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Item Open Access Genetisch modifizierte Biotemplate zur Erzeugung von Zr-basierten Nanomaterialien(2019) Eisele, Rahel; Bill, Joachim (Prof. Dr.)In Biomineralisationsprozessen aus der belebten Natur scheiden sich anorganische Materialien auf organischen Templaten (Biomakromoleküle) ab. Funktionelle Gruppen der Makromoleküle steuern dabei die Abscheidung aus einer wässrigen Lösung sowie die Strukturierung des anorganischen Materials. Dabei sind spezifische Wechselwirkungen zwischen dem organischen Templat und dem anorganischen Material von Bedeutung. Die Materialbildung findet unter Umgebungsbedingungen in wässrigen Systemen statt. Für technisch interessante Materialien wie Zirkoniumdioxid (ZrO2) stellt die energieeffiziente Herstellung präziser Nanostrukturen eine technische Herausforderung dar. Daher wurden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit die Prinzipien der Biomineralisation auf die Herstellung von Zirkonium-basiertem Material (ZrbM) übertragen. Hierzu gehörte die Materialbildung durch Mineralisation aus einer ZrOCl2-Lösung sowie eine gezielte Mineralisation auf bioorganischen M13-Bakteriophagentemplaten. Um die „biologische Spezifität“ in Biomineralisationsprozessen auf die Bildung von ZrbM zu übertragen, wurden Peptide mittels Phagen-Display identifiziert, die spezifisch an ZrO2 binden. Mittels genetischer Modifikation wurden diese ZrO2 Bindepeptide auf der Phagenoberfläche präsentiert. Hierdurch wurde eine hohe Bindepeptiddichte und damit viele Interaktionspunkte zum anorganischen Material erzielt. Bevor der Einfluss dieser Bindepeptide auf die Mineralisation von ZrbM untersucht werden konnte, wurde zunächst der Partikelbildungs- und Partikelwachstumsprozess von ZrbM in einer ZrOCl2-Lösung und einem Ethanol-Wasser Lösungsmittelgemisch bei verschiedenen System- und Prozessparametern beschrieben. Auf Grundlage dieser Ergebnisse wurde eine Mineralisationslösung etabliert mit der der Einfluss der Bindepeptide - präsentiert auf der Phagenoberfläche - auf die Mineralisation von ZrbM untersucht werden konnte. Die Bindepeptide zeigten einen deutlichen Einfluss auf die Mineralisation von ZrbM. Im Vergleich zu Bakteriophagen ohne Bindepeptid wurde mit den genetisch modifizierten Bakteriophagen eine deutlich höhere Abscheiderate erzielt. Dieser Einfluss der Bindepeptide wurde auf Hydroxygruppen in Serineinheiten zurückgeführt. Diese führen zum einen zu einer starken Anziehung von molekularen Zr-Spezies an das Biotemplat. Zum anderen induzieren die Hydroxygruppen die heterogene Keimbildung von ZrbM durch Kondensationsreaktionen zwischen dem Biotemplat und molekularen Zr-Spezies. Somit ist es nun möglich genetisch kontrolliert Zr-basierte Nanomaterialien zu mineralisieren. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gelang es nicht nur einzelne Phagen zu mineralisieren, sondern auch dünne homogene Schichten aus ZrbM. Diese ZrbM-Schichten wurden im letzten Teil dieser Arbeit vergleichend zu Phagenschichten und SiO2-Schichten auf die Adhäsion von Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) getestet. S. aureus ist ein pathogenes Bakterium, welches zur Bildung von Biofilmen, zum Beispiel auf Implantaten, und dadurch zu einem Implantatverlust bis hin zu lebensbedrohlichen Komplikationen führen kann. Die Biofilmbildung kann effektiv unterbunden werden, indem die Bakterienadhäsion auf Oberflächen verhindert wird. Daher wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit untersucht, ob bestimmte chemische Oberflächen, das heißt bestimmte Materialien oder auch bestimmte funktionelle Gruppen, die Bakterienadhäsion unterdrücken können. Die Untersuchung der Bakterienadhäsion auf den verschiedenen Oberflächen ergab, dass auf der Phagenschicht im Vergleich zur SiO2-Schicht und einer Schicht aus ZrbM eine sehr geringe Bakterienadhäsion vorlag. Untersuchungen verschiedener Einflussfaktoren auf die Bakterienadhäsion zeigten, dass die Bakterienadhäsion an der SiO2-Schicht und der ZrbM-Schicht durch die Oberflächenrauigkeit, die Hydrophobizität und die Oberflächenladung beeinflusst werden kann. Bei der Phagenschicht korrelierten weder die Oberflächenladung, noch die Oberflächenrauigkeit und die Hydrophobizität im Vergleich zu den anorganischen Materialoberflächen mit der Bakterienadhäsion. Dies ließ darauf schließen, dass die geringe Bakterienadhäsion auf der Phagenschicht auf die biochemische Zusammensetzung der Hüllproteine, vor allem auf die Abwesenheit spezifischer Bindedomänen (Ligand-Rezeptor-Wechselwirkungen), zurückzuführen ist.Item Open Access Interaction of carbon and nitrogen in iron(Stuttgart : Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme (ehemals Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung), 2016) Göhring, Holger; Mittemeijer, Eric Jan (Prof. Dr. Ir.)Item Open Access Grain growth and texture evolution in copper thin films(2010) Sonnweber-Ribic, Petra; Arzt, Eduard (Prof. Dr. phil)An improved basic understanding of mechanisms causing grain growth and texture evolution in Cu