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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 8: Thin Film Properties II

DS 8.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 09:45–10:00, A 060

Towards high-throughput studies of gradient multi-component thin films — •Dmitry Lapkin, Alexander Gerlach, Alexander Hinderhofer, and Frank Schreiber — Institute of Applied Physics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Progress in the development of modern functional materials is indispensable for technological progress. In many cases, these materials are complex multi-component systems, with a rather non-trivial dependence of the properties on composition. A typically non-linear and non-monotonic composition dependence makes it mandatory to investigate the resulting properties with many points on the composition axis, and ideally within one given sample to ensure comparability, calling for suitable sample preparation techniques.

An example of such a preparation technique relevant for applications is organic molecular beam deposition (OMBD) of organic semiconductor thin films. A deposition chamber, recently developed in our group, makes it possible to overcome unintentional variations in deposition conditions for different samples and, importantly, to obtain a film with a composition gradient in one run.

In this work, we demonstrate the preliminary results of gradient two-component film deposition and how the spatial resolution of modern sample characterization methods can be effectively converted into compositional resolution using such gradient films. In combination with arising machine learning-based on-the-fly data treatment methods, this opens up horizons for high-throughput studies of the structure and properties of multi-component thin films.

Keywords: gradient films; molecular semiconductors; composition optimization; spatially-resolved techniques