[labnetwork] RTA furnace issues

[Sushma Kotru]

Hello everyone,
Sorry, this is going to be long e-mail.

We have an RTA, JetFirst 100/150 from Jiplec (yes, it is old but was working fine).  We use it mostly for annealing PZT/PLZT films around 750 C. We started noticing some changes to the quartz window (picture attached) and the films are damaged after annealing and develop a white layer on the surface. These films don't show any ferroelectric properties after annealing in RTA furnace.
At this point we are kind of stuck as we cannot make progress on the research projects without annealing the films. We have contacted the company and they suspect that the quartz window is creating the issue. We have cleaned the quartz window using the procedure the company provided but the problem still exists. The company is suggested to replace quartz window ( with additional parts) and buy a special sample holder (~30K)
My questions are:

  1.  Does anyone have RTA from this company? If so, can you provide your contact so that we can connect off line?
  2.  Those who use  similar RTA furnaces, have you faced similar issues?
  3.  I am not positive if the issue is with the RTA or with the samples. When we anneal other samples (magnetic- eg. Ni ferrite etc.), we have no issues with those samples. Anyone who has a RTA furnace- would you be willing to help us by annealing a couple of samples for us?
  4.  At this point, I don't have the money to buy the components but before I even start  looking for resources, I want to make sure the problem is RTA and not the process itself (graduate student is using process established by previous graduate students but not getting results).
Any help/suggestions/comments would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sushma

Sushma Kotru
Associate Professor
Senior Member IEEE

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Materials Science PhD Program
The University of Alabama<https://www.ua.edu/>

2034 NERC,  Box 870286
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Phone 205-348-7235<tel:205-348-7235>
skotru at eng.ua.edu<mailto:skotru at eng.ua.edu>
[Divider line]
[The University of Alabama]<https://www.ua.edu/>

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