Magnetic, Optical Properties of Thin Films

Dear Colleagues,

Thin films represent a new scientific domain. They comprise many types of layers, generally as coatings. The thickness of these layers is variable, ranging from several nanometers to few micrometers. A new category of films can be called the “very thin films”, which have thickness under 1000 Angstroms for organic polymeric films and under 10 Angstroms for inorganic films. Thin films not only improve the properties of substrates but introduce many new and interesting properties, such as optical, magnetic, mechanical, electrical, thermal, or even biological. Thin films with optical, magnetic, and magneto-optical properties are of special interest due to their very interesting and useful applications in lasers, optoelectronics, spatial sciences, and medicine, as amplifiers, mirrors, waveguides, resonant cavities, selectors, etc.

The methods for the deposition of thin films are generally separated into physical and chemical approaches. The main physical methods include thermal evaporation, pulsed laser deposition, molecular epitaxy, and magnetron sputtering; sol–gel, precipitation, pyrolysis, chemical vapor deposition, and electroplating represent some of the chemical methods. Some new methods, such as matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE), can be referred to as physico-chemical methods because they include both physical and chemical reactions.

Thin films’ structure and properties can be evaluated by techniques such as atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX or EDS) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-Vis-IR and Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, or X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

Potential topics in this summary:

• Organic-inorganic optical thin films
• Magneto-optical thin films with high Verdet constant
• Variable optics in multilayered thin films
• The enhancement of magneto-optical properties induced by nano-crystallization in thin films
• Sol–gel deposition of rare-earth-doped thin films
• Magnetron sputtering versus pulsed laser deposition for multicomponent thin films
• New giant magnetoresistant thin films
• Multilayer thin film properties design and modelling

Dr. Bogdan Alexandru Sava
Guest Editor

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• thin films
• optical properties
• magnetic properties
• faraday rotation
• laser guides