When the going gets rough – studying the effect of surface roughness on the adhesive abilities of tree frogs

• Niall Crawford,
• Thomas Endlein,
• Jonathan T. Pham,
• Mathis Riehle and
• W. Jon P. Barnes

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 2116–2131, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.201

• abrasion of the pad epithelium. Here, we tested the effect of surface roughness on the attachment abilities of the tree frog Litoria caerulea. This was done by testing shear and adhesive forces on artificial surfaces with controlled roughness, both on single toe pads and whole animal scales. It was shown

• specialised morphology allow the tree frogs to climb smooth vertical and overhanging surfaces. The attachment ability of tree frogs is affected by both surface chemistry and surface roughness. Hydrophobic leaves (such as those on lotus leaves [4]), could affect the capillary forces produced by the pad (which

• require low fluid contact angles), and deprive the pads of adhesive ability. Indeed, many plant surfaces are hydrophobic, as this reduces water loss [5]. Turning to surface roughness, this affects the ability of the pad surface to form close contact with the surface. With fine-scale roughness, the volume

Evolution of the graphite surface in phosphoric acid: an AFM and Raman study

• Rossella Yivlialin,
• Luigi Brambilla,
• Gianlorenzo Bussetti,
• Matteo Tommasini,
• Andrea Li Bassi,
• Carlo Spartaco Casari,
• Matteo Passoni,
• Franco Ciccacci,
• Lamberto Duò and
• Chiara Castiglioni

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1878–1884, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.180

• at the micrometer scale, i.e., local swellings of the surface caused by the production of gases (O2, CO and/or CO2) due to the oxidation processes occurring at high anodic potentials [7]. At the nanometer scale, protrusions have been observed together with an increase of the surface roughness caused

• on the same regions by ex situ AFM experiments. Figure 3a shows that the A-area, where the modified film is unquestionably present, is characterized by a high surface roughness (Rq = 0.3 nm from AFM analysis, which is about five times higher than characteristic mean square root values measured on

• system, i.e., the cyclic-voltammetry (CV) curve, presents a single feature during the first EC potential sweep, but it disappears during the second scan. On the other hand, EC atomic force microscopy (EC-AFM) measurements, performed in situ in the EC cell, reveal a significant increase of the surface

Monolayer graphene/SiC Schottky barrier diodes with improved barrier height uniformity as a sensing platform for the detection of heavy metals

• Ivan Shtepliuk,
• Jens Eriksson,
• Volodymyr Khranovskyy,
• Tihomir Iakimov,
• Anita Lloyd Spetz and
• Rositsa Yakimova

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1800–1814, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.173

• ideality parameter for graphene/SiC structures are the homogeneity of the graphene thickness, the quality of the grown interface (defects, pits, dislocations, surface roughness), the type of the grown interface (SiC polytypism, face polarity) and the growth conditions. Indeed, we noticed that the Schottky

Precise in situ etch depth control of multilayered III−V semiconductor samples with reflectance anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) equipment

• Ann-Kathrin Kleinschmidt,
• Lars Barzen,
• Johannes Strassner,
• Christoph Doering,
• Henning Fouckhardt,
• Wolfgang Bock,
• Michael Wahl and
• Michael Kopnarski

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1783–1793, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.171

• ], known from various studies on epitaxial growth, or on surface roughness due to ion bombardment [9][39][40][41]. Also, information on the composition of compound semiconductors [1] as well as the doping of the etched layers (related to the offset/mean value of the Fabry–Perot oscillations) are included

Properties of Ni and Ni–Fe nanowires electrochemically deposited into a porous alumina template

• Alla I. Vorobjova,
• Dmitry L. Shimanovich,
• Kazimir I. Yanushkevich,
• Sergej L. Prischepa and
• Elena A. Outkina

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1709–1717, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.163

• °C and a voltage of 25 ± 2 V for 1–2 min to reduce the surface roughness. Next, the samples were washed in distilled water and dried in a dry air stream. Before anodization, the technological frame has been formed along the perimeter and in the center of the substrate. It is necessary to strengthen

