Recent advances in high-throughput experimentation for combinatorial studies have accelerated the discovery and analysis of materials across a wide range of compositions and synthesis conditions. However, many of the more powerful characterization methods are limited by speed, cost, availability, and/or resolution. To make efficient use of these methods, there is value in developing approaches for identifying critical compositions and conditions to be used as a priori knowledge for follow-up characterization with high-precision techniques, such as micrometer-scale synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction (XRD). Here, we demonstrate the use of optical microscopy and reflectance spectroscopy to identify likely phase-change boundaries in thin film libraries. These methods are used to delineate possible metastable phase boundaries following lateral-gradient laser spike annealing (lg-LSA) of oxide materials. The set of boundaries are then compared with definitive determinations of structural transformations obtained using high-resolution XRD. We demonstrate that the optical methods detect more than 95% of the structural transformations in a composition-gradient La-Mn-O library and a Ga₂O₃ sample, both subject to an extensive set of lg-LSA anneals. Our results provide quantitative support for the value of optically detected transformations as a priori data to guide subsequent structural characterization, ultimately accelerating and enhancing the efficient implementation of micrometer-resolution XRD experiments.

中文翻译：

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氧化物薄膜中材料转变的光学识别

用于组合研究的高通量实验的最新进展加速了对各种成分和合成条件下材料的发现和分析。然而，许多更强大的表征方法受到速度、成本、可用性和/或分辨率的限制。为了有效地利用这些方法，开发用于识别要用作先验的关键成分和条件的方法是有价值的。使用高精度技术进行后续表征的知识，例如基于微米级同步加速器的 X 射线衍射 (XRD)。在这里，我们展示了使用光学显微镜和反射光谱来识别薄膜库中可能的相变边界。这些方法用于在氧化物材料的横向梯度激光尖峰退火 (lg-LSA) 之后描绘可能的亚稳态相边界。然后将这组边界与使用高分辨率 XRD 获得的结构转变的最终确定进行比较。我们证明了光学方法可以检测到成分梯度 La-Mn-O 库和 Ga ₂ O _{3 中}超过 95% 的结构转变样品，两者都经过大量的 lg-LSA 退火。我们的结果为光学检测转换作为先验数据的价值提供了定量支持，以指导随后的结构表征，最终加速和提高微米分辨率 XRD 实验的有效实施。