With the in-depth study of thin-film structures, nonuniform thin films with rigid elements have been applied in the aerospace and flexible electronics industries. For thin-film structures with rigid elements, there is an interaction force between the rigid element and the thin film; therefore, the wrinkling mode of the thin film changes under the influence of the interaction force. In this study, a wrinkle model was developed to predict the wrinkle morphology of thin-film structures with rigid elements on the diagonal. First, the wrinkle patterns of the rigid elements were observed at different positions using tensile experiments. Then, the relationship between the tilt of the rigid element and the wrinkle wavelength was investigated using a finite-element eigenvalue buckling analysis. Finally, local wrinkling caused by the perturbed stress of the rigid element was introduced, and a wrinkling model of a square thin film with rigid elements on the diagonal under tension was established. The theoretical analysis results were compared with simulation and experimental results, demonstrating that the model can accurately describe the wrinkle patterns of thin-film structures containing rigid elements on the diagonal under tension.

Thermal conductivity is a familiar property of materials: silver conducts heat well, and plastic does not. In recent years, an interdisciplinary group of materials scientists, engineers, physicists, and chemists have succeeded in pushing back long-established limits in the thermal conductivity of materials. Carbon nanotubes and graphene are at the high end of the thermal conductivity spectrum due to their high sound velocities and relative lack of processes that scatter phonons. Unfortunately, the superlative thermal properties of carbon nanotubes have not found immediate application in composites or interface materials because of difficulties in making good thermal contact with the nanotubes. At the low end of the thermal conductivity spectrum, solids that combine order and disorder in the random stacking of two-dimensional crystalline sheets, so-called “disordered layered crystals,” show a thermal conductivity that is only a factor of 2 larger than air. The cause of this low thermal conductivity may be explained by the large anisotropy in elastic constants that suppresses the density of phonon modes that propagate along the soft direction. Low-dimensional quantum magnets demonstrate that electrons and phonons are not the only significant carriers of heat. Near room temperature, the spin thermal conductivity of spin-ladders is comparable to the electronic thermal conductivities of metals. Our measurements of nanoscale thermal transport properties employ a variety of ultrafast optical pump-probe metrology tools that we have developed over the past several years. We are currently working to extend these techniques to high pressures (60 GPa), high magnetic fields (5 T), and high temperatures (1000 K).

A range of material systems exist in which nanoscale ionic transport and redox reactions provide the essential mechanisms for memristive switching. One class relies on mobile cations, which are easily created by electrochemical oxidation of the corresponding electrode metal, transported in the insulating layer, and reduced at the inert counterelectrode. These devices are termed electrochemical metallization (ECM) memories, also called conductive bridge random access memories. The memristive characteristics of the ECM cells provide opportunities for circuit design and computational concepts that go beyond those in traditional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Passive memory arrays open up paths toward ultradense and 3D stackable memory and logic gate arrays. Furthermore, the multivalued conductance characteristics allow for potential exploitation of the cells as synapses in neuromorphic circuits in future energy efficient high-performance computer architectures. Despite exciting results obtained in recent years, many challenges have to be met before these physical effects can be turned into competitive industrial technology. Here, we briefly review the basic working principle, the different possible and potential material combinations, and the fundamental electrochemical processes in ECM cells and their implications for device operations. The prospects of ECM-based resistive random access memory as an emerging memory technology are also reviewed in terms of switching speed and scalability.