i would say quarz glass. it is not very expensive, you may order wery thin one, its absorption and emission properties are known and /or easy to measure by yourself.It is not changing any properties of your material so you may measure everything up to 240nm ( int the 160-240 nm quarz glass absorbs) -this is for PL. For electrical properties, try to use quarz glass with ITO. It is eanugh that you will look for details in any OLED paper. they are all doing EL and electrical curves.

Hi Dusan,

Maybe you could use any substrate after coating this with a film with negligible roughness with sputtering, for example.

Good luck!

Elena

Depends on the purpose of your sample. If you are leaving sample and substrate together to examine the interface, You can choose from quite a number depending what interface you wish to create. If you are separating the two, you want to use something relatively cheap. For this I'd use high purity cleaved NaCl, then you can just dissolve the NaCl in warm water and you will just be left with your polymer.

Dear Dusan, this will depend much on your applications. We currently work on glass slides and SiO2-Si (more expensive) for optical: photonics and plasmonics. You can see in my publication list some papers on the field using nanocomposites: polymers with metal nanoparticles and QDots. Regards, juan.

There are two ways of managing a spin coated film. 1. Peel-off and 2.Dissolve support. Peel off is convenient if the films are not too thin. In any case one is interested often in using a polymer as a platform for doing something specific. Like plasmonics with Ag and photoluminescence with iodized Ag. We were happy using PVA as the polymer and spin coating was done on glass substrates. Glass as a substrate is quite versatile. Just as thermal evaporation is for Ag coating. Ultimately the choice depends on the end use/application.

It mainly depends on the solvent that you are using for the polymer, check weather the substrate is hydrophilic or hydrophobic and choose according to that

Generally you can use a simple glass substrate and depending on the application you have to choose your substrate.

DEAR DUSAN, Above suggestions are very good .you must be follow them. Most convenient substrate for spin coating of polymers for electrochemical sensing application is ITO or gold.Like wise convenient substrate is according to application and nature of polymer.

Dear Dusan, It is depend on your application, If you want to deposit another thin film layer on top of it, the best choice is a material which has more compatibility of your second layer. As you know, stress is one of the most important factors that could affect the uniformity, and cracking effect in your thin film structure. In this case my suggestion is using Si or silica, however you can use the Si(GaAs)-SiO2-polymer structure if you are going to use your thin film for waveguide applications. In this case you will secure your structure from lossy modes.

hai, if you are aiming at cost effective way then you can use KAPTON substrates .they are a kind of flexible substrates.

.more over you can use silicon and quartz substrates.

Dear Dusan, I agree with Martinez-Pastor answer. Depends on your goal. Glass could be enough if you want transparency in the vis-NIR. Use fused silica for UV. You could give a look to our paper published on J. Phys. Chem. C in 2011.

Dear colleagues, I am very grateful to all of you for sharing your expertise and help regarding my problem. :)

The thing I want to do is to deposit metals on thin films of NH2 terminated PS and PMMA in order to prepare polymer nanocomposites, and to investigate the morphology, optical and electrical properties of that material. As I can see from your comments I'll need multiple substrates to do that ;).

@Christopher Quinn: That is a wonderful suggestion, thank you very much! I used Si wafers so far and HF to dissolve it & remove the film. Do you have any idea which company sells those things?

@Juan Martinez-Pastor & @David Comoretto: Thank you for sharing your work, the optical properties will be one of key elements in my study, I will surely check your publication thoroughly.

@Pawan Kumar: I've found on the Sigma-Aldrich site that they sell ITO-coated PET. Do you think it will work for spin coating and electrical measurements?

for optical studies like PL you should use sapphire substrate.. Si substrate can be used for electrical characterization..

@ omar,

can you explain little bit more, pls..

