Emergence and Evolution of Crystallization in TiO2 Thin Films: A Structural and Morphological Study.

Among all transition metal oxides, titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most intensively investigated materials due to its large range of applications, both in the amorphous and crystalline forms. We have produced amorphous TiO2 thin films by means of room temperature ion-plasma assisted e-beam deposition, and we have heat-treated the samples to study the onset of crystallization. Herein, we have detailed the earliest stage and the evolution of crystallization, as a function of both the annealing temperature, in the range 250-1000 °C, and the TiO2 thickness, varying between 5 and 200 nm. We have explored the structural and morphological properties of the as grown and heat-treated samples with Atomic Force Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray Diffractometry, and Raman spectroscopy. We have observed an increasing crystallization onset temperature as the film thickness is reduced, as well as remarkable differences in the crystallization evolution, depending on the film thickness. Moreover, we have shown a strong cross-talking among the complementary techniques used displaying that also surface imaging can provide distinctive information on material crystallization. Finally, we have also explored the phonon lifetime as a function of the TiO2 thickness and annealing temperature, both ultimately affecting the degree of crystallinity.

Stepped beam pipes and helical baffles for scattered light absorption in future gravitational wave detectors.

The next generation interferometric gravitational wave detectors require arm lengths measured in tens of kilometers, with each cavity storing megawatts of optical power. The beams are contained in ultrahigh vacuum pipes. Scattered interferometer light in the pipes may reenter the cavities and inject extra noise. The pipes are, therefore, provided with optical baffles necessary to eliminate the scattered light. The design of the vacuum pipes and of the optical baffles is tightly intertwined. We present a thorough discussion that opens the door to the design of an optimized stepped-diameter vacuum pipe system using novel helical baffles. Our analysis suggests that a more efficient pipe design (with special reference to scattered light) may use spiral baffles and sectioned stepped tubes.

Interferometric SAR Phase Denoising Using Proximity-Based K-SVD Technique.

This paper addresses the problem of interferometric noise reduction in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry based on sparse and redundant representations over a trained dictionary. The idea is to use a Proximity-based K-SVD (ProK-SVD) algorithm on interferometric data for obtaining a suitable dictionary, in order to extract the phase image content effectively. We implemented this strategy on both simulated as well as real interferometric data for the validation of our approach. For synthetic data, three different training dictionaries have been compared, namely, a dictionary extracted from the data, a dictionary obtained by a uniform random distribution in [ - π , π ] , and a dictionary built from discrete cosine transform. Further, a similar strategy plan has been applied to real interferograms. We used interferometric data of various SAR sensors, including low resolution C-band ERS/ENVISAT, medium L-band ALOS, and high resolution X-band COSMO-SkyMed, all over an area of Mt. Etna, Italy. Both on simulated and real interferometric phase images, the proposed approach shows significant noise reduction within the fringe pattern, without any considerable loss of useful information.

Thickness-dependent crystallization on thermal anneal for titania/silica nm-layer composites deposited by ion beam sputter method.

Crystallization following thermal annealing of thin film stacks consisting of alternating nm-thick titania/silica layers was investigated. Several prototypes were designed, featuring a different number of titania/silica layer pairs, and different thicknesses (in the range from 4 to 40 nm, for the titania layers), but the same nominal refractive index (2.09) and optical thickness (a quarter of wavelength at 1064 nm). The prototypes were deposited by ion beam sputtering on silicon substrates. All prototypes were found to be amorphous as-deposited. Thermal annealing in air at progressive temperatures was subsequently performed. It was found that the titania layers eventually crystallized forming the anatase phase, while the silica layers remained always amorphous. However, progressively thinner layers exhibited progressively higher threshold temperatures for crystallization onset. Accordingly it can be expected that composites with thinner layers will be able to sustain higher annealing temperatures without crystallizing, and likely yielding better optical and mechanical properties for advanced coatings application. These results open the way to the use of materials like titania and hafnia, that crystallize easily under thermal anneal, but ARE otherwise promising candidate materials for HR coatings necessary for cryogenic 3rd generation laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors.