Controllable one-pot synthesis of uniform colloidal TiO₂ particles in a mixed solvent solution for photocatalysis

• Jong Tae Moon,
• Seung Ki Lee and
• Ji Bong Joo

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1715–1727, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.163

• photocatalyst must be narrow in order to facilitate the facile adsorption of the low energy photon and high harvesting efficiency under visible-light irradiation conditions [11]. To enhance charge separation efficiency and extend the lifetime of photoexcited electron–hole pairs, properties such as a crystalline

• anatase/rutile phase with high anatase crystallinity. As shown in both a previous study and our later discussion, a mixed crystalline phase of anatase and rutile in P25 TiO2 can have several beneficial effects such as improved light adsorption in the low energy UV range and separation of photoexcited

Josephson effect in junctions of conventional and topological superconductors

• Alex Zazunov,
• Albert Iks,
• Miguel Alvarado,
• Alfredo Levy Yeyati and
• Reinhold Egger

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1659–1676, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.158

• end states. Using Green’s function techniques, the topological superconductor is alternatively described by the low-energy continuum limit of a Kitaev chain or by a more microscopic spinful nanowire model. We show that for the simplest S–TS tunnel junction, only the s-wave pairing correlations in a

• boundary fermion fields representing the S lead and the effectively spinless TS lead, respectively. For the S lead, we assume the usual BCS model [62], where the operator ψσ annihilates an electron with spin σ at the junction. The TS wire will, for the moment, be described by the low-energy Hamiltonian of

• , the low-energy limit of a Kitaev chain yields the bGF [40] The matrices τ0,x here act in the Nambu space defined by the spinor ΨTS. Later on we will address how our results change when the TS wire is modeled as spinful nanowire [2][3], where the corresponding bGF has been specified in [43]. We

Friction force microscopy of tribochemistry and interfacial ageing for the SiO_x/Si/Au system

• Christiane Petzold,
• Marcus Koch and
• Roland Bennewitz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1647–1658, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.157

• cantilevers before use. A Au(111) single crystal (MaTeck GmbH, Jülich, Germany) was prepared by repeating a sputter–heating cycle (20 min Ar sputtering at 25 μA/1 keV followed by 1 h annealing at 850 °C) until a sharp (111) pattern was observed by low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). The n-Si(100) sample

Spatial Rabi oscillations between Majorana bound states and quantum dots

• Jun-Hui Zheng,
• Dao-Xin Yao and
• Zhi Wang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1527–1535, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.143

• energy splitting that exponentially decays as the length of the island increases. The low-energy physics of the island can be described by an effective Hamiltonian [2][3], where and γM and γM′ represent the two Majorana bound states, and δ represents the exponentially protected splitting energy. The

Robust topological phase in proximitized core–shell nanowires coupled to multiple superconductors

• Tudor D. Stanescu,
• Anna Sitek and
• Andrei Manolescu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1512–1526, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.142

• between 50–100 meV [29][37]. In this case the corner states are extremely robust to orbital effects of the magnetic field and the low-energy subspace is well separated from higher-energy states. Another interesting aspect of a prismatic shell is that it can host several Majorana states at each end of the

• hosts the zero-energy Majorana modes and one can obtain an additional experimental knob for exploring a rich phase diagram and observing potentially interesting low-energy physics. The rest of this article is organized as follows. We first describe the coupled-chains tight binding model that we use in

• model that describes the low-energy physics of a core–shell nanowire with n edges. The model has already been introduced for triangular core–shell nanowires in [29] (Appendix), and also previously considered by other authors, in different forms, for ladder systems [38][39]. A “coarse-grained” shell is

Interplay between pairing and correlations in spin-polarized bound states

• Szczepan Głodzik,
• Aksel Kobiałka,
• Anna Gorczyca-Goraj,
• Andrzej Ptok,
• Grzegorz Górski,
• Maciej M. Maśka and
• Tadeusz Domański

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1370–1380, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.129

• μN↑ − μN↓. Individual atoms of the nanochain are coupled with such STM tip through For simplicity, we assume constant couplings The low-energy physics of such proximitized Rashba nanowire can be described by [44] where annihilates (creates) an electron of spin σ at site i with energy εi, and tij

• effect shows up only in the correlated limit (U > ΓS), but its spectroscopic signatures are qualitatively different for each of the spins. Leakage of the Majorana quasiparticle suppresses the low-energy states of ↑ electrons. We notice that the initial density (for tm = 0) is reduced by half, whereas we