thin films contains the potential to improve performance and reliability of components and devices. In this work, the influence of film thickness, strain and temperature on grain growth and texture evolution in Cu thin films was investigated. By varying the parameters, information about the underlying mechanisms were revealed. The 0.5 to 10 micrometer thick Cu films were deposited on 125 micrometer thick polyimide substrates (Kapton®, DuPont) using a UHV magnetron sputtering system. For detailed observation of grain growth and texture evolution an EBSD-based in situ testing appliance was constructed. This system allowed the simultaneous observation of grain growth and texture evolution, giving new insight into growth kinetics and details of grain growth. In a first step, Cu thin films of thicknesses in between 0.5 and 10 micrometer were deposited on polymer substrates and annealed at 330°C for 30 min. Their resulting texture and microstructure were investigated by EBSD. A texture transition from (111) to (100) was observed at film thicknesses between 3 and 5 micrometer. The experimental findings were explained by the texture evolution model of Thompson and Carel. A significant observation which cannot be explained by a purely energetic argument is the broad texture transition. In order to get more information about the critical role of strain energy, uniaxial tensile tests were carried out on 3 micrometer thick films. In contrast to theoretical predictions, various tensile tests revealed no influence of strain on grain growth behaviour. Neither at room temperature nor at elevated temperatures, further (100) grain growth was observed. In a next step, the abnormal growth of individual (100) oriented grains was recorded for more than 24 hours at temperatures between 90 and 118°C. Annealing was carried out inside a Leo 1530-VP SEM equipped with a heating facility. Detailed analysis of grain growth and estimates of the possibly acting driving forces indicated that the reduction of dislocation density played an important role for abnormal grain growth. A further hint for the critical importance of defect density was given by the HWHM of the (100) texture fraction. Nevertheless, it was not clear why this driving force favours the growth of (100) oriented grains. A possible answer could be given by the strain energy release maximization (SERM) model developed by Lee. In addition, when analysing the activation energy for grain growth, they were found to possess a higher grain boundary mobility, supporting the preferred growth of (100) oriented grains. A new texture map, considering dislocation density as driving force, was constructed. Assuming dislocation density to play a significant role for grain growth and texture evolution in Cu thin films, the influence of deposition parameters is pointed out.Item Open Access Deposition of metal oxide thin films from solutions containing organic additives(2007) Lipowsky, Peter; Aldinger, Fritz (Prof. Dr.)In bio-inspired materials synthesis the principles of biomineralization are employed for the fabrication of materials with favourable functional properties at near-ambient temperature and with little expenditure: Organic templates direct the formation of inorganic matter. In aqueous solution, zinc compounds with manifold morphologies are produced by thermal hydrolysis of zinc nitrate in the presence of biomolecules like amino acids and dipeptides. In methanol, ZnO films are deposited by hydrolysis of zinc acetate in the presence of polymers like polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and polyethylene glycol. With PVP, particularly smooth, uniform and stable films are fabricated. Their thickness is determined by the deposition time and the polymer concentration. Various microscopic and spectroscopic measurements prove that the films consist of textured nanocrystalline zinc oxide. Selected properties of the films, such as their photoluminescence, are investigated. Film deposition is possible on substrates with organic coatings bearing certain functional groups. Patterned films can be deposited after local decomposition of the organic coating by UV light. The mechanism of film formation is treated in detail. Like in biomineralization, an amorphous transient state of matter occurs before crystallization. This state succumbs to ZnO nanocrystals, which either aggregate in solution or adsorb to the substrate. It is demonstrated in what way the additive controls the reaction. Sulfonate-modified polystyrene beads are coated with zinc oxide and used as sacrificial templates for the fabrication of zinc oxide hollow spheres. Laminates of alternating layers of zinc oxide and poly(amino acids) are deposited and exhibit an improved mechanical performance compared to the monolithic zinc oxide.Item Open Access Aluminum-induced crystallization of semiconductor thin films(2015) Qu, Fei; Schmitz, Guido (Prof. Dr.)Thin film materials of the semiconductors, such as silicon (Si), germanium (Ge) or their alloys, are turning into the most promising functional