Atomic layer deposition, a unique method for the preparation of energy conversion devices

• Julien Bachmann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 245–248, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.26

• homogeneous growth even if the gas phase is inhomogeneous – a situation notably found in highly porous systems. Readers of this Thematic Series will obtain a glimpse of the broad applicability of the method in different types of energy conversion devices (summarized in Table 1). The plethora of functions

Modeling and optimization of atomic layer deposition processes on vertically aligned carbon nanotubes

• Nuri Yazdani,
• Vipin Chawla,
• Eve Edwards,
• Vanessa Wood,
• Hyung Gyu Park and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 234–244, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.25

• typical ALD processes, gas phase collisions among the precursor molecules in the pores of VACNT structure are far less frequent than collisions between a precursor molecule and a CNT surface. This corresponds to the free molecular regime of gas transport (i.e., Knudsen diffusion) [28][29]. Furthermore

The role of surface corrugation and tip oscillation in single-molecule manipulation with a non-contact atomic force microscope

• Christian Wagner,
• Norman Fournier,
• F. Stefan Tautz and
• Ruslan Temirov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 202–209, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.22

• simulate the intramolecular mechanics of PTCDA, fitting it explicitly to DFT calculations of the mechanical properties of a gas phase molecule. The intramolecular force-field parameters are kept fixed through the rest of the simulation. The molecule–tip bond is described by a spherical Morse potential (D

Confinement dependence of electro-catalysts for hydrogen evolution from water splitting

• Mikaela Lindgren and
• Itai Panas

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 195–201, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.21

• an efficient absorber of H2 in the gas phase under ambient conditions - a purely chemical property. The semi-quantitative nature of the methodology does not allow for precise predictions of absolute numbers (see horizontal "error bar" in Figure 1e). However, it may be that the overpotentials reported

The role of oxygen and water on molybdenum nanoclusters for electro catalytic ammonia production

• Jakob G. Howalt and
• Tejs Vegge

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 111–120, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.11

• calculated as where Esurface/O and Esurface are the total energies of the molybdenum nanocluster with and without the specific oxygen atom adsorbed, and is the gas phase energy of water and are the energy of protons and electrons with an applied potential defined by the computational hydrogen electrode

• following. First hydrogen is bound to the surface, then O is reduced to OH and then finally the reduction of N2 can take place. Here, the reaction free energy for production of gas phase hydrogen is ∆G[H* + (H+ + e−) → H2(g)] = 0.20 eV and for water formation is ∆G[OH + (H+ + e−) → H2O*] = 0.59 eV, while ∆G

• consequence that the free energy barrier for producing gas phase hydrogen molecules is lowered. The results for ammonia production on a partially oxidized molybdenum nanocluster indicates that the formation of ammonia on the molybdenum nanocluster is possible at a low onset potential, but with a low Faradaic

Adsorption of the ionic liquid [BMP][TFSA] on Au(111) and Ag(111): substrate effects on the structure formation investigated by STM

• Benedikt Uhl,
• Florian Buchner,
• Dorothea Alwast,
• Nadja Wagner and
• R. Jürgen Behm

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 903–918, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.102

Challenges in realizing ultraflat materials surfaces

• Takashi Yatsui,
• Wataru Nomura,
• Fabrice Stehlin,
• Olivier Soppera,
• Makoto Naruse and
• Motoichi Ohtsu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 875–885, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.99

• in the gas-phase molecules, and there was no selective etching in this case. Therefore, etching with the 5.82 eV light did not the change the small-scale surface roughness profile. Moreover, it is noteworthy that this information could be revealed only by considering the R(l) values. The results

Synthesis of indium oxi-sulfide films by atomic layer deposition: The essential role of plasma enhancement

• Cathy Bugot,
• Nathanaëlle Schneider,
• Daniel Lincot and
• Frédérique Donsanti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 750–757, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.85

• oxygen or recombined species like O3 [32][33]. Consequently, exchange reactions between adsorbed oxygen and oxygen species from the gas phase or recombination reactions have to be considered. Marinov et al. studied the interactions between a radiofrequency O2 plasma and oxide surfaces like TiO2, SiO2 and

• Pyrex [32]. They demonstrated that these materials surfaces are continuously re-structured under O2 plasma exposure because of the exchange reactions that occur between O atoms in the films and oxygen species of the gas phase. They also reported that reaction products undergo oxidation at the surface

Large-scale atomistic and quantum-mechanical simulations of a Nafion membrane: Morphology, proton solvation and charge transport

• Pavel V. Komarov,
• Pavel G. Khalatur and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 567–587, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.65

• to perform accurate DFT-based molecular calculations for a wide range of chemical environments, including gas phase, interfaces, and condensed phase [91]. The Kohn–Sham orbitals were expanded in contracted Gaussian basis sets. Core electrons were removed by the introduction of norm conserving

Novel composite Zr/PBI-O-PhT membranes for HT-PEFC applications

• Mikhail S. Kondratenko,
• Igor I. Ponomarev,
• Marat O. Gallyamov,
• Dmitry Y. Razorenov,
• Yulia A. Volkova,
• Elena P. Kharitonova and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 481–492, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.57

