Morphology-driven gas sensing by fabricated fractals: A review

• Vishal Kamathe and
• Rupali Nagar

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 1187–1208, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.88

• concentrations of ethanol. The SnO2 with NDs showed enhanced ethanol sensing in comparison to SnO2 NWs without NDs, which was attributed to a higher surface-to-volume ratio, more grain boundaries, and the presence of junction barriers at the ND–NW interfaces. The estimated D for the SnO2 nanodendrites was 1.88

Is the Ne operation of the helium ion microscope suitable for electron backscatter diffraction sample preparation?

• Annalena Wolff

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 965–983, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.73

• evaluation of the grain boundaries shows that ≈8% of the grain boundaries are low-angle grain boundaries (LAGB). These are displayed in yellow in Figure 3e. High-angle grain boundaries (HAGB) which are displayed in red in Figure 3e correspond to 92% of the grain boundaries. These values serve as reference

• and a video of the occurring sample change is given in Supporting Information File 2. The patches appear to nucleate around the grain boundaries at the darker grains within the sample and then gradually increase in size and merge. The patches are highlighted with blue arrows in Figure 5b and Figure 5c

• different times. This result is in good agreement with the observed dark patch growth in the ion channeling images. The kernel average misorientation map and grain boundary map overlay (Figure 7c) shows a higher local misorientation and low-angle grain boundaries within the topographically higher regions

Effects of temperature and repeat layer spacing on mechanical properties of graphene/polycrystalline copper nanolaminated composites under shear loading

• Chia-Wei Huang,
• Man-Ping Chang and
• Te-Hua Fang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 863–877, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.65

• stacking faults occur in all copper layers. Stacking faults are produced from two adjacent HCP layers. These defects are caused by the release of energy stored in the specimens. The deformation of the polycrystalline structure is mostly affected by the grain boundaries [46][47]. When the dislocations

• propagate to the grain boundaries, they will cause the grain boundaries to slide and twist. The dislocations may be absorbed by the grain boundaries or diffuse into the grains. Besides, the evolution of grains is also one of the main factors of crystal structure deformation. As shown in Figure 16b1 and

• Figure 16c1, grains “1” and “2” and grains “3” and “4” will merge with increasing shear strain and form new grains with dislocations and stacking faults, as shown in Figure 16b4 and Figure 16c4. The evolution of grains is due to the local displacement of grain boundaries and atoms adjacent to the grain

A review of defect engineering, ion implantation, and nanofabrication using the helium ion microscope

• Frances I. Allen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 633–664, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.52

• ], tungsten [83][84][85], an Fe–Zr alloy [86], a Y2O3/Fe bilayer [87], and nanocluster films of magnetite and core–shell iron–magnetite nanoparticles [88]. In these studies, various implantation effects have been investigated, including the tendency for grain boundaries and interfaces to act as sinks for

Properties of graphene deposited on GaN nanowires: influence of nanowire roughness, self-induced nanogating and defects

• Jakub Kierdaszuk,
• Piotr Kaźmierczak,
• Justyna Grzonka,
• Aleksandra Krajewska,
• Aleksandra Przewłoka,
• Wawrzyniec Kaszub,
• Zbigniew R. Zytkiewicz,
• Marta Sobanska,
• Maria Kamińska,
• Andrzej Wysmołek and
• Aneta Drabińska

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 566–577, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.47

• contact with graphene. The lowest concentration of defects is observed for graphene deposited on nanowires with the lowest density. The contact between graphene and densely arranged nanowires leads to a large density of vacancies. On the other hand, grain boundaries are the main type of defects in

• the value of RDD’ ratio equals to 3.5 is characteristic of grain boundaries, five is characteristic of multiple vacancies, seven corresponds to single vacancies, while 13 is observed for sp3 hybridisation defects [20][49]. Furthermore, theoretical calculations predicted values of 1.3 and 10.5 for on

