Research on synthesis, characterization and determination of processing – structure – property relationships of commercially important ferroelectric thin films has been performed. The sol-gel-type solution deposition technique was applied to produce good quality thin films of Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (BST60/40) chemical composition on the stainless steel substrates. The thin films were characterized in terms of their microstructure, crystal...

In addition to traditional imaging the surface, atomic force microscopy (AFM) enables wide variety of additional measurements. One of them is higher harmonic imaging. In tapping mode the nonlinear contact between tip and specimen results in higher frequency vibrations. More information available from the higher harmonics analysis proves to be helpful for more detailed imaging. Such visualization is especially useful for heterogeneous...