• of PA inside the MEA and the formation of the effective boundary between the three phases (electron and proton conducting phases and gas phase) is observed during the first 1000 h. This relaxation time is noticeably higher than the typical time of about 100 hours reported in the literature as a

The role of electron-stimulated desorption in focused electron beam induced deposition

• Willem F. van Dorp,
• Thomas W. Hansen,
• Jakob B. Wagner and
• Jeff T. M. De Hosson

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 474–480, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.56

• function of the dwell time in Figure 2a (see below), from which Edes can be determined. Following the model proposed by Müller et al. [22], the precursor coverage, N·(cm−2), depends on the adsorption from the gas phase, the diffusion of precursor molecules over the surface, the number of molecules consumed

• in the reaction with the electrons and desorption to the gas phase: where g is the sticking factor, F is the gas flux, N0 is the density of adsorption sites in a monolayer, D is the diffusion coefficient, σ(E) is the cross section for dissociation, J is the electron flux, and τ is the residence time

• of the molecules on the surface. The first term describes adsorption of precursor molecules from the gas phase on available sites on the substrate. The second term describes the number of molecules arriving at the writing position due to surface diffusion, the contribution of which depends on the

Influence of the solvent on the stability of bis(terpyridine) structures on graphite

• Daniela Künzel and
• Axel Groß

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 269–277, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.29

• calculations at the gas/solid interface, but at an entirely different range of chemical potentials because of the rather different energy reference related to molecules in the gas phase. The calculations presented so far have already shown that the inclusion of TCB into the model has a drastic effect. It may

Selective surface modification of lithographic silicon oxide nanostructures by organofunctional silanes

• Thomas Baumgärtel,
• Christian von Borczyskowski and
• Harald Graaf

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 218–226, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.22

• during the functionalization reaction [39]. An elevation of the reaction temperature seems to be a promising step for future experiments in order to obtain more densely packed FITC monolayers on the silicon oxide nanostructures. Also a formation of silane monolayers from the gas phase should be

Functionalization of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes

• Eloise Van Hooijdonk,
• Carla Bittencourt,
• Rony Snyders and
• Jean-François Colomer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 129–152, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.14

• functionalization, and also dry gas-phase functionalization. Before presenting these methods, we briefly discuss different ways to synthesize vertically aligned carbon nanotubes and the existing approaches to obtain patterning of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. A part of this review is also dedicated to a

• layer deposition (ALD). First the VA-CNTs were modified by chemical functionalization with a trimethylaluminium (TMA) monolayer or ex-situ Ar, O2 or Ar/O2 RF-plasma functionalization. Then, platinum was deposited by ALD. The gas-phase functionalization route was preferred in order to control the

Controlled deposition and combing of DNA across lithographically defined patterns on silicon

• Zeinab Esmail Nazari and
• Leonid Gurevich

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 72–76, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.8

• molecules across lithographically defined patterns. The technique involves surface modification of Si/SiO2 substrates with a hydrophobic silane by using gas-phase deposition. Thereafter, DNA molecules are aligned by dragging the droplet on the hydrophobic substrate with a pipette tip. Using this procedure

• substrates are coated with a thin layer of a hydrophobic silane by gas-phase deposition. Figure 1 is a representation of the combing procedure used in this experiment. In the method proposed here, the applied meniscus force is large enough to allow efficient combing of DNA across nanofabricated patterns as

• –peptide conjugates, while the original recipe was proven to be ineffective for combing these materials [11]. Figure 3 represents the topography of combed dsDNA conjugated with various peptides. Combing across nanoelectrodes was also possible for DNA–peptide conjugates (Figure 3e). The gas-phase deposition

Structural and electronic properties of oligo- and polythiophenes modified by substituents

• Simon P. Rittmeyer and
• Axel Groß

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 909–919, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.101

• predicted a dihedral angle of 17.5° with a very flat rotational potential for angles from 0° to 30° whereas Almenningen et al. obtained an angle of about 34° using gas-phase electron diffraction [37]. There are known problems when using GGA-DFT to compute rotational barriers especially for conjugated

Diamond nanophotonics

• Katja Beha,
• Helmut Fedder,
• Marco Wolfer,
• Merle C. Becker,
• Petr Siyushev,
• Mohammad Jamali,
• Anton Batalov,
• Christopher Hinz,
• Jakob Hees,
• Lutz Kirste,
• Harald Obloh,
• Etienne Gheeraert,
• Boris Naydenov,
• Ingmar Jakobi,
• Florian Dolde,
• Sébastien Pezzagna,
• Daniel Twittchen,
• Matthew Markham,
• Daniel Dregely,
• Harald Giessen,
• Jan Meijer,
• Fedor Jelezko,
• Christoph E. Nebel,
• Rudolf Bratschitsch,
• Alfred Leitenstorfer and
• Jörg Wrachtrup

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 895–908, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.100

• -collection efficiency and directed emission is demonstrated by solid immersion lenses and micropillar cavities. Thereafter, the coupling of diamond nanocrystals to the guided modes of micropillar resonators is discussed along with experimental results. Finally, we present a gas-phase-doping approach to

