In the present work titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films were grown by d.c. reactive magnetron sputtering process, systematically varying the Ar/O2 ratio in the gas mixture, in order to study the influence of the oxygen partial pressure on the crystallographic structure and photocatalytic activity of the Tio2 thin films. After the sputtering process the Tio2 coatings were nitrided in a microwave (f= 2.45 GHz) Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) plasma discharge in pure nitrogen, to compare the photocatalytic activity of undoped and nitrogen-doped Tio2 thin films. The crystal structure of the Tio2 grown samples was studied by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and the presence of the anatase phase in these films were corroborated by Raman spectroscopy. On the other hand, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements carried out in the nitrogen-doped Tio2 samples, showed that the nitrogen was incorporated to the films with an average concentration of 18 at% of N. The UV-Vis optical spectroscopy allowed calculating the band gap. A narrowing of the optical band gap from 3.2 eV for the undoped films to 2.5 eV for the N-doped films was observed. Photocatalytic activity tests were done using a methylene blue (MB) dye solution. The irradiation of the films in the MB dye solution was carried out with an emission lamp in the UV and in the visible range for undoped and N-doped Tio2 films, respectively. The results showed that the N-doped TiO2 films had a higher photocalytic activity in the visible range, reaching a greater MB degradation in comparison with undoped samples, which were subjected to a higher energy radiation.

Thin films of YBa2Cu3O7-δ grown on SrTiO3 (100) single crystal substrates by sputtering DC technique to high oxygen pressures were put under different conditions of relative humidity from 24 to 100% and different times of exposition. The electrical, morphologic and structural characteristics of the films by means of curves R-T, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were analyzed. The effect on structural and transport properties with the environmental conditions of relative humidity and with time were systematically studied. Samples under relative humidity around 24% measured just later of deposition showed a critical temperature (T C) of 92 K, and thin films exposed around 90% of relative humidity with times greater to 10(4) s (1 day) showed a T C of 16 K, while samples under a relative humidity 100% do not showed the superconductive phase. The degradation's causes of superconductive properties in this system were investigated.

We studied growth mechanisms in semiconducting Ga1 - xIn xAs ySb1 - y films grown by liquid phase epitaxy on (100) GaSb:Te (10(17) cm- 3) substrates at 600 ºC solution-substrate temperature. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) images of these films show step-like corrugations, undulations, grooves, and terraces. The terraces are a few nm in height and hundreds of nanometers in length. Epitaxial Ga1 - xIn xAs ySb1 - y films grow lattice-matched to the (100) GaSb substrates. These narrow-gap quaternary Ga1 - xIn xAs ySb1 - y compounds are suitable materials for heterostructure devices operating in the infrared wavelength range. The estimated x and y values are in the GaSb-rich zone. The step-like corrugations (bunching steps) are formed by different mechanisms, such as pinning effect probably due to impurities on the substrate surface.

A dynamic scaling and kinetic roughening study was done on digitized atomic force microscope (AFM) images of Pb(Zr0.52,Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) thin films. The films were grown on Si(001) and Nb - SrTiO3(001) (STNO) substrates via rf-sputtering technique at high oxygen pressures at substrate temperatures of 600 ºC by varying the deposition time and keeping other growth parameters fixed. By using a specific self-designed algorithm, we can extract from digitized 512-pixel resolution AFM-images, quantitative values of roughness parameters, i.e., interface width (sigma(l)), lateral correlation length (xi||) and, roughness exponent (alpha). Herein, we report on the sputter-time deposition dependence of the parameters describing roughness for both kinds of substrates. We report alpha-values for different time depositions (between 15 and 60 minutes) close to 0.55 for Si substrates and 0.63 for Nb - SrTiO3 substrates, indicating that the surface becomes more correlated in STNO substrates. The alpha-values are associated to the Lai-Das-Sarma-Villain model.