Phoenix Convention Center
The Materials research society (MRS) is one of the largest societies of materials researchers, scientists and engineers. It has over 16,000 materials researchers from academia, industries, and government, and a recognized leader in the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research from over 90 countries including Japan. Its conference is recognized as one of the highest attention for presenting materials science topics. Various recognition topics are energy materials, biomaterials, nanomaterials, photonic materials together with manufacturing and artificial intelligence for materials development. This year, it had 63 symposium sessions together with workshops and exhibition with over 4,000 attendees joined. The 2018 MRS Spring Meeting was held from April 2-6, 2018 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
I attended multiscale designing and constructing photocatalytic materials for solar fuels section. I gave a poster presentation under the title of “Buffer layer-enhanced single-orientation growth of BaTaO2N epitaxial thin films for electrochemical solar water splitting by pulsed laser deposition”. In this work, I showed the crystallinity improvement and grain boundaries suppression of BaTaO2N thin film by inserting a BaSnO3 buffer layer. The film was grown by nitrogen plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition method on a single crystal SrTiO3 substrate.
BaTaO2N were grown on SrTiO3 (110) substrate under the supply of nitrogen gas activated with RF plasma source. At optimized condition, the result showed that BaTaO2N directly grown on STO (110) substrate showed almost stoichiometric with rough surface (RMS = 5 nm) and low crystallinity (FWHM = 1.25°). By introduction of BaSnO3 buffer layer, the crystallinity and surface roughness were much improved. The RMS of the BaTaO2N on BaSnO3 buffer layer was 1 nm and the FWHM on (110)-oriented peak was 0.3°. These results demonstrated that insertion of a suitable buffer layer is a promising way to improve crystallinity and surface morphology.
Phoenix, Arizona
Attendance the conference gave me a valuable opportunity as a student to meet and have a conversation with leader professors, researchers, and students in the field all around the world. I had many discussions on my research topic and obtained many valuable idea and blind spots. This provided me to learn and conduct the research properly.
Apart from the scientific presentation, I enjoy talking with many top students of the field of photoelectrochemical materials. Many provided and inspired me to their research with novel methods and materials. This was my first international conference I have been to. I would like to extend my deep gratitude for your support of Marubun Research Promotion Foundation. I am honored and thankful to have been chosen for this award.