Enhanced detection of nitrogen dioxide via combined heating and pulsed UV operation of indium oxide nano-octahedra

• Oriol Gonzalez,
• Sergio Roso,
• Xavier Vilanova and
• Eduard Llobet

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1507–1518, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.144

• , sensors were left for an hour to level and then were dried at 150 °C. Finally they were fired at 300 °C for 12 h. The active films were 6 µm thick, quite porous and with a surface roughness of about 2 µm [21]. The largest dimension of indium oxide octahedra is about 500 nm. Therefore, the UV light can

The effect of dry shear aligning of nanotube thin films on the photovoltaic performance of carbon nanotube–silicon solar cells

• Benedikt W. Stolz,
• Daniel D. Tune and
• Benjamin S. Flavel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1486–1491, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.141

• flatter, with atomic force microscopy showing two orders of magnitude reductions in surface roughness (from ≈140 nm to only 3–4 nm) [43], which should lead to the desired improvements in interfacial contact between the nanotube film and the silicon substrate. The optical properties of the nanotube films

Surface roughness rather than surface chemistry essentially affects insect adhesion

• Matt W. England,
• Tomoya Sato,
• Makoto Yagihashi,
• Atsushi Hozumi,
• Stanislav N. Gorb and
• Elena V. Gorb

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1471–1479, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.139

• attachment of the beetles. Surface roughness was found to be the dominant factor, strongly affecting the attachment ability of the beetles. Keywords: insect attachment; superhydrophilicity; superhydrophobicity; superoleophobicity; surface structures; Introduction The development of functional coatings that

• relatively little attention from researchers working on surface science and engineering [24][25]. Another possible reason might be that the properties of unwettable biological surfaces, other than surface wetting/de-wetting, have not been tested. The question of whether surface chemistry or surface roughness

• is primarily responsible for natural anti-attachment properties has also not been fully resolved. Therefore, a comparative study of the attachment behavior of insects on artificially designed (low/high surface energy) surfaces of varying surface roughness, has been postulated as an effective strategy

Effect of tetramethylammonium hydroxide/isopropyl alcohol wet etching on geometry and surface roughness of silicon nanowires fabricated by AFM lithography

• Siti Noorhaniah Yusoh and
• Khatijah Aisha Yaacob

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1461–1470, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.138

• (30, 40, and 50 s) were investigated. The relationships between etching depth and width, and etching rate and surface roughness of silicon nanowires were characterized in detail using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The obtained results indicate that increased IPA concentration in TMAH produced greater

• requirements of SOI applications have been developed. The geometry and surface roughness of the devices are the factors that must be improved in order to upgrade the possible device performance in many fields, such as biomedical applications. The etching process has been studied by many researchers in order to

• the etching depth and width, and etching rate and surface roughness using TMAH with different IPA concentrations at a constant etching time and also different etching times at a constant IPA concentration. Silicon nanowires with suitable geometrical features and surface are important for obtaining a

Electric field induced structural colour tuning of a silver/titanium dioxide nanoparticle one-dimensional photonic crystal

• Eduardo Aluicio-Sarduy,
• Simone Callegari,
• Diana Gisell Figueroa del Valle,
• Andrea Desii,
• Ilka Kriegel and
• Francesco Scotognella

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1404–1410, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.131

• force microscopy (AFM) images of a Ag layer, a TiO2 layer and the top surface of a five bilayer Ag/TiO2 photonic crystal, all deposited on glass/ITO substrates, are presented in the Supporting Information File 1 (Figure S1) and show that the silver nanoparticle layer has the highest surface roughness

• among the different samples. This is due to the large size of the silver nanoparticles and the formation of large aggregates. Notably, the lowest surface roughness was found for the top TiO2 surface layer of the five bilayer photonic crystal (Figure S1c of Supporting Information File 1). The formation

• of a more compact layer with a reduced surface roughness is most probably a result of the small TiO2 nanoparticles deposited onto the Ag films, which fill the empty voids between the Ag aggregates and promote a certain degree of intermixing between the two different types of nanoparticles at the Ag

Influence of ambient humidity on the attachment ability of ladybird beetles (Coccinella septempunctata)