• maximum of high intensity and several smaller maxima can be observed, and approx. 80% or more defects are described by the main maximum. Single vacancies are dominant defects in N0 and N100 samples (maximum of distribution at RDD’ is equal to 8.3 and 7.5, respectively) while the grain boundaries are the

The patterning toolbox FIB-o-mat: Exploiting the full potential of focused helium ions for nanofabrication

• Victor Deinhart,
• Lisa-Marie Kern,
• Jan N. Kirchhof,
• Sabrina Juergensen,
• Joris Sturm,
• Enno Krauss,
• Thorsten Feichtner,
• Sviatoslav Kovalchuk,
• Michael Schneider,
• Dieter Engel,
• Bastian Pfau,
• Bert Hecht,
• Kirill I. Bolotin,
• Stephanie Reich and
• Katja Höflich

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 304–318, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.25

• -crystalline gold constitute an ideal platform for plasmonic applications due to the lack of scattering losses at grain boundaries and surface roughness [56]. In nanostructured gold, collective excitations of the free electron gas may occur under the incidence of visible light [2]. These plasmon polaritons of

The influence of an interfacial hBN layer on the fluorescence of an organic molecule

• Christine Brülke,
• Oliver Bauer and
• Moritz M. Sokolowski

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1663–1684, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.149

• morphology on a micrometer scale [60]. We propose that the defect-rich regions exhibit a large step density due to impurities and/or grain boundaries. Consequently, we assume that the hot spots are related to an inhomogeneous mesoscopic roughness of the Cu(111) surface, which is remnant after sputtering and

Proximity effect in [Nb(1.5 nm)/Fe(x)]₁₀/Nb(50 nm) superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures

• Yury Khaydukov,
• Sabine Pütter,
• Laura Guasco,
• Roman Morari,
• Gideok Kim,
• Thomas Keller,
• Anatolie Sidorenko and
• Bernhard Keimer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1254–1263, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.109

• a rather low RRR of 3.4, which is attributed to enhanced scattering of conduction electrons at the grain boundaries. Neutron reflectometry has shown that Fe/Nb superlattices with x ≤ 2.5 nm form a depth-modulated FeNb alloy with the concentration of iron varying within the superlattice unit cell

High permittivity, breakdown strength, and energy storage density of polythiophene-encapsulated BaTiO₃ nanoparticles

• Adnanullah Khan,
• Amir Habib and
• Adeel Afzal

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1190–1197, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.103

• resistivity of grain boundaries, more energy is required for electron hopping, thus, increasing the loss [27][28]. In the high frequency region that corresponds to the higher conductivity, energy required for the hopping of electrons is less and therefore, the loss decreases [27][28]. Dielectric loss is an

• frequencies, the greater resistive influence of grain boundaries results in lower ac conductivity [28][29]. It is important to note that pristine PTh inherently exhibits the lowest ac conductivity and the highest loss tangent. Therefore, core–shell BTO-PTh nanoparticles offer an excellent combination of

Gas-sensing features of nanostructured tellurium thin films

• Dumitru Tsiulyanu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1010–1018, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.85

• region enriched in holes is formed at the surface and at grain boundary and intragrain regions. Therefore, when the films are exposed to NO2, the surface and grain boundaries are the most affected by the gas reaction. Although the gas sensing occurs due to the variation in hole density at the enriched

Hexagonal boron nitride: a review of the emerging material platform for single-photon sources and the spin–photon interface

• Stefania Castelletto,
• Faraz A. Inam,
• Shin-ichiro Sato and
• Alberto Boretti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 740–769, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.61

Structural optical and electrical properties of a transparent conductive ITO/Al–Ag/ITO multilayer contact

• Aliyu Kabiru Isiyaku,
• Ahmad Hadi Ali and
• Nafarizal Nayan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 695–702, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.57

• roughness is attributed to the increasing grain sizes [35]. The large grain sizes of IAAI films reduce the number of grain boundaries and thus the scattering at grain boundaries. This improves the carrier mobility leading to an increased electrical conductivity of the films. The surface morphology of the