materials in the energy technology. However, the morphologies of these semiconductor thin films must be varied to be suitable for the different applications, e.g. a large-grained layer as the seed layer of thin film solar cells, a porous structure for anode materials of high energy rechargeable lithium (Li) ion batteries. Due to the collective interdiffusion process during the aluminum (Al)-induced crystallization, in this thesis, the suitable morphologies are achieved for the corresponding applications under the different fabrication conditions. A large-grained Si layer can be formed by the crystallization of Si in a porous Al layer, which is obtained by applying a bias voltage. Since the Al grain boundaries are contaminated by e.g. oxygen (O), the diffusion of Si in the Al grain boundaries is retarded. It can lead to a reduction of the nucleation density of Si. At a certain high temperature, a collective diffusion process of Si in Al is activated. Consequently, a large-grained Si layer with (100) texture can be formed. By purposely interrupting the annealing of nanocrystalline Al/amorphous Si (a-Si) bilayers, a porous structure of the crystallized Si can be developed due to the incomplete intermixing of Si and Al. Due to the different dominant diffusion processes of Si in Al at the different annealing temperatures, the most Si diffuses along the different paths in the Al layer, such as triple junction, grain boundary and Al bulk. Therefore, it can develop the different morphologies of the porous Si layers after the selectively etching of Al. By introducing an amorphous Ge interlayer between the crystalline Al and amorphous Si layer, the Al grain boundaries are not essential for the crystallization of the amorphous Si in contrast to the case in Al/Si bilayer system. Si crystallizes continuously on the pre-crystallized Ge seeds which form initially at the original interface of crystalline Al and amorphous Ge. The thermodynamic models to interpret the fundamentals of these different crystallization behaviors of Si are established based on the change of the interface energy between the different phases of the whole system during the crystallization. Using the effective diffusivity, the dominant diffusion process of Si in Al can be investigated to explore the morphological dependence of the crystallized Si layer on the annealing conditions.Item Open Access Template controlled mineralization of functional ZnO thin films(2017) Blumenstein, Nina; Bill, Joachim (Prof. Dr.)In this thesis, the influence of different organic templates on the bioinspired deposition of ZnO thin films is investigated. Depending on the polarity of the templates, the growth and the properties of the films can be influenced. On a non-polar template, film growth is inhibited whereas homogeneous films grow on polar templates. Additionally, it was shown that on a template with high polarity a crystallographic texture is observed. This leads to a macroscopically measurable piezoelectric response of these samples. In the last part of this work, the incorporation of Al, Ga and In into the ZnO films was investigated. Measurements showed a blue shift of the UV photoluminescence emission and an improved electrical conductivity with increasing doping content.Item Open Access Microstructural changes and intermetallic compound formation in metallic bilayers(Stuttgart : Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme (ehemals Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung), 2016) Rossi, Paul J.; Mittemeijer, Eric Jan (Prof. Dr. Ir.)This thesis investigates interdiffusion and intermetallic compound (IMC) formation, as well as their effects on the microstructure, in metallic thin-film bilayers. The investigation focuses on bilayers based on the Ag-Sn and Ag-In binary systems, which are technologically important as basis for lead free solders. Due to the enhanced diffusional mechanisms in these systems, diffusion occurs readily even at room and low temperatures. The proceeding interdiffusion eventually leads to IMC formation in the bilayers, allowing for the investigation of the kinetics of IMC formation and the associated microstructural changes at room and low temperatures. The combination of the properties special to thin films with the diffusional mechanisms in the binary Ag-Sn and Ag-In systems leads to interesting effects, such as the dependence of IMC formation on the stacking sequence in the bilayers. The obtained experimental results for both systems could be explained using thermodynamic and kinetic models. Experimental characterization of the bilayers mainly relied on X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron microscopy. In order to investigate the effect of the deposition process on IMC formation and the microstructure of the bilayers, different physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques, especially thermal evaporation and magnetron sputtering, were used for the preparation of the bilayers. During investigation of the Ag-Sn system it was found that ambiguity