Thermo- and electro-optical properties of photonic liquid crystal fibers doped with gold nanoparticles

• Agata Siarkowska,
• Miłosz Chychłowski,
• Daniel Budaszewski,
• Bartłomiej Jankiewicz,
• Bartosz Bartosewicz and
• Tomasz R. Woliński

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2790–2801, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.278

• about 8.0 V/µm and higher, the relaxation time could exceed even the times for an undoped LC. This effect could be connected with the electric constant of metallic dopants. High concentrations of Au NPs give good response times (25–30% shorter than for the undoped LC), but the relaxation times reduce

Ab initio study of adsorption and diffusion of lithium on transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

• Xiaoli Sun and
• Zhiguo Wang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2711–2718, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.270

• phase (Figure 1a), whereas M atoms are located at the octahedral/disordered octahedral centre of six S atoms in the 1T/1T' phase (Figure 1b,c). Some compounds are not stable in the 1T' phase, which will be relaxed to the 1T phase after relaxation. The energy related to the 2H phase per formula unit (f.u

• represented as double zeta basis sets plus polarization, and a cut-off energy of 250 Ry was chosen to calculate the Hamiltonian element. The Monkhorst–Pack scheme with 11 × 11 × 1 k-point meshes were used for integration in the irreducible Brillouin zone for the relaxation of the primitive cell. A 2 × 2 × 1 k

Nanoprofilometry study of focal conic domain structures in a liquid crystalline free surface

• Anna N. Bagdinova,
• Evgeny I. Demikhov,
• Nataliya G. Borisenko and
• Sergei M. Tolokonnikov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2544–2551, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.254

• about 0.1 μm. For the next experiments, the 8CB materials was heated up to 43 °С – the temperature of the isotropic liquid phase, and then cooled down to the smectic-A (SmA) phase temperature. Figure 2 shows the process of formation and relaxation of the craters over the course of 10 min at 30 °С in the

• stabilized at 30.5 °C. Figure 4 illustrates the structure in smectic phase at 30.5 °C. Figure 4a,b demonstrates the appearance of small crater-like structures around larger ones and that the average depth changes from 329 nm (Figure 4a) to 408 nm (Figure 4b) after 15 min of relaxation. Discussion 8CB is a

Dynamic behavior of a nematic liquid crystal mixed with CoFe₂O₄ ferromagnetic nanoparticles in a magnetic field

• Emil Petrescu,
• Cristina Cirtoaje and
• Cristina Stan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2467–2473, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.246

• Fréedericksz threshold. Here τon and τoff are the relaxation times for each case and they contain all the influences of the added ferroparticle and the applied external field as follows: and with where B is the applied magnetic field, Bc is the Fréedericksz transition threshold for the pure liquid crystal and

• relaxation times for this mixture were calculated using experimental results and the theoretical model described above. They are presented in Table 1 where τon is the relaxation time after the field is switched on, and τoff is the relaxation time after the field is switched off. In pure nematic substances

• , the relaxation time τoff does not depend on the applied field as long as it is higher than the Fréedericksz transition threshold. As it can be observed from Table 1, when ferro-particles are added, the relaxation time decreases with increase of the applied field. Conclusion A new alignment was

Laser-assisted fabrication of gold nanoparticle-composed structures embedded in borosilicate glass

• Nikolay Nedyalkov,
• Mihaela Koleva,
• Nadya Stankova,
• Rosen Nikov,
• Mitsuhiro Terakawa,
• Yasutaka Nakajima,
• Lyubomir Aleksandrov and
• Reni Iordanova

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2454–2463, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.244

• annealing times, the entire sample became pink colored. At temperatures below 500 °C, the coloration induced by laser irradiation at 266 nm disappeared and the glass became again transparent in the laser-irradiated areas. This effect has to do with the thermally induced relaxation of the color centers [31

Changes of the absorption cross section of Si nanocrystals with temperature and distance

• Michael Greben,
• Petro Khoroshyy,
• Sebastian Gutsch,
• Daniel Hiller,
• Margit Zacharias and
• Jan Valenta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2315–2323, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.231

• presence of one e–h pair does not influence the absorption of the second one (because of the relatively high [1] density of optical states (DOS) in Si NCs). According to the first assumption, and therefore relaxation of biexcitons in Equation 3 for a given fraction of excitons N1 (Equation 2) can be

• usually determined directly as the slope of the function 1/τON(Iex). However, our experiments show that the PL lifetime, τPL(Iex), is also a function of the excitation power [28] (Figure 2b). Assuming the radiative relaxation, τr, to be independent on the power, this can be understood by the saturation of

