Fatigue crack growth rate tests were conducted as a function of temperature, dissolved hydrogen (DH) level, and frequency in a simulated PWR environment. Fatigue crack growth rates increased slightly with increasing temperature in air. However, the fatigue crack growth rate did not change with increasing temperature in PWR water conditions. The DH levels did not affect the measured crack growth rate under the given test conditions. At 316 oC, oxides were observed on the fatigue crack surface, where the size of the oxide particles was about 0.2 μm at 5 ppb. Fatigue crack growth rate increased slightly with decreasing frequency within the frequency range of 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz in PWR water conditions; however, crack growth rate increased considerably at 0.01 Hz. The decrease of the fatigue crack growth rate in PWR water condition is attributed to crack closure resulting from the formation of oxides near the crack tips at a rather fast loading frequency of 10 Hz.

In this study, BaTiO3 thin films were grown by RF-magnetron sputtering, and the effects of the thin film thickness on the structural characteristics of BaTiO3 thin films were systematically investigated. Instead of the oxide substrates generally used for the growth of BaTiO3 thin films, p-Si substrates which are widely used in the current semiconductor processing, were used in this study in order to pursue high efficiency in device integration processing. For the crystallization of the grown thin films, annealing was carried out in air, and the annealing temperature was varied from 700˚C. The changed thickness was within 200 nm~1200 nm. The XRD results showed that the best crystal quality was obtained for ample thicknesses 700 nm~1200 nm. The SEM analysis revealed that Si/BaTiO3 are good quality interface characteristics within 300 nm when observed thickness. And surface roughness observed of BaTiO3 thin films from AFM measurement are good quality surface characteristics within 300 nm. Depth-profiling analysis through GDS (glow discharge spectrometer) showed that the stoichiometric composition could be maintained. The results obtained in this study clearly revealed BaTiO3 thin films grown on a p-Si substrate such as thin film thickness. The optimum thickness was 300 nm, the thin film was found to have the characteristics of thin film with good electrical properties.

In this study, BaTiO3 thin films were grown by RF-magnetron sputtering, and the effects of a post-annealing process on the structural characteristics of the BaTiO3 thin films were investigated. For the crystallization of the grown thin films, post-annealing was carried out in air at an annealing temperature that varied from 500-1000˚C. XRD results showed that the highest crystal quality was obtained from the samples annealed at 600-700˚C. From the SEM analysis, no crystal grains were observed after annealing at temperatures ranging from 500 to 600˚C; and 80 nm grains were obtained at 700˚C. The surface roughness of the BaTiO3 thin films from AFM measurements and the crystal quality from Raman analysis also showed that the optimum annealing temperature was 700˚C. XPS results demonstrated that the binding energy of each element of the thin-film-type BaTiO3 in this study shifted with the annealing temperature. Additionally, a Ti-rich phenomenon was observed for samples annealed at 1000˚C. Depth-profiling analysis through a GDS (glow discharge spectrometer) showed that a stoichiometric composition could be obtained when the annealing temperature was in the range of 500 to 700˚C. All of the results obtained in this study clearly demonstrate that an annealing temperature of 700˚C results in optimal structural properties of BaTiO3 thin films in terms of their crystal quality, surface roughness, and composition.