Disorder-induced suppression of the zero-bias conductance peak splitting in topological superconducting nanowires

• Jun-Tong Ren,
• Hai-Feng Lü,
• Sha-Sha Ke,
• Yong Guo and
• Huai-Wu Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1358–1369, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.128

• ], among which some possible reasons have been proposed, such as the combining effect of high temperature and multisubband occupancy in a Coulomb-blocked nanowire where the non-topological low-energy Andreev bound states and MBSs simultaneously exist [53], the zero-energy pinning effect induced by the

• wire, respectively. Following the Bogoliubov–de Gennes formalism the Hamiltonian describing the low-energy physics for our one-dimensional superconducting wire is given by where is the Nambu spinor for which cσ(x) annihilates (creates) electrons with spin σ at position x. For numerical calculations

• not simply neglect the role played by disorder in detecting Majorana energy oscillation experimentally through transport measurements since for some values of Zeeman field the disorder-induced effects can broaden the Majorana energy splitting of the low-energy states while simultaneously narrows the

Andreev spectrum and supercurrents in nanowire-based SNS junctions containing Majorana bound states

• Jorge Cayao,
• Annica M. Black-Schaffer,
• Elsa Prada and
• Ramón Aguado

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1339–1357, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.127

• states (MBSs) in engineered topological superconductors. We perform a systematic numerical study of the low-energy Andreev spectrum and supercurrents in short and long superconductor–normal–superconductor junctions made of nanowires with strong Rashba spin–orbit coupling, where an external Zeeman field

• . In section “Results and Discussion” we discuss how nanowire-based SNS junctions can be readily modeled using the tools of section “Nanowire model”. Then, we describe the low-energy Andreev spectrum and its evolution from the trivial into the topological phase with the emergence of MBSs. In the same

• the low-energy spectrum of the superconducting nanowire. This spectrum can be numerically obtained by discretising the Hamiltonian given by Equation 1 into a tight-binding lattice: where the symbol means that v couples the nearest-neighbor sites i, j; h = (2t − μ)σ0 + Bσx and v = −tσ0 + itSOσy are

Circular dichroism of chiral Majorana states

• Javier Osca and
• Llorenç Serra

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1194–1199, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.110

• a 2D grid for x and y. When ΔB is increased, the spectrum of low-energy eigenvalues evolves from a gapped (void) spectrum around zero energy at low values of ΔB, to the emergence of chiral near-zero-energy modes for sufficiently large values of ΔB. When the pairing parameters for each layer are

• gap that tends to close with increasing ΔB by the appearance of a quasi-continuum distribution of eigenvalues. These low-energy states are indicating the presence of propagating Majorana states, energy-discretized due to the finite size of the system. When Δt = Δb (Figure 1a,c) the degeneracy is such

• distribution between a square and a rectangle (upper vs lower panels). It is remarkable that when a Majorana phase is well developed the low-energy states are equally spaced in energy. This is particularly clear for 2 < ΔB/EU < 4 in Figure 1a and Figure 1c, corresponding to the phases with two Majorana states

Non-equilibrium electron transport induced by terahertz radiation in the topological and trivial phases of Hg_1−xCd_xTe

• Alexandra V. Galeeva,
• Alexey I. Artamkin,
• Alexey S. Kazakov,
• Sergey N. Danilov,
• Sergey A. Dvoretskiy,
• Nikolay N. Mikhailov,
• Ludmila I. Ryabova and
• Dmitry R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1035–1039, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.96

• . We show that both the positive photoresponse in films with x < 0.16 and the negative photoconductivity in samples with x > 0.16 have no low-energy threshold. The observed non-threshold positive photoconductivity is discussed in terms of a qualitative model that takes into account a 3D potential well

Cyclodextrin inhibits zinc corrosion by destabilizing point defect formation in the oxide layer

• Abdulrahman Altin,
• Maciej Krzywiecki,
• Adnan Sarfraz,
• Cigdem Toparli,
• Claudius Laska,
• Philipp Kerger,
• Aleksandar Zeradjanin,
• Karl J. J. Mayrhofer,
• Michael Rohwerder and
• Andreas Erbe

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 936–944, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.86

• shift for all energy regions [35], as opposed to what is observed. Since the XPS was not sensitive for the region of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of β-CD, this region was analyzed by UPS. Figure 3f presents the magnification of the low-energy onset of the UP spectra, which allows for

