[en] Nanocrystalline Fe₉₀Si₁₀, Fe₇₅Si₂₅, and Fe₇₅Si₁₅Al₁₀ alloy powders were produced by high-energy planetary ball milling, starting from elemental powders. The resulting powders were annealed at various temperatures for 30 min and their grain sizes were determined by X-ray diffraction peak broadening using the Williamson-Hall approximation and confirmed by transmission electron microscope (TEM) observation. A minimum crystallite size of 13-17 nm could be achieved in Fe₉₀Si₁₀, Fe₇₅Si₂₅, and Fe₇₅Si₁₅Al₁₀ alloys. The lattice parameters of as-milled Fe₉₀Si₁₀, Fe₇₅Si₂₅, and Fe₇₅Si₁₅Al₁₀ attained minimum values of about 0.2860, 0.2842, and 0.2862 nm, respectively after 60 h, and thereafter remained constant for prolonged milling times. Annealing at 873 K increased the grain size of Fe₉₀Si₁₀ from approximately 17 nm to about 35 nm. Fe₇₅Si₂₅ exhibited some stability against grain growth at low temperatures but not above 673 K. Fe₇₅Si₁₅Al₁₀ grains were more stable with no significant grain growth until 873 K. For Fe₇₅Si₂₅ and Fe₇₅Si₁₅Al₁₀ alloys annealing at 773, 873, and 973 K resulted in the formation of ordered DO₃ structure with long-range order (LRO) parameters ranging from 0.64 to 0.71. The internal strains of all three compositions decreased steadily with annealing from the range 0.63-0.32% to the range 0.23-0.07%

[en] A radius of curvature technique was used to study stresses in zinc oxide (ZnO) films prepared by filtered cathodic vacuum arc. To deposit the films, a pure zinc target was used and O₂ was fed into the chamber. It was found that stresses in ZnO films are strongly correlated to the growth parameters of substrate temperature, substrate bias and oxygen pressure. The films prepared for studying the effect of substrate bias and oxygen pressure exhibited only compressive stress. For the films prepared to investigate the effect of substrate temperature, a transition from compressive to tensile stress was observed when the temperature was varied from 100 to 420 deg. C. The tensile stress is attributed to thermal stress caused by the difference in thermal expansion coefficients of the film and the substrate. Atomic force microscope images of the films were obtained to study their surface morphology. It is found that the surface morphology is significantly influenced by the growth parameters