exists among the published crystal structures of the Ag3Sn IMC. Therefore, the crystal structure of Ag3Sn has been reinvestigated using high-resolution XRD in connection with Rietveld refinements.Item Open Access The strength limits of ultra-thin copper films(2007) Wiederhirn, Guillaume; Arzt, Eduard (Prof. Dr.)Elucidating size effects in ultra-thin films is essential to ensure the performance and reliability of MEMS and electronic devices. In this dissertation, the influence of a capping layer on the mechanical behavior of copper (Cu) films was analyzed. Passivation is expected to shut down surface diffusion and thus to alter the contributions of dislocation- and diffusion-based plasticity in thin films. Experiments were carried out on 25 nm to 2 µm thick Cu films magnetron-sputtered onto amorphous-silicon nitride coated silicon (111) substrates. These films were capped with 10 nm of aluminum oxide or silicon nitride passivation without breaking vacuum either directly after Cu deposition or after a 500 °C anneal. The evolution of thermal stresses in these films was investigated mainly by the substrate curvature method betweeen -160 °C and 500 °C. Negligible differences were detected for the silicon nitride vs. the aluminum oxide passivated Cu films. The processing parameters associated with the passivation deposition also had no noticeable effect on the stress-temperature behavior of the Cu. However, the thermomechanical behavior of passivated Cu films strongly depended on the Cu film thickness. For films in the micrometer range, the influence of the passivation layer was not significant, which suggests that the Cu deformed mainly by dislocation plasticity. However, diffusional creep plays an increasing role with decreasing film thickness since it becomes increasingly difficult to nucleate dislocations in smaller grains. Size effects were investigated by plotting the stress at room temperature after thermal cycling as a function of the inverse film thickness. Between 2 µm and 200 nm, the room temperature stress was inversely proportional to the film thickness. The passivation exerted a strong effect on Cu films thinner than 100 nm by effectively shutting down surface diffusion mechanisms. Since dislocation processes were also shut off in these ultra-thin films, they exhibited purely elastic behavior in the measured temperature range. Their lack of plasticity was confirmed by in-situ TEM analysis, which revealed the presence of sessile parallel glide dislocations during thermal cycling. The stress plateau reported for films thinner than 100 nm was attributed to the fact that the thermal strain applied was insufficient to induce yielding. The highest stress value of 1.7 GPa measured at -150 °C is therefore a lower limit for the actual flow stress since even at this high stress the films remained elastic.Item Open Access Extracting thermodynamic information from local composition fluctuations in solids : extended theory and its application to simulated and experimental atom probe data(2024) Zheng, Jianshu; Schmitz, Guido (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.)In case of liquids, thermodynamic fluctuation theory has been applied for decades to obtain direct thermodynamic information (e.g. miscibility gap, mixing/demixing tendencies, critical solution temperature) from local composition fluctuations. Recently, this theory has been extended to solids by introducing an additional elastic work term between the evaluated sub-system and the entire system, which does not arise in liquids. This extended theory has been verified via atomistic simulations in an exemplary Cu-Ni embedded-atom system using Monte Carlo simulations at a fixed temperature over the entire composition range. Composition fluctuations in the system that are represented by the relative variance of the composition histogram are tracked in various-sized subvolumes over time, revealing a systematic dependence on the size of the evaluation volume due to interface effects. Nonetheless, these surface effects can be excluded by extrapolation to an infinitely large subvolume, leading to perfect agreement with the prediction by the extended theory. Thus, the recovery of the Gibbs free energy of mixing from evaluation of the fluctuations is possible also in the case of solids. Atom Probe Tomography (APT) delivers combined high-resolution chemical and sub nanometric three-dimensional (3D) spatial information, and is therefore the perfect technique to determine local composition fluctuations by using spatial frequency distribution analysis in practical applications. In this work, the applicability of the extended theory is tested on the Cu-Ni alloy and ionic CuO systems via frequency distribution analysis on simulated and experimental atom probe data, and eventually compared to available phase diagram data, thereby proving the validity of extracting the Gibbs free energy from local composition fluctuations in solids. In the first part of this work, the spatial frequency distribution analysis is applied to simulated