A spiraled niobium tin superconductive ribbon

Copper film is vapor-deposited on clean ribbon and sprayed with photosensitive etch-resistant material. Photographic film masks are placed on ribbon and exposed to ultraviolet light. Etchant removes copper and exposure to oxidizing atmosphere forms niobium oxide. Photosensitive material is removed and ribbon is immersed in molten temperatures

Fatigue Crack Propagation Evaluated by Electric Resistance and Ultrasonics in Copper Film Bonded to Base Metal with Resin

As model specimens of surface film-bonded materials, pure copper films with a thickness of 100μm were bonded to the surface of steel base with epoxy resin, where the tensile residual stress was measured by an X-ray on the surface copper film. The distribution of initial electric resistance was measured on both copper film and base specimen by a direct current potential drop technique. As a result, there was a good agreement between the measured and theoretical values. From the fatigue testing results, it was shown that the measured electric resistance increased with the fatigue crack length on the copper film, which was almost equal to the theoretical value calculated for a central slit in a plate with finite width. This was probably because the fatigue crack was opened due to the tensile residual stress on the film even under unloading condition. In addition, the internal crack length during fatigue was examined by ultrasonic testing for the film-bonded specimen. As a result, there was a difference in the fatigue crack length between the surface copper film and the inner base

Effects on LDEF exposed copper film and bulk

Two forms of copper were exposed to the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) Mission 1 environment: a copper film, initially 74.2 plus or minus 1.1 nm thick sputter coated on a fused silica flat and a bulk piece of oxygen-free, high conductivity (OFHC) copper. The optical density of the copper film changed from 1.33 to 0.70 where exposed, and the film thickness increased to 106.7 plus or minus 0.5 nm where exposed. The exposed area appears purple by reflection and green by transmission for the thin film and maroon color for the bulk copper piece. The exposed areas increased in thickness, but only increase in the thickness of the thin film sample could be readily measured. The increase in film thickness is consistent with the density changes occurring during conversion of copper to an oxide. However, we have not been able to confirm appreciable conversion to an oxide by x-ray diffraction studies. We have not yet subjected the sample to e-beams or more abusive investigations out of concern that the film might be modified

Impact of the Casimir-Polder Potential and Johnson Noise on Bose-Einstein Condensate Stability near Surfaces

We investigate the stability of magnetically trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates and thermal clouds near the transition temperature at small distances 0.5 microns < d < 10 microns from a microfabricated silicon chip. For a 2 microns thick copper film the trap lifetime is limited by Johnson-noise induced currents and falls below 1 s at a distance of 4 microns. A dielectric surface does not adversely affect the sample until the attractive Casimir-Polder potential significantly reduces the trap depth.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, and submitted to Physical Review Letter

Study on the performance deterioration of flexible UWB antenna

A flexible transparent film uwb antenna for curved surfaces has been designed and developed for wireless communications. The antenna has demonstrated good performance over the entire UWB bandwidth. It can be mounted on any conformal shape by virtue of the film properties of both the antenna as well as the substrate. The radiator and ground are both designed using AgHT-8 while the substrate is of a polymer. The antenna is shown to be able to maintain its performance below the 10dB level throughout the entire UWB bandwidth of 7.5GHz i.e from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz as it is flexed through various radius of curvature thus providing an insight into how to overcome performance deterioration in wearable antennas

β\beta-NMR of Isolated 8^{8}Li+^{+} Implanted into a Thin Copper Film

Depth-controlled $\beta$-NMR was used to study highly spin-polarized $^8$Li in a Cu film of thickness 100 nm deposited onto a MgO substrate. The positive Knight Shifts and spin relaxation data show that $^8$Li occupies two sites at low temperatures, assigned to be the substitutional ($S$) and octahedral ($O$) interstitial sites. Between 50 to 100 K, there is a site change from $O$ to $S$. The temperature dependence of the Knight shifts and spin-lattice relaxation rates at high temperatures, i.e. when all the Li are in the $S$ site, is consistent with the Korringa Law for a simple metal.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Synthesis of large-area and aligned copper oxide nanowires from copper thin film on silicon substrate

Large-area and aligned copper oxide nanowires have been synthesized by thermal annealing of copper thin films deposited onto silicon substrate. The effects of the film deposition method, annealing temperature, film thickness, annealing gas, and patterning by photolithography are systematically investigated. Long and aligned nanowires can only be formed within a narrow temperature range from 400 to 500°C. Electroplated copper film is favourable for the nanowire growth, compared to that deposited by thermal evaporation. Annealing copper thin film in static air produces large-area, uniform, but not well vertically aligned nanowires along the thin film surface. Annealing copper thin film under a N2/O2 gas flow generates vertically aligned, but not very uniform nanowires on large areas. Patterning copper thin film by photolithography helps to synthesize large-area, uniform, and vertically aligned nanowires along the film surface. The copper thin film is converted into bicrystal CuO nanowires, Cu2O film, and also perhaps some CuO film after the thermal treatment in static air. Only CuO in the form of bicrystal nanowires and thin film is observed after the copper thin film is annealed under a N2/O2 gas flow

Fabrication of hydrophobic inorganic coatings on natural lotus leaves for nanoimprint stamps

Hydrophobic inorganic films were obtained by direct deposition of copper or silicon onto natural lotus leaves by ion beam sputtering deposition technique. Scanning electron microscopy observations showed a lotus-leaf-like surface structure of the deposited inorganic films. Hydrophobic nature of the inorganic films on lotus leaves had been improved compared to the inorganic films deposited on flat silicon substrates. Water contact angles measured on the lotus-leaf-like copper and silicon films were 136.3 \pm 8{\deg} and 117.8 \pm 4.4{\deg}, respectively. The hydrophobic lotus-leaf-like inorganic films had been repeated used as nanoimprint stamps. Negative structures of lotus-leaf-like inorganic films were obtained on the polystyrene resist layers.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Adhesion of sputtered copper to plasma-treated polyimide substrates

We have studied the adhesion of a sputtered copper film (thickness 5000 Angstroms) to flexible polyimide substrates between 1 mil and 5 mil thick. The polyimide types include Kapton (based on the monomers of pyromellitic dianhydride and oxydialine, i.e., PMDA-ODA) and Upilex (based on the bi-phenyl tetracarboxylic dianhydride monomer). (A. S. Wood, 1988) For each of these polyimides, a clear difference in adhesion is observed when the polymer surface has been treated with a simple AC nitrogen glow discharge. We used a tape test to estimate the strength of the adhesion bond. The difference in adhesion only becomes apparent after the film and substrate have been subjected to either boiling water or steam for 30 minutes or more; the difference becomes quite clear after two hours. After two hours, about 100% of the copper film fails the adhesion tape test for an untreated polyimide surface; for a plasma modified surface, less than 1% of the copper film fails the tape test. In this thesis, we present experimental data on the effects of moisture, cleaning procedures, and plasma surface modification in copper - polyimide adhesion. A crude model of the AC discharge plasma is discussed