• less light scattering in the metal interlayer [28][29][30]. The annealing treatment has successfully reduced the number of defects leading light scattering [4][36]. The enhanced structural ordering decreases the electron scattering at grain boundaries and impurities. This can lead to an increase in the

Electromigration-induced directional steps towards the formation of single atomic Ag contacts

• Atasi Chatterjee,
• Christoph Tegenkamp and
• Herbert Pfnür

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 680–687, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.55

• structures and at grain boundaries. Nevertheless, we showed recently that it can be used reliably for the formation of single atomic point contacts after careful pre-structuring of the initial Ag nanostructures. The process of formation of nanocontacts by EM down to a single-atom point contact was

• study, the thinning mechanism of EM at grain boundaries correlated with electrical conductance histograms adds additional information to the existing studies just mentioned. The understanding of the origin of conductance histogram peaks can be deepened by searching for correlations between conductance

• growth behavior so that they are nanocrystalline with an average grain size between 30 and 50 nm. These grain boundaries turned out to be the main source of lateral resistance [27]. Therefore, the EM-induced material transport is mainly expected to take place at these boundaries. EM at grain boundaries

Recent progress in perovskite solar cells: the perovskite layer

• Xianfeng Dai,
• Ke Xu and
• Fanan Wei

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 51–60, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.5

• as shown in Figure 4d–g. The 2D perovskite vertically passivates the grain boundaries of the resulting 3D perovskite film. The photo-generated charge-carrier localization is minimized in the low-dimensional perovskite. Hence, the resulting phase pure 2D perovskite sections lead to an enhancement of

Synthesis and acetone sensing properties of ZnFe₂O₄/rGO gas sensors

• Kaidi Wu,
• Yifan Luo,
• Ying Li and
• Chao Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2516–2526, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.242

• surface of ZnFe2O4 and react with the adsorbed O2− and O− anions at the ZnFe2O4 grain boundaries. Subsequently, the electrons will be released back to the conduction band and the resistance will decrease again. The whole process can be described by Equations 2–5 [31][48]. In this work, the 0.5 wt

• will also exist a potential barrier at the grain boundaries. In Figure 11b, when air is introduced, the resistance of the sensor will decrease as a result of the construction of the depletion layers and the potential barriers at the grain boundaries (see also Equations 2–5). When acetone is introduced

Abrupt elastic-to-plastic transition in pentagonal nanowires under bending

• Sergei Vlassov,
• Magnus Mets,
• Boris Polyakov,
• Jianjun Bian,
• Leonid Dorogin and
• Vahur Zadin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2468–2476, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.237

• uniform structure hardening. Five-fold grain boundaries intersect with all possible slip systems restricting the motion of dislocations along any slip direction by the twin boundaries that extend to the center of the wire preventing the initiation of plastic deformation. This makes five-fold twinned NW

Mobility of charge carriers in self-assembled monolayers

• Zhihua Fu,
• Tatjana Ladnorg,
• Hartmut Gliemann,
• Alexander Welle,
• Asif Bashir,
• Michael Rohwerder,
• Qiang Zhang,
• Björn Schüpbach,
• Andreas Terfort and
• Christof Wöll

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2449–2458, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.235

• appropriately functionalized OSC molecules provides a suitable method to determine intrinsic mobilities of charge carriers in OSC thin films. In particular, this method is rather insensitive with regard to influence of grain boundaries and other defects, which hamper the application of conventional methods for

Semitransparent Sb₂S₃ thin film solar cells by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis for use in solar windows

• Jako S. Eensalu,
• Atanas Katerski,
• Erki Kärber,
• Lothar Weinhardt,
• Monika Blum,
• Clemens Heske,
• Wanli Yang,
• Ilona Oja Acik and
• Malle Krunks

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2396–2409, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.230

