Nanocomposite Thin Film and Multilayers

Dear Colleagues,

Nanocomposite thin film and multilayers provide extraordinary structural flexibility to manipulate mechanical and functional properties that are sensitive to defect, strain, dimensionality and interface. For structural materials, nanocomposite coatings may enhance the strength and wear resistance, and stability under extreme environment. Heterostructure interfaces affect dislocation gliding, twin boundary migration and crack initiation, which play important role on mechanical property enhancement. For functional materials, heterostructure interfaces allow to explore the strong interplay between lattice, orbital, charge and spin degrees of freedom, which could create emerging electronic or magnetic states with exciting functionalities. With the keys advantage of flexible interface design and phase coupling, nanocomposite thin film and multilayers have received extensive attention in the search for next-generation structural and functional materials. To facilitate this process, research efforts are highly required from theoretical simulations and modeling, material synthesis and growth, defect and microstructure control, property characterization, as well as in-depth understanding of structure-property relationships.

This special issue serves to report recent and representative progress relating to the topic of nanocomposite thin film and multilayers. It covers a broad range of topics from theoretical calculation, material design and synthesis, advanced characterization, device fabrication and performance evaluation. We call for contributions of original research articles as well as reviews and perspectives which cover most recent advances in relative fields.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Design, growth and characterization of nanocomposite thin films and multilayers
• Metallic based nanocomposite thin films and structural application
• Semiconductor thin films and electronic devices
• Functional oxide thin films and heterostructures
• Multi-scale modeling of thin film growth and performance

Prof. Yue Liu
Prof. Wenrui Zhang
Dr. Mingyu Gong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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