Silicon carbide (SiC) is a wide-bandgap semiconductor valued for durability and high performance, enabling advanced applications. This study investigates femtosecond-laser grooving of 4 H-SiC to assess the effects of incident face and crystallographic direction on groove morphology, and demonstrates a finishing step using the same laser source to reduce oxides on in-groove nanostructures. V-shaped grooves with in-groove nanostructures were obtained. A subsequent secondary finishing step, implemented with the same laser source, reduced the oxygen content of the nanostructures, yielding micro/nanostructured grooves with reduced oxygen content. These results show that, under the tested conditions, femtosecond-laser grooving produced crack-free grooves, and that the finishing step reduced the oxygen content of in-groove nanostructures.

The presented review aims to evaluate the effect of lithium compounds on the development of ceramic materials. Based on a systematic review methodology, 17 publications were selected from databases provided by Scopus (Elsevier), Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), and Springer Link. The analysis of the selected articles is presented segmented into the following topics: bibliometric analysis and contextualization of the global scenario, evaluation of the lithium source used in each of the works, as well as the products and technological parameters evaluated (linear shrinkage and apparent density, water absorption and porosity, mechanical strength, thermal expansion, other properties, and microstructure). In general, authors attribute to lithium compounds a fluxing agent, being responsible for the formation of a vitrous phase due to the reduction of viscosity during heat treatment. Thus, products with lower porosity and water absorption are generated, parameters associated with higher density and mechanical strength. Further investigation is still needed on the influence of α and β-spodumene phases in a comparative manner, as well as more studies regarding the coefficient of thermal expansion.

The objective of this work is to evaluate the capability of femtosecond laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (fs-LIBS) to characterize copper coatings on Lyocell textile fibers with micrometric spatial resolution. In this study, fs-LIBS is employed as a high-resolution analytical technique for characterizing copper coatings on heat-sensitive polymer-based Lyocell fabric. A relative spectral analysis of the multilayered material was performed by tracking relative variations in emission lines within the coating thickness and in spatially selected regions where the coloring is inhomogeneous. The observed color inhomogeneity arises from local variations in oxide formation and particle density during the copper deposition process. A coated textile sample was inspected via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) from the surface to the polymer substrate to estimate a Cu coating thickness of approximately 20 $$\mu m$$ and fiber diameters of approximately 175 $$\mu m$$ . SEM-EDX was used only to estimate coating thickness, as its limited sensitivity to light elements and buried interfaces makes it unsuitable for resolving the polymer and oxide signatures targeted in this work. The proposed measuring approach based on fs-LIBS enabled precise chemical mapping with a lateral resolution of 7 $$\mu m$$ linked to the implemented focusing optics and shallow depth profiling with minimal thermal damage to the underlying polymer substrates. The technique successfully identified key elements such as Copper (Cu-I) and trace contaminants such as Silver (Ag-I), Tin (Sn-II), and Sodium (Na-I), introduced during silver seeding and electroless copper deposition. Additionally, due to the ultrashort pulse duration of the laser pulses used, CN and C–C band spectral lines coming from the dielectric polymer, as well as Cu oxides (CuO, Cu₂O) originating from extremely thin surface layers, could also be detected. These findings highlight the capability of fs-LIBS for spatially selective, minimally invasive, real-time analysis and demonstrate its compatibility with the characterization of thin films deposited on thermally sensitive substrates, relevant for flexible electronics and smart textile applications.

Abstract Lattice defects play an important role in the tailoring of the magnetic properties of spinel ferrites. Thus, understanding the structure-property relation is essential for practical applications of these materials. In the present work, the relationship between defects, microstructure, and magnetic properties of submicron spinel nickel ferrites has been investigated. Four samples of nickel ferrites were obtained by a sol-gel method followed by annealing for 3 h at different temperatures in air atmosphere. A set of techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction along with Rietveld refinement, and Mössbauer spectroscopy, was used to characterize the particle morphology, elemental composition, crystal structure, and cation distribution, respectively. X-ray line profile analysis was used to estimate the diffraction domain size and microstrain of the obtained samples. The magnetic properties of the samples were investigated by DC magnetometry. The results showed that the lattice defects and microstrain decrease, the diffraction domain increases, and the particle morphology changes as the annealing temperature increases. Mössbauer spectroscopy data indicated a small variation in distribution of Fe cations over the tetrahedral and octahedral sites for samples annealed at 500 and 1000 $$^{\circ }$$ C. The magnetic hysteresis curves for all samples exhibited low coercivity and moderate saturation magnetization. The variation of magnetic parameters with microstructural parameters revealed that the saturation magnetization increased from 45.9 to 47.2 emu/g and coercivity decreased from 138 to 81 Oe with crystallite growth and reduction in microstrain. These results show how defects and microstructure are related to changes in magnetic properties of nickel ferrites with submicron size distribution.