• absorber, the development of fabrication techniques to produce high quality Sb2S3 absorber layers, with few grain boundaries and intra-grain defects is essential to enable commercialization of Sb2S3-based solar cells [14][38]. The record PCE of 5.77% was achieved with a planar TiO2/Sb2S3/P3HT cell by

• charge carriers is likely impeded by numerous grain boundaries owing to the smaller grain size in thinner films. On the other end, RS is also over 10 Ω cm2 in the cells with overly thick Sb2S3 layers (150 nm), which is ascribed to the ohmic resistance of the thicker absorber. In this study, the

Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond for nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging applications

• Alberto Boretti,
• Lorenzo Rosa,
• Jonathan Blackledge and
• Stefania Castelletto

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2128–2151, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.207

High-temperature resistive gas sensors based on ZnO/SiC nanocomposites

• Vadim B. Platonov,
• Marina N. Rumyantseva,
• Alexander S. Frolov,
• Alexey D. Yapryntsev and
• Alexander M. Gaskov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1537–1547, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.151

• material conductance, kB is the Boltzmann constant, the values of the activation energy Ea were calculated. For ZnO nanofibers, Ea = 0.40 ± 0.04 eV. This value lies within the error with the potential barrier at the grain boundaries eVs (the surface potential barrier energy between particles of

Energy distribution in an ensemble of nanoparticles and its consequences

• Dieter Vollath

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1452–1457, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.143

• grain boundaries, the heat capacity is increased [7]. As a second example, the transition into the superconducting state of nanocrystalline lead is discussed. For these experiments, Li et al. [8] used loosely arranged 4.5 nm particles. The transition from the normal to the superconducting state was

Selective gas detection using Mn₃O₄/WO₃ composites as a sensing layer

• Yongjiao Sun,
• Zhichao Yu,
• Wenda Wang,
• Pengwei Li,
• Gang Li,
• Wendong Zhang,
• Lin Chen,
• Serge Zhuivkov and
• Jie Hu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1423–1433, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.140

• [16]. The blue-colored precursor was first oxidized into faint-yellow-colored WO3 nanowires, and then re-crystallized to nanoparticles or nanorods of larger size with less grain boundaries in order to reduce the free energy. Furthermore, with the increase of the amount of Mn, the proportion of

Kelvin probe force microscopy of the nanoscale electrical surface potential barrier of metal/semiconductor interfaces in ambient atmosphere

• Petr Knotek,
• Tomáš Plecháček,
• Jan Smolík,
• Petr Kutálek,
• Filip Dvořák,
• Milan Vlček,
• Jiří Navrátil and
• Čestmír Drašar

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1401–1411, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.138

• been observed for Si [51][52], Ti, Ni or Al [53][54][55], carbon [56] and organic–inorganic compounds [57]. We suggest, in our case, that OH− or O−/O2− ions diffuse through our polycrystalline Au layer with many defects (grain boundaries, dislocations) forced by the strong electric field (8 V/53 nm of

Direct observation of the CVD growth of monolayer MoS₂ using in situ optical spectroscopy

• Claudia Beatriz López-Posadas,
• Yaxu Wei,
• Wanfu Shen,
• Daniel Kahr,
• Michael Hohage and
• Lidong Sun

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 557–564, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.57

• nanoparticles at the grain boundaries. Furthermore, the height profile measured across the edge of the MoS2 layer reveals a layer thickness of ≈0.69 nm, which is very close to the interlayer spacing in the bulk of 2H phase MoS2. The Raman spectra recorded from each side of the substrate (Figure 1d) show the

Advanced scanning probe lithography using anatase-to-rutile transition to create localized TiO₂ nanorods

• Julian Kalb,
• Vanessa Knittel and
• Lukas Schmidt-Mende

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 412–418, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.40

• to the scratch, but tiny cracks such as the one shown in the figure appear in a distance of a few micrometers. The fracture continues in grains or grain boundaries indicating preferred breaking lines along specific crystal planes. Nanorods grow only in the scratched area, while there is no preferred