39 research outputs found
Epitaxial strain adaption in chemically disordered FeRh thin films
Strain and strain adaption mechanisms in modern functional materials are of
crucial importance for their performance. Understanding these mechanisms will
advance innovative approaches for material properties engineering. Here we
study the strain adaption mechanism in a thin film model system as function of
epitaxial strain. Chemically disordered FeRh thin films are deposited on W-V
buffer layers, which allow for large variation of the preset lattice constants,
e.g. epitaxial boundary condition. It is shown by means of high resolution
X-ray reciprocal space maps and transmission electron microscopy that the
system reacts with a tilting mechanism of the structural units in order to
adapt to the lattice constants of the buffer layer. This response explained by
density functional theory calculations, which evidence an energetic minimum for
structures with a distortion of c/a =0.87. The experimentally observed tilting
mechanism is induced by this energy gain and allows the system to remain in the
most favorable structure. In general, it is shown that the use of epitaxial
model heterostructures consisting of alloy buffer layers of fully miscible
elements and the functional material of interest allows to study strain
adaption behaviors in great detail. This approach makes even small secondary
effects observable, such as the directional tilting of the structural domains
identified in the present case study
Long-Term Stable Adhesion for Conducting Polymers in Biomedical Applications: IrOx and Nanostructured Platinum Solve the Chronic Challenge
Conducting polymers (CPs) have frequently been described as outstanding coating materials for neural microelectrodes, providing significantly reduced impedance or
higher charge injection compared to pure metals. Usability has until now, however, been limited by poor adhesion of polymers like poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)
to metallic substrates, ultimately precluding long-term applications. The aim of this study was to overcome this weakness of CPs by introducing two novel adhesion improvement strategies that can easily be integrated with standard microelectrode fabrication processes. Iridium Oxide (IrOx) demonstrated exceptional stability for PEDOT coatings, resulting in polymer survival over 10 000 redox cycles and 110 days under accelerated aging conditions at 60 °C. Nanostructured Pt was furthermore introduced as a purely mechanical adhesion promoter providing 10-fold adhesion improvement compared to smooth Pt substrates by simply altering the morphology of Pt. This layer can be realized in a very simple process that is compatible with any electrode design, turning nanostructured Pt into a universal adhesion layer for CP coatings. By the introduction of these adhesion-promoting strategies, the weakness of CP-based neural probes can ultimately be eliminated and true long-term stable use of PEDOT on neural probes will be possible in future electrode generations
Structural characterisation of FeâOâ nanoparticles
The structure of nano-crystalline FeâOâ particles, synthesized using the microwave plasma technique, has been analysed using synchrotron based X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray powder diffraction, as well as transmission electron microscopy. Furthermore, magnetic properties, the crystal structure, and the microstructures are compared and the potential model character of the samples for structure simulations is discussed