A synopsis of the various photoinduced changes of rheological, mechanical and elastic properties is presented in the first part of the article. After a critical appraisal of a large body of experimental data it suggested that the photoviscous effect, that is, the athermal decrease of viscosity of a non-crystalline chalcogenide upon illumination is the key for a plethora of photoinduced effects reported so far in the literature under different names. Morphic effects (shape or surface morphology) may ap-pear either in the presence or absence of external mechanical stimuli leading to the fabrication of a variety of technologically important photoprocessed structures. A few representative examples of photoplastic effects are described, in the second part of the paper, in some detail based on information provided by in situ Raman scattering and nanoindentation experiments.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

We present direct measurements of the kinetics of surface relief gratings (SRGs) formation in amorphous AsxSe100−x (20≤xAs≤50) thin films. SRGs are induced in different holographic schemes of recording using near-band-gap light and their growth is further facilitated by illumination with an interference pattern and observed in real time by in situ atomic force microscopy. It is found that the kinetics of SRG formation depends upon film composition and incident light polarization. The light-stimulated vectorial surface deformations are maximized for Se-rich glasses and increase even further by additional illumination during recording.

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Strain dependent stabilization of metallic paramagnetic state in epitaxial NdNiO3 thin films Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 132101 (2012) Residual stresses and clamped thermal expansion in LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 thin films Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 122902 (2012) Tribological properties of nanocrystalline diamond films deposited by hot filament chemical vapor deposition AIP Advances 2, 032164 (2012) The combined effect of surface roughness and internal stresses on nanoindentation tests of polysilicon thin films

Surface relief gratings formation in amorphous selenium thin films in two recording configurations with light intensity modulation were studied in situ by real-time atomic force microscopy and diffraction efficiency measurements. We report observation of mass transport effect in films induced by band-gap irradiation when the light polarization of the recording beams has a component along the light intensity gradient ("p-p" scheme of recording) that allows obtaining giant stable gratings in this versatile chalcogenide material. On the contrary, only a pure scalar weak grating caused by photoinduced volume shrinkage is obtained in the "s-s" recording configuration, even for long-term irradiation. Chalcogenide glasses (ChG) are known to exhibit a rich variety of photoinduced changes when illuminated with near bandgap light including changes in mechanical properties, termed as photoplastic effects.1 Among them, the effect of light induced surface deformation and direct fabrication of surface relief gratings (SRGs) in ChG is intensively studied over the last decade both experimentally 2-10 and theoretically.11 Two main types of SRG induced by holographic recording, due to the excitation intensity modulation, with near band-gap light in ChG can be distinguished according to their formation mechanism and their properties:10 (1) small scalar SRG induced by either volume expansion or shrinkage due to different response of the material in the bright and dark zones of the interference pattern formed and (2) giant vectorial SRG induced by lateral mass transport in the case where the light polarization of the recording beams has a component along the light intensity gradient.Experiments have shown that only few compositions of ChG demonstrate both types of SRG. For example, vectorial SRG have been observed only for Se-rich films in the binary As-Se system (As 20 Se 80 ) 10 and for the compositions close to As 40 S 60 in As-S glasses 3 while scalar SRGs are common to all glass compositions of As-S and As-Se glasses. While for As-S glass the above observation (lack of vectorial SRG) could be accounted for by considering the photo-induced polymerization effect in S-rich compositions, 12 in the case of As-Se glasses the effect is not yet well understood. Although elemental amorphous Se (a-Se) is a model glass-former in chalcogenide science, no systematic studies of SRG formation have been carried out up to now, while investigations of other photoinduced effects abound. 13 A fact that perplexes studies of SRG formation relates to the photoinduced crystallization of a-Se (Ref. 14) under band-gap illumination, thus preventing the formation of advanced surface relief stable in time.Few papers report the formation of surface relief induced by holographic recording for a-Se films. 2,5,15 In an early study, Haro-Poniatowski et al.,15 employing phase conjugation, haveshown that small (20 nm in height) photoinduced surface relief gratings appears in 4 lm-thick films with the same spatial period. Slightly higher reliefs ($ 40 nm) formed a...