The interplay between spin densities and magnetic superexchange interactions: case studies of mono- and trinuclear bis(oxamato)-type complexes

• Azar Aliabadi,
• Bernd Büchner,
• Vladislav Kataev and
• Tobias Rüffer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2245–2256, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.224

• material that exhibits a slow relaxation of the magnetization below the blocking temperature. Oxamato-based SCMs, especially when equipped with further redox-switchable functionalities, are regarded as novel materials for the design of molecular spintronic devices [8][17][18]. Into such devices [21][22

• orientations with a substantially better S/N ratio as compared to the pulsed ENDOR spectra of 8@7. This improvement can be explained by the different relaxation paths involved in the two experiments and the smaller number of pulses in the EDNMR protocol. The EDNMR spectra have been modeled with the same

• ]. We aim to obtain with such experiments further insights into an understanding of mononuclear type-II and bis(oxamidato) complexes with respect to their electron spin dynamics, spin coherence and relaxation processes as well as their possible applications in molecular electronic devices. Conclusion Is

Material property analytical relations for the case of an AFM probe tapping a viscoelastic surface containing multiple characteristic times

• Enrique A. López-Guerra and
• Santiago D. Solares

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2230–2244, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.223

• input are related through a material transfer function, which contains the viscoelastic parameters. Standard inputs are typically strain and stress step functions (in the case of stress relaxation and creep experiments, respectively) or harmonic excitations (in the case of DMA). Following the spirit of

• ) is physically represented in Figure 1 for the case of a Generalized Maxwell model with an arbitrary number of characteristic times. The load in Equation 1 may also be written in the time domain as a convolution of the relaxation modulus (G(t)) with the time derivative of the displacement: where the

• substitution has been made to express the result in terms of the widely known relaxation modulus, which is the stress response to a unit step strain [8][30] (see Supporting Information File 1 for further details about the relaxation modulus). Harmonic excitations in contact mode Before analyzing the case of

Au₅₅, a stable glassy cluster: results of ab initio calculations

• Dieter Vollath,
• David Holec and
• Franz Dieter Fischer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2221–2229, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.222

• ). In case of the crystalline starting configuration (Figure 1a), the initial coordination numbers (equivalent to the crystalline cluster being only relaxed at 0 K without the annealing procedure) and the coordination numbers after annealing at 900 K and subsequent relaxation at 0 K are displayed. For

• the random starting arrangement, the histogram of the coordination numbers after relaxation at 0 K is shown in Figure 1b. The coordination numbers of the crystalline cluster displayed in Figure 1a show that 13 atoms assume the maximum coordination number of twelve as expected for the fcc structure

• . The most frequent coordination number is seven. However, after annealing at 900 K and relaxation at 0 K, the highest coordination number is reduced from twelve to ten, which is close to 10.9 exhibited by liquid gold [27]. The cluster did not crystallize again after quenching it to 0 K but instead it

Substrate and Mg doping effects in GaAs nanowires

• Perumal Kannappan,
• Nabiha Ben Sedrine,
• Jennifer P. Teixeira,
• Maria R. Soares,
• Bruno P. Falcão,
• Maria R. Correia,
• Nestor Cifuentes,
• Emilson R. Viana,
• Marcus V. B. Moreira,
• Geraldo M. Ribeiro,
• Alfredo G. de Oliveira,
• Juan C. González and
• Joaquim P. Leitão

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2126–2138, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.212

• of particular interest due to the possible integration with Si technology [42][43]. The free lateral surfaces of a nanowire allow efficient lateral stress relaxation [44], which is important to adjust lattice mismatched materials without the formation of a high density of structural defects [42][44

Electronic structure, transport, and collective effects in molecular layered systems

• Torsten Hahn,
• Tim Ludwig,
• Carsten Timm and
• Jens Kortus

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2094–2105, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.209

• included. The geometry of the molecules was optimized using a gradient approach, the relaxation was terminated once all atomic were below 0.05 eV/Å. We applied the NEGF method for the self-consistent calculation of the electronic transport properties as implemented in the GPAW code [20][21] to investigate

• adding a second metal slab on top of the organic material, with subsequent relaxation. The distance between the second contact and the organic material was systematically varied and the structure with the lowest total energy was used for the transport calculations. In Figure 1, we show the results for

• molecular material on both sides of the device. Based on this layout, which is shown in Figure 3a,b, it was possible to obtain device structures for which the geometry of the Pc/Pc stacks was preserved during relaxation. Contrary to the direct deposition on a gold surface, the additional graphene layer

