Description

Physical Vapor Deposition at Glancing Angle configuration (PVD-GLAD) is a powerful tool for the fabrication of sculptured thin films. This method allows to tailor the nanostructure by changing the orientation of the substrate with respect to the incoming material flux during deposition, which means that we can design at the nanoscale from the macroscale.[1,2] The resulting films, present the shape of nanocolumns and the gaps between them give rise to a high porosity and specific area. Thanks to this morphology, these films can be also used as templates and hosts of organic and inorganic compounds.[3,4]
GLAD films find applications in a large variety of fields such as electrochemistry, catalysis, sensors, optical devices, photovoltaic cells and magnetism.[5,6]

 
 

References

[1] Barranco A, Borras A, Gonzalez-Elipe A R and Palmero A 2016 Perspectives on oblique angle deposition of thin films: From fundamentals to devices Progress in Materials Science 76 59–153

[2] Brett M J and Hawkeye M M 2008 New Materials at a Glance Science 319 1192–3

[3] Castillero P, Sánchez-Valencia J R, Cano M, Pedrosa J M, Roales J, Barranco A and González-Elipe A R 2010 Active and Optically Transparent Tetracationic Porphyrin/TiO2 Composite Thin Films ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2 712–21

[4] Gonzalez-García L, Parra-Barranco J, Sanchez-Valencia J R, Ferrer J, Garcia-Gutierrez M-C, Barranco A and Gonzalez-Elipe A R 2013 Tuning Dichroic Plasmon Resonance Modes of Gold Nanoparticles in Optical Thin Films Adv. Funct. Mater. 23 1655–63

[5] Oliva-Ramirez M, Barranco A, Löffler M, Yubero F and González-Elipe A R 2015 Optofluidic Modulation of Self-Associated Nanostructural Units Forming Planar Bragg Microcavities ACS Nano

[6] Ramos F, Oliva-Ramirez M, Nazeeruddin M K, Grätzel M, Gonzalez-Elipe A R and Ahmad S 2016 Light Management: Porous 1-Dimensional Nanocolumnar Structures as Effective Photonic Crystal for Perovskite Solar Cells J. Mater. Chem. A