@kiran dasari we record absorption or transmission by passing light through it so substrate plays its role but for PL we are considered about the reflection of the LASER only hence substrate effect will be very less.

yes, thats my intention too .. thats y i recommended sapphire fr PL.. sapphire is useful to record true PL of the thin films.. is not it??

use glass if you are not annealing at high temperature. its cheap n best. can be dissolved in HF to get your layer, optical properties can be done by subtracting the glass effect using baseline correction.. anybody can do it.. so dont worry.. go for glass.. you can use some chemical treatment to make your substrate hydrophobic or hydrophilic depending on your requirement.

I am not sure I did not do it by myself but may be you can use MICA ?

Also for any substrate if you coat HMDS before spin coating you can get better adhesion of PR on your substrate..

i would say quarz glass. it is not very expensive, you may order wery thin one, its absorption and emission properties are known and /or easy to measure by yourself.It is not changing any properties of your material so you may measure everything up to 240nm ( int the 160-240 nm quarz glass absorbs) -this is for PL. For electrical properties, try to use quarz glass with ITO. It is eanugh that you will look for details in any OLED paper. they are all doing EL and electrical curves.

Sodium Chloride Substrates are suitable for processing via spin coating or depends on the deposition with environmental conditions.

not the cheapest for sure, but Si wafers are really easy to use for unexperienced users (flat, easy to cut, easy to image etc.). Of course then it depends on your polymer adhesion to Si wafers, some pretreatment may be necessary to get the right hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity etc...

You can use quarz, glass.

Hi Dusan, I run an XPS instrument and a lot of the samples I get to run are spun coated onto silicon wafer. I understand that there are cleaning techniques for the Si such as piranha etching (nasty) or flame annealling in a bunsen or H2 flame. The jury is out on what works. Sometimes the films are patchy and incomplete, sometimes not. Hope this is useful, Emily

When you purchase substrates, you might want to specify that they should be "epi-polished." Otherwise, the polishing may be of lower quality and the films will be more rough.

Can i deposit thin films of cnts/pva on glass substrate for evaluate electrical conductivity ? Pls guide me .........

The main issue in electrical conductivity measurements is contact making rather than glass/mica/quartz.

In such a case you could coat your films(sample) on ITO coated glass slides.

HI friends, ITO is shows substantial electrical conductivity even at room temperature. Substrates should be highly insulating in the operating temprature range. So, insulating oxides like alumina, SiO2 are of better choice, if the measurement is at room temperature, glass or quartz are also ok, if you can do post annealation after coating for adhesion.

My comment was in answer to another questioner whose object was electrical measurement

How about mica? Cheap, smooth and easy to peel off.

If I were you I would be a little innovative and try 'decolam'

Research Gate is turning out to be a great forum for free and open exchange of creative and applicable ideas.

Shouldn't it find favour with project/thesis advisors as much as their students? After all learning and knowledge creation/application are dynamic and ageless processes-more like a river- a perennial river? Yes?

Of course it depends on the purpose and application. I can tell you my opinion for nanotech applications (i.e. nanomaterials). Personally, Si wafers are my favourite: easy to handle and super easy and neat to cut reproducibly even in tiny pieces, super flat, easy to check changes on surface even by eye (compared to other materials), well behaved for most analysis and processes, resistant, however not cheap at all. Nevertheless, the cost of the wafer for me was always balanced by the time and cost savings I had during all subsequent steps, because everything went quite smooth with no big issues (i.e. samples were easy to prepare and analyse). I find mica very useful for AFM analysis, but not as convenient for other processes. I actually don't like glass, I find it not flat enough for nanoscale-analyses/processes, and either too difficult to cut neatly when it's too thick, and too fragile to handle when it's too thin. Hope it helps. Good luck.

Silvia makes a good point here, Si wafers are great for thin film work. Their main drawback is if you need to remove the film from the substrate and then Si becomes a problem, films have great adhesion with Si. Sometimes a cheaper alternative is cleaved NaCl, which is also very flat when done correctly - and it has the benefit of dissolving in a solvent to float off your films. Spin coating isn't my first choice in deposition - preferred is PVD for excellent control of thickness, closely followed by CVD for a large amount of similar samples.