Inorganic thin-film combinatorial studies for rapidly optimising functional properties

Combinatorial chemistry is now commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry and applied rigorously in the discovery of drugs. Within materials science, combinatorial methods have been widely applied in investigating thin-films and since its re-introduction in the mid 90's more than 20 new families of materials have been discovered. Yet, given the high diversity of states that can be produced in a single deposition, such methods are now being used more prominently to optimise functional properties of existing materials; having been applied in a variety of fields. In this review we will cover the key developments in bandgap, ferro/di-electric, fuel cell anode/cathode, H-2 storage, hardness, Li battery electrodes, luminescence, transparent ferro-magnetic, photocatalytic, photovoltaic, shape-memory, transparent conducting oxide and thermo-electric materials optimisation. The critical review focuses on how functional-property relationships have been derived from combinatorial studies (217 references).