Functional Oxide Based Thin-Film Materials

Abstract

Functional oxide-based thin-film materials are extraordinary multifunctional crystals with a huge range of emerging application domains, including as sensors, displays, light emitters, photovoltaics, nanotechnology, spintronics, piezoelectric motors, biotechnology, capacitors, transparent electronics, and next-generation memories. These materials served as the original inspiration for the Special Issue "Functional Oxide-Based Thin-Film Materials". Functional oxide crystals have numerous favorable properties, including good transparency, high conductivity, wide bandgap, and strong luminescence. Thin-film oxide materials have been successfully grown on various substrates by hydrothermal, sol-gel, chemical bath deposition, sputtering, atomic layer deposition, pulsed laser deposition, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), hot filament CVD, plasma-enhanced CVD methods, among others. A number of breakthroughs over the recent years have driven an exponential increase in the research activity in this field. For this Special Issue "Functional Oxide-Based Thin-Film Materials", specialists working with device applications came together to shed light on the properties and behavior of thin-film oxides. This collections of papers covers many aspects of thin-film science and technology, from thin film to nanostructure and from material properties to optoelectronic applications, thus reflecting the numerous varied interests of the community of scientists active in this field.