We conducted the in-situ observations of the magnetic domain structure change in Nd-Fe-B magnets at high temperature by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) / Lorentz microscopy with applying an external magnetic field. Prior to observation, a thin foil was magnetized by an external magnetic field of 2.0 T to almost saturation, then the magnetic domain structures were observed by the Fresnel mode with in-situ heating. At 225°C, reverse magnetic domains were found to generate in the thin foil sample without applying an external magnetic field. When we applied a magnetic field on the same direction to the pre-magnetization direction at 225°C, one magnetic domain wall was pinned by a grain boundary and the other magnetic domain wall moved. As the results, the reverse magnetic domain shrank then annihilated. When we cut the applied magnetic field, the reverse magnetic domain generated at almost the same location. On the other hand, when we applied a magnetic field to the foils in the opposite direction, the reverse domain started to grow, i.e., magnetic domain walls started to move. The observation results of the shrink or growth of the reverse domain showed that the pinning effect of grain boundary against domain wall motion would be different depending on the applied magnetic field direction. Moreover, domain walls was observed to be pinned by grain boundaries at elevated temperature, so that the coercivity of Nd-Fe-B magnet would occur by pinning mechanism.

In this study, we conducted the in-situ observations of the magnetic domain structure change in Nd2Fe14B magnets at elevated temperature by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) / Lorentz microscopy. The in-situ observations in Nd2Fe14B magnets revealed that the magnetization reversal easily occurred at the elevated temperature. At more than 180°C, the magnetic domain wall motion could be observed by applying the magnetic field of less than 20 mT. The motion of the magnetic domain wall was discontinuous and the domain wall jumped to one grain boundary to the neighboring grain boundary at 180°C. On the other hand, the continuous domain wall motion within grain interior as well as discontinuous domain wall motion was observed at 225°C, and some grain boundaries showed still strong pinning effect even at 225°C. The temperature dependence of the pinning effect of grain boundaries would not uniform.

The microwave tunable capability and its related material optimization of (Ba,Sr)TiO3 thin films in the parallel-plate capacitor form is discussed in terms of the dependence of barium concentration, acceptor doping, and in-plane film stress, based on the present broadband microwave characterization technique under various bias fields. The barium-content dependence indicates the tradeoff between tunability and dielectric loss, and the notable field-induced loss in SrTiO3 is confirmed as an intrinsic quasi-Debye contribution. The Mg dopant incorporated into a perovskite lattice shows almost no effectiveness on tunable device performance, except for enhanced insulation as an electron acceptor, while the low bias-field dependence of the dielectric loss suggests the possibility of the partial occupation of the alkaline-earth-ion site by Mg. The reduction of in-plane thermal stress controlled by the pressure during sputtering deposition leads to higher permittivity and tunability while degrading the film crystallinity by ion bombardment. The low-frequency loss tends to increase with crystal damage; however, the microwave loss remains unchanged, revealing the applicability of sputtering stress control to real microwave devices. In addition, we demonstrate the operation of an analog phase shifter using parallel-plate ferroelectric tunable capacitors and its application to a phased array antenna monolithically integrated on a silicon substrate.

The striped nano-channel structure (about 10nm in depth) was formed on the NiO film surface by thermal annealing of the film deposited on the sapphire(0001) substrate with periodic straight atomic steps. The interval of each nano-channel was about 100nm in average and well corresponding to the separation of atomic steps on the used sapphire(0001) substrate. Effects of annealing temperature and impurity doping into NiO upon the nanochannel formation were examined in order to control the depth. The depth of nano-channels formed on the alkali-metal(Li or Na) doped NiO films were found to be larger than that of nano-channels on the non-doped NiO films and enlarged with increasing annealing temperature in the range of 500∼900°C. Atomic-scale cross sectional structure of the nano-channel was characterized by transmission electron microscopy with focused on the film/substrate interface.

We have studied the early stages of GaN growth to realize the growth mechanism of GaN thin films on mis-oriented sapphire substrates which affects the surface and crystal quality of GaN thin films. As the result, it was found that the larger mis-orientation angle helps the growth of the larger grain of GaN and leads to the earlier shift of growth mode from 3D to 2D. The AFM observation of closed-coalesced GaN thin films revealed the difference in the micro-step structures by the mis-orientation angle of sapphire substrate. The result of x-ray rocking curve as a function of mis-orientation angle well matched with the microstructure of GaN surface, indicating that the larger mis-orientation angle helps the column ordering of GaN crystals.

a-/b-axis-oriented epitaxial bismuth layer-structured ferroelectric thin films were epitaxially grown on (101)-oriented oxide with rutile structure. The long-range lattice matching between the ferroelectric layer and the bottom rutile layer, particularly the number of rutile units facing one ferroelectric unit and the surface orientation, were discussed for (100)(010)Bi4Ti3O12//(101)TiO2 structure. Cross sectional transmission electron microscope analysis suggests that seven rutile units lie under one a-/b-axis-oriented Bi4Ti3O12 unit with lower misfit dislocation density comparing to eight rutile units by one Bi4Ti3O12 model. Based on this result, the surface orientation at the interface was simulated to give us an appropriate ion alignment model. The titanium layer in the (101)TiO2 structure is most likely to match with the oxygen layer in the a-/b-axis-oriented Bi4Ti3O12 film.

Bismuth layered structured ferroelectrics (BLSF) thin films with different number of octahedron number (m-number) were prepared by MOCVD and directly crystallized on the substrates. Directly-crystallized SrBi2Ta2O9 (SBT) (m=2) films on a (111) Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate were ascertained to have a strong (103) one-axis orientation by the X-ray reciprocal space mapping and to be hetero-epitaxially grown on the (111) Pt grains by the TEM observation. Moreover, directly crystallized Bi2VO5.5 (m=1) and Bi4Ti3O12 (m=3) films deposited on the same substrate showed (102) and (104) one-axis preferred orientations, respectively. These orientations are basically the equal ones with SBT (103) orientation because the tilting angle of c-axis from the substrate surface is also about 55°. Therefore, the direct crystallization is one of the important key techniques for orientation control of BLSF films. Moreover, the directly crystallized SBT film deposited on a (111) Ir/TiOx/SiO2/Si substrate at 570 °C by ECR-MOCVD exhibited (103) one-axis orientation, which also originated from the local epitaxial growth on (111)-oriented Ir grains. The remanent polarization (2Pr), and the coercive field (Ec) of this film were 16.1 μC/cm2 and 83 kV/cm at an applied electric field of 360kV/cm, respectively. This Pr value is about 88% of the expected value of (103)-oriented SBT film from both the Pr values of the (116) and (001)-oriented epitaxial films and detailed crystal analysis.

Epitaxial (001)-, (116)- and pseudo (103)-oriented Sr0.35Bi2.2Ta2O9 (SBT (0.35/2.2/2.0)) films were successfully grown on (001), (110) and (111) SrTiO3 substrates, respectively. High-resolution X-ray diffraction reciprocal space mapping (HRXRD-RSM) measurements and pole figure measurements clearly indicated that the (116)-oriented SBT (0.35/2.2/2.0) film consisted of two growth domains those c-axis are separated 180° apart in in-plane and pseudo (103)-oriented SBT film consisted of three growth domains those c-axis are separated 120° apart in in-plane. Moreover, lattice parameter measurements indicated that SBT films grew in fully relaxed state.