With the quartz tube, we were able to confine the evaporated material and maintain a uniform gas pressure in the vicinity of the evaporation source. A molybdenum boat was used as an evaporation source. For depositing the thin films, the glass

substrate was pasted at the top of the tube. Film selleck kinase inhibitor thickness was measured with a quartz crystal thickness monitor (FTM 7, BOC Edwards, West Sussex, UK). After loading the glass substrate and the source material, the chamber was evacuated to 10-5 Torr. The inert gas (Ar) with 0.1 Torr pressure was injected into the sub-chamber, and the same gas pressure was maintained throughout the evaporation process. Once a thickness of 500 Å was attained, the evaporation source was covered with a shutter,

which was operated from outside. After the process was over, thin films were taken out of the chamber and were analyzed for structural and optical properties. X-ray diffraction patterns of thin RG7112 films of a-Se x Te100-x nanorods were obtained with the help of an Ultima-IV (Rigaku, Tokyo, Japan) diffractometer (λ = 1.5418 Å wavelength CuKα radiation at 40 kV accelerating voltage and 30 mA current), using parallel beam geometry with a multipurpose thin film attachment. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns for all the studied thin films were recorded in theta – 2 theta scans with a grazing incidence angle of 1°, an angular interval (20° to 80°), a step size of 0.05°, and a count time of 2 s per step. Field emission scanning electron microscopic (FESEM) images of these thin AZD1390 films containing aligned nanorods were obtained using a Quanta FEI SEM (FEI Co., Hillsboro, OR, USA) operated at 30 kV. A 120-kVtransmission electron microscope (TEM; JEM-1400, JEOL,

Tokyo, Japan) was employed to study the microstructure of these aligned nanorods. Energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) was employed to study the composition of these as-deposited films using EDAX (Ametek, Berwyn, PA, USA) operated at an accelerating voltage of 15 kV for 120 s. To study the optical properties of these samples, we deposited the a-Se x Te100-x thin films on the glass substrates at room temperature using a modified thermal evaporation system. The thickness of the films was kept fixed at 500 Å, which was measured using the quartz crystal thickness monitor (FTM 7, BOC Edwards). The experimental data on optical absorption, reflection, and transmission was recorded using a computer-controlled Pregnenolone JascoV-500UV/Vis/NIR spectrophotometer (Jasco Analytical Instruments, Easton, MD, USA). It is well known that we normally measure optical density with the instrument and divide this optical density by the thickness of the film to get the value of the absorption coefficient. To neutralize the absorbance of glass, we used the glass substrate as a reference as our thin films were deposited on the glass substrate. The optical absorption, reflection, and transmission were recorded as a function of incident photon energy for a wavelength range (400 to 900 nm).