• Lars Heepe,
• Jonas O. Wolff and
• Stanislav N. Gorb

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1322–1329, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.123

• attachment organ determines its function, but also environmental parameters, such as the surface roughness or/and chemistry of the substrate [1][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Also the ambient temperature and humidity may affect the attachment ability of adhesive organs, as it was shown in the dry adhesive pads of

Diameter-driven crossover in resistive behaviour of heavily doped self-seeded germanium nanowires

• Stephen Connaughton,
• Maria Koleśnik-Gray,
• Richard Hobbs,
• Olan Lotty,
• Justin D. Holmes and
• Vojislav Krstić

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1284–1288, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.119

• therefore the quantum regime is entered. As dominating resistivity contributions, we considered phonon and (remote) Coulomb scattering from the charge traps at the core/shell interface (Supporting Information File 1). Surface roughness scattering was neglected within our diameter range, as previous reports

Functional diversity of resilin in Arthropoda

• Jan Michels,
• Esther Appel and
• Stanislav N. Gorb

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1241–1259, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.115

• indicated by experiments showing that cut-off adhesive pads of T. viridissima (with the relatively thin superficial layer) lose water much faster than those of L. migratoria (Figure 6E). Consequently, the material gradient provides a combination of conformability to the surface roughness of the substrate

Reasons and remedies for the agglomeration of multilayered graphene and carbon nanotubes in polymers

• Rasheed Atif and
• Fawad Inam

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1174–1196, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.109

• graphite is shown in Figure 2. The wrinkles in MLG are wider apart or closer together at different locations. As MLG does not store sufficient elastic strain energy, wrinkling is irreversible but it can be altered by external influences [16]. The surface roughness varies owing to the different

Assembling semiconducting molecules by covalent attachment to a lamellar crystalline polymer substrate

• Rainhard Machatschek,
• Patrick Ortmann,
• Renate Reiter,
• Stefan Mecking and
• Günter Reiter

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 784–798, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.70

Thermo-voltage measurements of atomic contacts at low temperature

• Ayelet Ofarim,
• Bastian Kopp,
• Thomas Möller,
• León Martin,
• Johannes Boneberg,
• Paul Leiderer and
• Elke Scheer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 767–775, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.68

• . surface roughness of 1 µm it was necessary to polish the substrate before spin-coating a thin layer (2–3 µm) of polyimide which enhances the planarization of the substrate. Furthermore, the layer serves as a sacrificial layer to be etched in order to create a freestanding Au bridge of approximately 2 µm

Orientation of FePt nanoparticles on top of a-SiO₂/Si(001), MgO(001) and sapphire(0001): effect of thermal treatments and influence of substrate and particle size

• Martin Schilling,
• Paul Ziemann,
• Zaoli Zhang,
• Johannes Biskupek,
• Ute Kaiser and
• Ulf Wiedwald

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 591–604, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.52

• ambient temperature. The RHEED pattern after reduction at 240 °C for 30 min in a hydrogen plasma is presented in Figure 7a already revealing the formation of RHEED streaks. This indicates the existence of smooth textured domains and a low surface roughness. After subsequent in situ annealing steps of 30

Characterization of spherical domains at the polystyrene thin film–water interface

• Khurshid Ahmad,
• Xuezeng Zhao,
• Yunlu Pan and
• Danish Hussain

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 581–590, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.51

• that the contact angle of the gaseous bubble increases with the lateral size in each independent size scale [15]. Similarly, increased surface roughness and the influx of gas from the interfacial gas enrichment favors formation of larger gaseous bubbles [15][19]. In addition, other studies have

Synthesis and applications of carbon nanomaterials for energy generation and storage

• Marco Notarianni,
• Jinzhang Liu,
• Kristy Vernon and
• Nunzio Motta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 149–196, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.17

Linear and nonlinear optical properties of hybrid metallic–dielectric plasmonic nanoantennas

• Mario Hentschel,
• Bernd Metzger,
• Bastian Knabe,
• Karsten Buse and
• Harald Giessen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 111–120, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.13