• advantage of our gas-phase-doping approach is that it offers a targeted dopant addition. The dopant concentration in the gas phase can be adjusted either by the temperature of the precursor material in the dopant reservoir or by the carrier gas flux. The reproducibility of our doping approach was verified

• was hence ascribed to impurities originating from the filament material and accordingly from the cathode material of the reactor systems. The observation of the W5-luminescence in diamond layers grown with the addition of W(CO)6 confirms the previous assignment. The gas-phase doping approach offered

Influence of the diameter of single-walled carbon nanotube bundles on the optoelectronic performance of dry-deposited thin films

• Kimmo Mustonen,
• Toma Susi,
• Antti Kaskela,
• Patrik Laiho,
• Ying Tian,
• Albert G. Nasibulin and
• Esko I. Kauppinen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 692–702, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.79

• synthesized under previously optimized conditions at 880 °C with the introduction of 1500 ppm CO2. The SWCNTs were collected from the gas phase by filtering the flow at the reactor outlet through 10 mm diameter nitrocellulose disk filters (Millipore, HAWP, 0.45 µm pore diameter). In addition to the HWG

Zeolites as nanoporous, gas-sensitive materials for in situ monitoring of DeNO_x-SCR

• Thomas Simons and
• Ulrich Simon

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 667–673, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.76

• desorption from catalytic conversion under SCR-like conditions by IS on zeolite H-ZSM 5 with a Si/Al ratio of 80. We demonstrated that in situ monitoring of the NH3 conversion with NOx becomes feasible when the zeolite is loaded with NH3 first and NOx is applied to the gas phase afterwards [34]. In this

Polymer blend lithography: A versatile method to fabricate nanopatterned self-assembled monolayers

• Cheng Huang,
• Markus Moosmann,
• Jiehong Jin,
• Tobias Heiler,
• Stefan Walheim and
• Thomas Schimmel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 620–628, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.71

• mask can be alternatively dissolved in THF, following the protocol described above for acetic acid. For the three-phase template the (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES, Aldrich) SAM was deposited onto the silicon surface inside the holes of the lithographic mask in the gas phase, shown in Figure 5a

Focused electron beam induced deposition: A perspective

• Michael Huth,
• Fabrizio Porrati,
• Christian Schwalb,
• Marcel Winhold,
• Roland Sachser,
• Maja Dukic,
• Jonathan Adams and
• Georg Fantner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 597–619, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.70

• used in FEBID. In particular, one has to keep in mind that dissociation cross sections obtained on precursor molecules in the gas phase do not necessarily provide a suitable basis for a quantitative description of precursors in an adsorbed state. The coupling to the substrate provides additional

Spontaneous dissociation of Co₂(CO)₈ and autocatalytic growth of Co on SiO₂: A combined experimental and theoretical investigation

• Kaliappan Muthukumar,
• Harald O. Jeschke,
• Roser Valentí,
• Evgeniya Begun,
• Johannes Schwenk,
• Fabrizio Porrati and
• Michael Huth

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 546–555, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.63

• result of geometry optimization and are discussed in the text. Calculated Bader charges for Co2(CO)8 in units of electrons in the gas phase and for the adsorbate on SiO2 surfaces. The numbers in parenthesis identify the CO ligand as shown in Figure 5a and Figure 7. Values indicated by an asterisk

Imaging ultra thin layers with helium ion microscopy: Utilizing the channeling contrast mechanism

• Gregor Hlawacek,
• Vasilisa Veligura,
• Stefan Lorbek,
• Tijs F. Mocking,
• Antony George,
• Raoul van Gastel,
• Harold J. W. Zandvliet and
• Bene Poelsema

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 507–512, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.58

• , the BSHe data presented here was recorded with lower PEs between 10 keV and 20 keV. This results in a better signal-to-noise ratio for the BSHe images. Patterns of self-assembled monolayers (SAM) were created by using a PDMS stamp and gas-phase silanization. Orthogonal stripes with an identical width

Macromolecular shape and interactions in layer-by-layer assemblies within cylindrical nanopores

• Thomas D. Lazzara,
• K. H. Aaron Lau,
• Wolfgang Knoll,
• Andreas Janshoff and
• Claudia Steinem

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 475–484, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.54

• was adsorbed on the unfunctionalized surface. AAO substrates were O2 plasma cleaned for 2 min immediately prior to gas-phase silanization to increase the surface density of OH groups. The glass slide substrates to be silanized were inserted into a glass staining jar and 50 µL of APTES were added in a

Forming nanoparticles of water-soluble ionic molecules and embedding them into polymer and glass substrates

• Stella Kiel,
• Olga Grinberg,
• Nina Perkas,
• Jerome Charmet,
• Herbert Kepner and
• Aharon Gedanken

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 267–276, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.30

• the alkali metals arose from the gas phase of the bubbles. The ions reached the hot center of the bubble by the flow of the liquid towards the center upon their collapse. In our case, cavitation occurs not only in pure liquid, but also in liquid near a solid surface (glass slides) and it was found