Materials characterisation and software tools as key enablers in Industry 5.0 and wider acceptance of new methods and products

Recently, the NMBP-35 Horizon 2020 projects -NanoMECommons, CHARISMA, and Easi-stress -organised a collaborative workshop to increase awareness of their contributions to the industry "commons" in terms of characterisation and digital transformation. They have established interoperability standards for knowledge management in characterisation and introduced new solutions for materials testing, aided by the standardisation of faster and more accurate assessment methods. The lessons learned from these projects and the discussions during the joint workshop emphasised the impact of recent developments and emerging needs in the field of characterisation. Specifically, the focus was on enhancing data quality through harmonisation and stand-ardisation, as well as making advanced technologies and instruments accessible to a broader community with the goal of fostering increased trust in new products and a more skilled society. Experts also highlighted how characterisation and the corresponding experimental data can drive future innovation agendas towards tech-nological breakthroughs. The focus of the discussion revolved around the characterisation and standardisation processes, along with the collection of modelling and characterisation tools, as well as protocols for data ex-change. The broader context of materials characterisation and modelling within the materials community was explored, drawing insights from the Materials 2030 Roadmap and the experiences gained from NMBP-35 pro-jects. This whitepaper has the objective of addressing common challenges encountered by the materials com-munity, illuminating emerging trends and evolving techniques, and presenting the industry's perspective on emerging requirements and past success stories. It accomplishes this by providing specific examples and high-lighting how these experiences can create fresh opportunities and strategies for newcomers entering the market. These advancements are anticipated to facilitate a more efficient transition from Industry 4.0 to 5.0 during the industrial revolution

Analyse structurale de couches minces de silice amorphe pulvérisée : une étude par spectroscopie Raman

International audienceIn this work, a structural characterization of sputtered silica films was carried out using Raman spectroscopy. Due to the low cross-section and the thinness of the silica layer, its Raman signature is dwarfed by that of the glass substrate and is therefore difficult to extract. Overcoming these limitations represents an experimental challenge and requires the development of specific analysis strategies. For this purpose, an integrated approach for extracting and interpreting the Raman signature of amorphous silica films deposited on a soda-lime glass substrate was developed, based on three distinct methods: delamination of the sputtered silica film, creating a reflective mask substrate by depositing a metallic silver coating on the glass substrate and applying a numerical signal analysis (Non-negative matrix factorization) to the multidimensional dataset acquired through depth profile acquisitions on silica films directly deposited on a glass substrate. The reliability of each proposed method is demonstrated for the extraction of the silica thin film Raman spectra. These various methods can be easily extended to other materials, either crystalline or amorphous. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and the limits of each approach.Applying this methodology allowed us to highlight the structural differences between sputtered silica thin film and bulk vitreous silica glass (v-SiO2). Magnetron sputtering film deposition is shown to form dense silica glass layers, with an estimated densification ratio, measured by x-ray reflectivity, equal to 7%. At the medium distance range, the network connectivity change in v-SiO2 is expressed by an unusually high population of three-membered rings leading to a more compact structure. The short-range order transformation was also studied by deriving the intertetrahedral angle decrease. The present results could be a step towards advanced investigation to gain insights into the structure of films at the atomic level