crystals of long-range ordered L12 and monoclinic structures numerically modeled disregarding thermodynamic interaction between atoms. The relative variance displays an evaluation size dependence, but goes to zero (i.e. no composition fluctuations) if extrapolated to sufficiently large evaluation size. This result meets the expectation as no composition fluctuations should be found in perfectly ordered materials. In the second part, this approach is applied to simulated alloys including thermodynamic interactions. Cu-Ni alloys of various compositions are firstly equilibrated using a Monte Carlo simulation with an embedded-atom potential. Afterwards, the alloys are numerically field-evaporated by the evaporation simulation package TAPSim and the 3D coordinates of the field-evaporated sample are recovered through the usual reconstruction algorithm. Throughout this process, two practical considerations related to the atom probe technique have been effectively addressed: i) The newly developed model tackles the challenges associated with the limited detection efficiency and allows the reconstruction of the relative variance for the bulk system from limited atom probe data scaled by detection efficiency; ii) An additional correction term which is proportional to the evaluation size and magnitude of composition inhomogeneity is introduced. It enables the separation of thermodynamic fluctuations from artificial composition variations inherent in the experimental method based on their different size dependence, so that the extrapolation still recovers the intrinsic thermodynamic composition fluctuations. In the third part, this approach is finally applied to experimental atom probe data. The Cu-Ni alloys are prepared by induction melting of pure Cu and Ni and CuO thin films are prepared via ion beam sputtering. After sufficient equilibration by heat treatment, Cu-Ni and CuO specimens for the APT measurement are fabricated via focused ion beam cutting. By experimentally conducting the same approach as developed theoretically, local composition fluctuations are obtained for both Cu-Ni and CuO systems. After the elastic work term correction, the CALPHAD-style parametrization of the Gibbs free energy is obtained by linking it to the measured local composition fluctuations. In this way, the Cu-Ni miscibility gap is successfully reconstructed from data measured at elevated temperature (800 K), and the resulting phase diagram is in agreement with the CALPHAD results in literature. The frequency distribution analysis of the reconstructed CuO tends to approach the binomial distribution (i.e. behavior of random alloys), since field evaporation of molecules (e.g. CuO, Cu2O) but not only single ions destroys the long-range order structure and deteriorates the resolution in the reconstruction. This effect indicates the partial limitation of this method on ionic compounds. In summary, the present work has systematically extended and proven the application of the composition fluctuation theory to metallic alloys, and makes it possible to directly access thermodynamic information from local composition fluctuations. APT is demonstrated as a new technique to extract direct thermodynamic information, and a general route from the APT measurement to the Gibbs free energy is presented. Given that the composition fluctuation is a local property and only a substantially short diffusion length for equilibration is required, this represents an efficient methodology especially for systems where slow diffusion hinders the establishment of large scale thermodynamic equilibrium. APT, as a sub-nanometric resolution technique, promises to extract more accurate thermodynamic information in a wider temperature composition range. Besides, this study advances our understanding of the size dependence in the traditional frequency distribution analysis. It is pointed out that potential misinterpretation could happen and is presented in literature, if a sample evaluation size in the frequency distribution analysis is arbitrarily chosen. Only the bulk relative variance obtained via extrapolation to infinitely large sub-system is thermodynamically meaningful.Item Open Access Thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transformations in the Fe-N-C system(2012) Wöhrle, Thomas; Mittemeijer, Eric J. (Prof. Dr. Ir.)The control of the nitriding/nitrocarburizing process involves both the knowledge of the thermodynamics prescribing the gas-solid and solid-solid phase equilibria of the Fe-N and Fe-N-C systems and kinetics governing the (multicomponent) diffusion of each component in the solid phases formed during the heat treatment. Although nitriding and nitrocarburizing have been widely investigated a fundamental knowledge about the thermodynamics and kinetics, in particular in the Fe-N-C system is still lacking. For that reason the present work is focused on (i) the thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transformations in the Fe-N-C system and (ii) the thermodynamics of the gamma’ phase in the Fe-N system.