From the 27th of January, during my two-month research stay at the Chemical Crystallography of Solids (CKfS) group at the University of Bremen and under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thorsten M. Gesing, I had the opportunity to investigate SnO₂ thin films deposited on different substrates. The goal was to analyze the structural growth and preferred orientation of the films depending on the type of substrate.
For this purpose, preliminary and then high-quality X-ray diffraction measurements were performed. Additionally, UV-VIS spectroscopy was used to determine the optical properties of the films. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) were used to measure and analyze the thickness and morphology of the films and to confirm the elemental composition of the deposited materials. I was trained in the use of GSAS-II for Rietveld refinement of XRD data, which allows extracting precise crystallographic information, and I was introduced to the EnvACS approach, developed by the CKfS group, to estimate the crystallite size distribution.
I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Thorsten M. Gesing for his guidance, as well as to the CKfS group for their collaboration. I also extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Wilken Seemann and the MAPEX-CF team for their administrative support and for making this research stay possible. This opportunity has been incredibly valuable, and I look forward to further collaborations between Argentine engineering and German solid-state chemistry research groups.
