Acquisition and Development of X-Ray Instrumentation for the Study of Nanostructured Materials and Thin Films

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9625965 Martinez-Miranda The properties of very thin films often deviate from the bulk due to confinement and surface energy effects. The deviation from bulk properties depends on parameters such as film thickness, strain and processing conditions and these variations can depend on the depth within the film. Many advances in thin film processes are the result of advances in the techniques used to characterize these materials. The development of high intensity x-ray sources has made possible in-house studies of aggregate samples, quasi- ordered materials, very small samples and thin films. Currently in the Materials and Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of Maryland there are a range of problems being studied which depend on the characterization of structure in the nanometer size scale. This award provides support for the purchase of an 18 kW rotating anode x-ray source and the construction of a small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) diffractometer. The two ports on the rotating anode source would be used for the small angle diffractometer and for a thin film four circle diffractometer already available in the Department. This equipment will allow us to perform small angle analysis of thin film and bulk morphology in the size range of 1-100 nm and in-plane and depth profile analysis of thin films. %%% The on-going research problems which can be addressed immediately by the use of the four circle diffractometer would include: thin films of liquid crystals, semiconducting multilayers, films of metal aggregates and disordered clusters, polymer nanofoam dielectric films, and reactive polymer blend interfaces. In addition to many of the systems listed above, the SAXS system could be used immediately to solve current research problems in area of: structure of metal aggregates and clusters, structure of highly branched dendrimer molecules and characterization of reactive polymer blends. All of these research areas are current projects in the Dep artment where the application of x-ray scattering techniques would have a dramatic and substantial impact on solving outstanding structural characterization and application problems in the fields of electronic devices, optical display devices and polymer blends. ***