• concept of tensorial nonlinear optics, based on effective media, does not hold, as our systems in fact consist of a 2D array of optical resonators of wavelength dimensions. Also, the structures exhibit significant surface roughness, which might be responsible for the observed signals. Such a signal would

Dependence of lattice strain relaxation, absorbance, and sheet resistance on thickness in textured ZnO@B transparent conductive oxide for thin-film solar cell applications

• Kuang-Yang Kou,
• Yu-En Huang,
• Chien-Hsun Chen and
• Shih-Wei Feng

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 75–80, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.9

• were prepared (here within named, c-20, c-40, c-60, and c-70, respectively). Figure 1 shows the atomic force microscopy (AFM) images (5 × 5 μm) of the four ZnO@B samples. The surface roughness is 16.603, 26.756, 51.531 and 56.233 nm for c-20, c-40, c-60, and c-70, respectively. Each sample is composed

• (model T64000) with a 532 nm laser. AFM images (5 × 5 μm) of (a) c-20 (16.603 nm), (b) c-40 (26.756 nm), (c) c-60 (51.531 nm), and (d) c-70 (56.233 nm) ZnO@B samples. The surface roughness of each sample is given in the parentheses. SEM images of the (a) c-20, (b) c-40, (c) c-60, and (d) c-70 ZnO@B

Nanostructured surfaces by supramolecular self-assembly of linear oligosilsesquioxanes with biocompatible side groups

• Maria Nowacka,
• Anna Kowalewska and
• Tomasz Makowski

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2377–2387, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.244

• surface roughness, thickness and the arrangement of macromolecules were noted depending on the kind of functional groups on the side chains. Specific changes in the morphology of the surface layer were observed when mica was primed with a monolayer of small organic compounds (e.g., N-acetylcysteine

• matrix in living organisms (e.g., CH3, OH, NH2 and COOH). We have investigated the effect of the kind of functional groups in side chains of LPSQ-COOH/X on the structure (e.g., surface roughness, thickness and arrangement of macromolecules within the coated layer) of the prepared PSAMs. Native mica was

• wettability of P4 can be ascribed to the presence of the acetyl group, protecting the NH2 function of NAC. We have analysed the effect of surface roughness on changes in γS (Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figures S1a, S2a, S3a, S4a and Table S1 in Supporting Information File 1). All surfaces are smooth (with root

Self-organization of gold nanoparticles on silanated surfaces

• Htet H. Kyaw,
• Salim H. Al-Harthi,
• Azzouz Sellai and
• Joydeep Dutta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2345–2353, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.242

• surface morphology was observed after annealing in vacuum at 600 °C as some of the AuNPs realign themselves in a certain direction (see Figure 7b) due to the softening of the substrate at its glass transition point. Surface roughness, RMS (root mean square), was marginally reduced from 3.05 nm (before

Electroviscous effect on fluid drag in a microchannel with large zeta potential

• Dalei Jing and
• Bharat Bhushan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2207–2216, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.226

• surface charge, boundary slip, nanobubble and surface roughness, which can be neglected in macroscale fluidics, are believed to significantly affect the micro/nano fluid flow [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. When a droplet of certain liquid contacts with a solid surface, the solid–liquid interface

Nanostructured superhydrophobic films synthesized by electrodeposition of fluorinated polyindoles

• Gabriela Ramos Chagas,
• Thierry Darmanin and
• Frédéric Guittard

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2078–2087, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.212

• during the reaction and the polymerization is not favorable. Surface structures and wettability The surface structures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and surface roughness measurements. The SEM images for Qs = 100 mC·cm−2 are given in Figure 3 and Figure 4 and the surface

• PIndole-5-Fn and proceeds equally in all directions for PIndole-6-Fn. For PIndole-4-Fn, the polymerization should not be favorable to form any structure on the surface. Previous works showed that one of the main parameters governing the surface roughness is the solubility of the oligomers formed in the

• C6F13 fluorinated chains have also the highest oleophobicity even if the oil contact angles are relatively low. Indeed, two equations (the Wenzel and the Cassie–Baxter equation) [36][37] depending on θY are very often used to explain the effect of the surface roughness on the wetting properties. In the