation and relaxation mechanisms of low-energetic electrons that depend on the nanoscale structure of the iridium film

Utilizing Reduced Graphene Oxide-Iron Nanoparticles Composite to Enhance and Accelerate the Removal of Methyl Blue Organic Dye in Wastewater

In this work, a nano-composite is used to remove dye from wastewater of different industries. For this purpose, thesynthesis of a magnetic 1:1 composite made of iron nanoparticles (NPs) using reduced graphene oxide is a novel techniqueand tested for Methyl Blue (MB) dye adsorption from aqueous solution. In this study Fe nanoparticles in reduced Graphenecomposite (FGOC) has been prepared using Graphene Oxide (GO). X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy and Ramanspectroscopy, are used to identify the structures. Many methods have been developed for MB removal in wastewater. One ofthe most popular methods is adsorption because it is simple and high-efficiency, and the adsorbent is crucial. It reached amaximum MB adsorption at pH 7. The kinetic study indicated that the adsorption of MB process was fitted well to thequasi-first-order and quasi-second-order kinetic models. The isotherm study revealed that the MB adsorption process obeyedthe Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption Isotherms models. The GO adding content and absorption conditions on the methylblue removal efficiencies were investigated. This adsorbent is easily recovered by an external magnetic field from thetreated wastewater and has high reusability

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| < 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Measurement of b jet shapes in proton-proton collisions at root s=5.02 TeV

We present the first study of charged-hadron production associated with jets originating from b quarks in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The data sample used in this study was collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 27.4 pb(-1). To characterize the jet substructure, the differential jet shapes, defined as the normalized transverse momentum distribution of charged hadrons as a function of angular distance from the jet axis, are measured for b jets. In addition to the jet shapes, the per-jet yields of charged particles associated with b jets are also quantified, again as a function of the angular distance with respect to the jet axis. Extracted jet shape and particle yield distributions for b jets are compared with results for inclusive jets, as well as with the predictions from the pythia and herwig++ event generators.Peer reviewe

An embedding technique to determine ττ backgrounds in proton-proton collision data

An embedding technique is presented to estimate standard model tau tau backgrounds from data with minimal simulation input. In the data, the muons are removed from reconstructed mu mu events and replaced with simulated tau leptons with the same kinematic properties. In this way, a set of hybrid events is obtained that does not rely on simulation except for the decay of the tau leptons. The challenges in describing the underlying event or the production of associated jets in the simulation are avoided. The technique described in this paper was developed for CMS. Its validation and the inherent uncertainties are also discussed. The demonstration of the performance of the technique is based on a sample of proton-proton collisions collected by CMS in 2017 at root s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb(-1).Peer reviewe