Light scattering spectroscopy, mainly developed for Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin films growth, has been demonstrated to be an efficient in-situ monitoring tool. It consists of illuminating the substrate surface using a light source and collecting the diffused light with a spectrometer. The on-line information allows monitoring the point of stoichiometry of the grown layer. In this work, we propose an alternative approach of this method, replacing the spectrometer by a standard webcam. This system allows to precisely choose the analyzed area on the substrate surface, which may be the whole sample surface or just a specific zone. We have grown CuInSe2 (CIS) thin films by co-evaporation under vacuum using the three-stage process. We have simultaneously performed CIS growth on both Mo-coated and bare glass substrates within the same growth run, while, on purpose, the scattered light was collected from the Mo-coated substrate. The CIS thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, Hall effect measurements, absorption spectroscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy for composition. By interrupting the CIS growth at different stages of the growth process, we have correlated the scattered light features with the Cu-rich/In-rich transitions and we observe the reproducibility of the scattered light spectra structures.

We report on the electrodeposition of ZnO with different surface morphologies. We demonstrate by three different ways that morphology is ruled by the growth rate, and therefore strongly influences the optical properties of the layers. Whereas small size well-connected grains are obtained at high growth rate, the crystals evolve toward large disoriented nanorods since the kinetic of the reaction is hindered. The corresponding RMS roughnesses ranges from 35nm to 119nm, resulting in diffusion of the light from far UV to visible-wavelength. The surface morphology is shown to be directly mastered by electrochemical parameters which enable either a 2D or 3D growth mechanism.

CdS thin films were grown on different substrates (glass, GaAs, Si, Al2O3) by CBD. The rms roughness of the CdS layers, measured on AFM pictures, ranges from 11 to 95 nm depending on the chemical nature of the substrate Thermal annealing of the samples leads to an improvement of the CdS crystalline quality with a conversion from cubic to hexagonal phase, whatever substrate is used, as assessed by XRD. Thermal annealing also improves the optical properties. While as-grown CdS layers photoluminescence is due to defect related emission around 1.7eV, annealed samples show dominant near band edge photoluminescence emission around 2.4 e V.

CuInSe2 (CIS) layers were grown by co-evaporation in a molecular beam epitaxy system onto soda lime glass substrates by using both two-step and three step processes. The physical properties of the layers were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and optical spectroscopy. The sample atomic composition was assessed by energy dispersive analysis of X-rays. Cu-rich or In-rich CIS thin films were obtained exhibiting strong preferential (112) and (220)/(204) orientations in both cases. We performed thermal annealing at 450 °C under nitrogen, keeping Se overpressure to avoid Se desorption from the layer. The annealed layers all exhibit improved crystalline quality, with reduced stoichiometric discrepancy. The secondary phases like CuxSe1 − x or InxSe1 − x are no more observable by XRD measurements. Regarding the preferential orientation, thermal annealing of Cu-rich CIS layers favours the (112) orientation leading to a more (112) textured layer after annealing, whatever the initial preferential growth orientation was. In opposite, thermal annealing of In-rich samples increases the (220)/(204) texture of the sample.

The morphology changes, in particular the organization of microtubules in mammalian nonmalignant HMEC 184A1 and cancerous MCF-7 cells during curcumin treat- ment have been investigated by utilizing multiphoton, fluorescence, and atomic force (AFM) microscopies. Fluorescence microscopy reveals formation of ring-like structures of microtubules circumscribing the nuclear area in HMEC 184A1 cells after treatment, while in MCF-7 cells, no important changes were observed. Topo- graphy analyses of fixed HMEC 184A1 and MCF-7 be- fore and after treatment with curcumin were performed using AFM and the effect of the employed cells' fixation method was investigated on MCF-7 cells. Due to its in- depth optical sectioning capacity multiphoton microscopy provided valuable complementary information on curcu- min's effect on both cells' types. Combining information provided by AFM and optical fluorescence and biphoton microscopes allows us to gain a better understanding of the cells and their curcumin-induced changes, especially for microtubules which are the main target of antitumor chemotherapy treatments. Our multimicroscopic study demonstrates that 6 h incubation with curcumin does not induce significant modifications in the interphase micro- tubules in the malignant MCF7cell, whereas it has meas- urable effects on those of the nonmalignant HMEC 184A1 cells, revealing also morphology modifications over the nuclear area of these cells.