The interfacial regimes of cobalt/pentacene/cobalt (Co/Pc/Co) trilayers were emulated through the ultrathin pentacene/cobalt (Pc/Co) and cobalt/pentacene (Co/Pc) bilayers. Employing the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) measurement, we found the coercivity of Co bottom film in a thickness of 3.4 nm experienced a slight reduction upon the adsorption of Pc molecules. For the bilayers prepared with reversed order of deposition, the Co film deposited on a 6.4 nm Pc layer showed no observable ferromagnetic order at room temperature until its thickness reached 3 nm. After the onset of magnetic order, the x-ray images acquired on Pc/Co revealed a complicated magnetization patterns comparing to those observed on Co/Pc bilayers. Because the spin-polarized carriers will interact with the environment along their transport path, the presence of a non-magnetic layer and the occurrence of complicated domain structures suggested the spin-polarized carriers would experience a greater disturbance on their spin coherence when crossing the Pc/Co interface.

ZnO films were grown on (0001) sapphire substrates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) using diethylzinc (DeZn) and nitrous oxide (N2O) in an inductively heated reactor operated at atmospheric pressure. Low-temperature (LT) ZnO buffer layers having various thicknesses were deposited at 400¢J followed by subsequent growth of ZnO films at 600¢J. Some of the ZnO films were then post-annealed at 1000¢J in the N2O flow. Under certain growth conditions, ZnO nanowires were formed on the post-annealed ZnO samples. Room temperature (RT) photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the ZnO nanowires show strong ultraviolet (UV) near band edge emissions at 3.27 eV with a typical full width at half-maximum ( FWHM ) of ~130 meV and quenched defect luminescence at 2.8 eV. 10 K PL spectra of the post-annealed ZnO all exhibit sharp excitonic emissions with the dominant emission being located at 3.36 eV having a FWHM of 4.6 meV.

In this paper, we investigate the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of Ge nanocrystals (NCs) directly on hafnium oxide HfO2 dielectric for non-volatile memory applications. Germane GeH4 was used as a precursor. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterize the Ge NCs. The dependence of the Ge NC size and density on the deposition temperature, deposition time, and flow rate was explored. A high Ge NC density of 1011 cm-2 was obtained at a deposition temperature of 600°C, with a mean diameter of about 16 nm. MOS capacitors with CVD Ge NCs embedded in the HfO2 gate dielectric were fabricated. Hysteresis of capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of capacitors with Ge NCs was observed, demonstrating memory effect.