Adsorbate-driven cooling of carbene-based molecular junctions

• Giuseppe Foti and
• Héctor Vázquez

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2060–2068, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.206

• electrodes only so as to introduce asymmetries in the junction DOS under bias, given that NH2 states will be pinned to the left chemical potential. We use Siesta [30] and TranSiesta [31] for the structure relaxation and the calculation of the electronic and transport properties. We use a single-ζ plus

Preparation and characterization of polycarbonate/multiwalled carbon nanotube nanocomposites

• Claudio Larosa,
• Niranjan Patra,
• Marco Salerno,
• Lara Mikac,
• Remo Merijs Meri and
• Mile Ivanda

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2026–2031, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.203

• appearing in the cooling cycle could be due to the enthalpy relaxation or mesophase transitions. The glass transition observed in the cooling cycle is 9 °C less than the heating cycle. Conclusion PC/MWCNTs composites were prepared as transparent films. The presence of a dispersed, uniform phase in the

Identifying the nature of surface chemical modification for directed self-assembly of block copolymers

• Laura Evangelio,
• Federico Gramazio,
• Matteo Lorenzoni,
• Michaela Gorgoi,
• Francisco Miguel Espinosa,
• Ricardo García,
• Francesc Pérez-Murano and
• Jordi Fraxedas

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1972–1981, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.198

• [5][6]. When the BCP self-assembly is used in combination with surface prepatterning, aligned structures of alternative phases of the blocks can be obtained. This is the principle of DSA. The main advantages are a relaxation of the resolution requirements of traditional lithography methods, as the

Intercalation of Si between MoS₂ layers

• Rik van Bremen,
• Qirong Yao,
• Soumya Banerjee,
• Deniz Cakir,
• Nuri Oncel and
• Harold J. W. Zandvliet

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1952–1960, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.196

• structure relaxation. Thus, we suggest that the intercalation of silicon atoms between MoS2 layers may promote the formation of silicene, which interacts only weakly with the environment via van der Waals forces. We found that both top and bottom MoS2 layers develop bumps due to the interaction with the

Coexistence of strongly buckled germanene phases on Al(111)

• Weimin Wang and
• Roger I. G. Uhrberg

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1946–1951, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.195

• favored an interpretation of the structure as a germanene layer with one Ge atom per (3×3) cell being higher than the other ones and a corresponding model was presented. However, some restrictions during the relaxation prevented their model from being fully relaxed. Starting from their hexagonal model

Spin-dependent transport and functional design in organic ferromagnetic devices

• Guichao Hu,
• Shijie Xie,
• Chuankui Wang and
• Carsten Timm

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1919–1931, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.192

• hyperfine interactions in organic materials are usually weak [4], which induces a long spin relaxation time and makes organic materials ideal for spin-polarized transport applications. Organic molecules may form a soft interface with metals and ferromagnets via chemical adsorption. The interfacial orbital

• interlayer has been studied in many experiments, motivated by the long spin relaxation time [4]. Examples are the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) and the room-temperature tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) in LSMO/Alq3/Co junctions [6][7][8]. The MR in the ferromagnet/OF/ferromagnet junction Co/poly-BIPO/Co has

Stick–slip boundary friction mode as a second-order phase transition with an inhomogeneous distribution of elastic stress in the contact area

• Iakov A. Lyashenko,
• Vadym N. Borysiuk and
• Valentin L. Popov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1889–1896, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.189

• dependence of the friction force with monotonically decreasing coefficient A according to the relaxation law where A0 is the initial value of coefficient A at time t = 0, while is the relaxation time. Equation 18 relates to the increase of the lubricant temperature. The temperature of the lubricant can vary

Synthesis and functionalization of NaGdF₄:Yb,Er@NaGdF₄ core–shell nanoparticles for possible application as multimodal contrast agents

• Dovile Baziulyte-Paulaviciene,
• Vitalijus Karabanovas,
• Marius Stasys,
• Greta Jarockyte,
• Vilius Poderys,
• Simas Sakirzanovas and
• Ricardas Rotomskis

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1815–1824, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.183

• ) spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) spectra and magnetic resonance (MR) T1 relaxation measurements were used to characterize the size, crystal structure, optical and magnetic properties of the core and core–shell nanoparticles. Moreover

• . That signifies that the Gd3+ ions in the shell of the UCNPs are the major contributors toward the relaxation of water protons, and the UCNP core does not show any significant effect towards relaxivity enhancement. However, it has been shown in the literature that reduced water access to the Gd3+ ions

