Development and characterization of ZnO, Au/ZnO and Pd/ZnO thin films through their adsorptive and catalytic properties.

In this paper, we report (a) the development of ZnO thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition and partially covered with nano-particles Pd or Au and (b) their physicochemical study, in order to investigate their catalytic and/or adsorptive properties. It is the first time where two different and popular methods, namely pulsed laser deposition and reversed flow-inverse gas chromatography, are combined. The inverse gas chromatographic technique with the corresponding time-resolved analysis is used for the first time in order to characterise compounds in the nano-scale domain. We focus on the determination of physicochemical quantities mainly concerning the adsorption in thin films, with (Pd/ZnO) or without (Au/ZnO) catalytic behaviour. Thus, entropy and other important physicochemical quantities are calculated which reveal the mechanism of adsorption as well as of isomerization-hydrogenation of 1-butene and contribute to the study of heterogeneity of thin film surfaces. The programs used have been written in Fortran. An important achievement is also the determination of the standard deviations of the kinetic constants.

Structure and optical properties of amorphous lead-germanate films developed by pulsed-laser deposition.

Lead-germanate materials are attractive systems for photonics applications. In this context, amorphous lead-germanate films were grown by pulsed-laser deposition at different substrate temperatures and oxygen pressures using a glassy target of composition 0.4PbO-0.6GeO(2). Optical and infrared measurements showed that the substrate temperature has a strong influence on the optical quality and stability of the deposited films. An accurate characterization of films was achieved by comparing experimental and simulated transmittance spectra in the infrared, and allowed to probe the structural evolution and variations in composition as a function of oxygen pressure. The results showed that the difference in reactivity of lead and germanium toward oxygen in the laser-produced plasma allows for composition adjustments in the lead-germanate films by varying the oxygen pressure in the deposition chamber.

Phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing in barium vapor.

We report what is to our knowledge the first observation of phase-conjugate waves by degenerate four-wave mixing in Ba vapor near its 6s(2)(1)S(0) ? 6s6p(1)P(1) resonance transition. A maximum reflectivity of 36% at 10 mbars of Ar buffer gas pressure is observed together with a temporal pulse shortening of 50%. Conical emission in the two pump waves after their passage through the nonlinear medium is also observed. The dependence of the phase-conjugate signal on the pressure of the Ar buffer gas shows a small state-changing collisional decay rate.