α-Silicene as oxidation-resistant ultra-thin coating material

• Ali Kandemir,
• Fadil Iyikanat,
• Cihan Bacaksiz and
• Hasan Sahin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1808–1814, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.182

• of at 500 eV. A 3 × 3 × 1 k-point mesh was used for the structural relaxation. The criterion of convergence of energy was chosen as 10−5 eV between two ionic steps, and the maximum force allowed on each atom is 0.1 meV/Å. At least 13 Å of vacuum were applied along z-direction to hinder interactions

Process-specific mechanisms of vertically oriented graphene growth in plasmas

• Subrata Ghosh,
• Shyamal R. Polaki,
• Niranjan Kumar,
• Sankarakumar Amirthapandian,
• Mohamed Kamruddin and
• Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1658–1670, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.166

• growth is initiated with a buffer layer consisting of amorphous carbon and carbon onion structures, nanographitic (NG) island formation, or through carbide formation. The factors responsible for the vertical growth are stress relaxation through NG islands, inherent electric field and thermophoretic force

• crystallinity to facilitate grain growth in nanocrystalline materials. This trend, clearly shown in Figure 3c, implies that the initial growth of the vertical sheets can be attributed to the relaxation of stress that starts at grain boundaries of NG islands. The higher growth rates at high temperature could be

Light-induced magnetoresistance in solution-processed planar hybrid devices measured under ambient conditions

• Sreetama Banerjee,
• Daniel Bülz,
• Danny Reuter,
• Karla Hiller,
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn and
• Georgeta Salvan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1502–1507, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.150

• exhibit a slower carrier relaxation. This can be attributed to higher electric fields and shorter charge-carrier transit times in the shorter channels of the HED-TIEs (ca. 100 nm) compared to that of OFETs (20 µm). Also the magnitude of switching in the HED-TIE device for both light and magnetic field was

Calcium fluoride based multifunctional nanoparticles for multimodal imaging

• Marion Straßer,
• Joachim H. X. Schrauth,
• Sofia Dembski,
• Daniel Haddad,
• Bernd Ahrens,
• Stefan Schweizer,
• Bastian Christ,
• Alevtina Cubukova,
• Marco Metzger,
• Heike Walles,
• Peter M. Jakob and
• Gerhard Sextl

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1484–1493, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.148

• Gd3+ ions on the surface, the NPs reduce the MR T1 relaxation time constant as a function of their concentration. Thus, the NPs can be used as a MRI CA with a mean relaxivity of about r = 0.471 mL·mg−1·s−1. Repeated MRI examinations of four different batches prove the reproducibility of the NP

• CaF2:(Tb3+,Gd3+) NPs with concentrations in the range from 0.4 to 18.2 mg·mL−1 is shown in Figure 4a. Due to the different concentrations of the samples, the T1 relaxation time constants vary and therefore, different signal intensities are observable at different time points. To evaluate the potential

• values of the NPs vary from 137 to 1633 ms with decreasing concentrations. Plotting the relaxation rate R1 (inverse relaxation time T1) over the concentration of the samples, the relaxivity r arises from the slope of the linear fit (cf. Equation 1, Figure 4c). The relaxivity indicates the efficiency of

Formation of ferromagnetic molecular thin films from blends by annealing

• Peter Robaschik,
• Ye Ma,
• Salahud Din and
• Sandrine Heutz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1469–1475, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.146

• β-MnPc powder showing a slow relaxation of magnetisation [30][31]. Further studies by Wang and Seehra were able to rule out spin-glass behaviour and found that the zero-field splitting (ZFS) parameter |D|/kB = 8.3 K is much larger than the coupling constant J/kB = 2.6 K [32]. According to Moriya, in

Spin-chemistry concepts for spintronics scientists

• Konstantin L. Ivanov,
• Alexander Wagenpfahl,
• Carsten Deibel and
• Jörg Matysik

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1427–1445, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.143

• evolution (driven by the radical pairs Hamiltonian, ), spin relaxation and chemical reactions. Additionally, one can take into account the relative motion, which is described by a corresponding operator , for instance, for diffusing radicals with the reflecting boundary condition at closest approach (here

• D is the relative diffusion coefficient, Δr is the Laplace operator where r is the distance between the radicals. The equation for the density matrix takes the following form: where the portion of the equation in square brackets is the commutator, is the relaxation super-operator and the super

• -operator stands for spin selective recombination. Here, for simplicity, we do not discuss relaxation effects. When the radical pair selectively recombines from the singlet state, acts on the density matrix in the following way: Where wS(r) is the position-dependent recombination rate, is the projection