Towards the third dimension in direct electron beam writing of silver

• Katja Höflich,
• Jakub Mateusz Jurczyk,
• Katarzyna Madajska,
• Maximilian Götz,
• Luisa Berger,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez,
• Caspar Haverkamp,
• Iwona Szymanska and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 842–849, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.78

• break [3][4]. The used primary electrons of energies in the kiloelectronvolt range have a focal spot of several nanometers or even less. Secondary electrons are generated by both primary and back-scattered electrons and hence escape in a radius of up to several micrometers [5]. Mainly these low-energy

• occurring during deposition can be elucidated by surface-science studies in which low-energy electrons dissociate monolayers of precursors under ultra-high vacuum conditions [4]. Based on these results the design of precursors for new materials and enhanced purity of the deposits is conceivable [15][16

A review of carbon-based and non-carbon-based catalyst supports for the selective catalytic reduction of nitric oxide

• Shahreen Binti Izwan Anthonysamy,
• Syahidah Binti Afandi,
• Mehrnoush Khavarian and
• Abdul Rahman Bin Mohamed

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 740–761, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.68

• temperature window of 150–500 °C in a diesel engine as well as the low energy consumption and economy of NH3-SCR [9]. In the literature, abundant catalysts at low temperature have been explored such as transitional metals (Mn, Cu, Ce, Fe, Co, Mo) [10][11][12][13], novel metals (Pt, Pd) [14], and metal ion

• impregnation removed NO at a reaction temperature of 25 °C with a high conversion of 88%. This suggests that the NO removal by AC and ACF could be a serious contributor to sustainable economic growth by offering cost-effective low energy consumption. Although AC and ACF are extremely

Combined pulsed laser deposition and non-contact atomic force microscopy system for studies of insulator metal oxide thin films

• Daiki Katsube,
• Hayato Yamashita,
• Satoshi Abo and
• Masayuki Abe

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 686–692, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.63

•  1 shows a schematic diagram of the combined NC-AFM and PLD system that was developed. It includes UHV chambers for sample preparation, low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), and load locking. It is also designed to allow for adding surface analysis capabilities such as reflection high-energy

Mechanistic insights into plasmonic photocatalysts in utilizing visible light

• Kah Hon Leong,
• Azrina Abd Aziz,
• Lan Ching Sim,
• Pichiah Saravanan,
• Min Jang and
• Detlef Bahnemann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 628–648, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.59

• sustainable photocatalysts that can collectively harvest visible light. However, the bottleneck in utilising the low energy photons has led to the discovery of plasmonic photocatalysts. The presence of noble metal on the plasmonic photocatalyst enables the harvesting of visible light through the unique

Electron interactions with the heteronuclear carbonyl precursor H₂FeRu₃(CO)₁₃ and comparison with HFeCo₃(CO)₁₂: from fundamental gas phase and surface science studies to focused electron beam induced deposition

• Ragesh Kumar T P,
• Paul Weirich,
• Lukas Hrachowina,
• Marc Hanefeld,
• Ragnar Bjornsson,
• Helgi Rafn Hrodmarsson,
• Sven Barth,
• D. Howard Fairbrother,
• Michael Huth and
• Oddur Ingólfsson

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 555–579, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.53

• carbonyl complex H2FeRu3(CO)13 covering its low energy electron induced fragmentation in the gas phase through dissociative electron attachment (DEA) and dissociative ionization (DI), its decomposition when adsorbed on a surface under controlled ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions and exposed to irradiation

• are largely unaffected by either further electron irradiation or annealing to room temperature, with a predicted metal content similar to what is observed in FEBID. Furthermore, gas phase experiments indicate formation of Fe(CO)4 from H2FeRu3(CO)13 upon low energy electron interaction. This fragment

• could desorb at room temperature under high vacuum conditions, which may explain the slight increase in the Ru/Fe ratio of deposits in FEBID. With the combination of gas phase experiments, surface science studies and actual FEBID experiments, we can offer new insights into the low energy electron

Single-step process to improve the mechanical properties of carbon nanotube yarn

• Maria Cecilia Evora,
• Xinyi Lu,
• Nitilaksha Hiremath,
• Nam-Goo Kang,
• Kunlun Hong,
• Roberto Uribe,
• Gajanan Bhat and
• Jimmy Mays

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 545–554, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.52

• device, which uses both low energy Ar ions and low-energy electrons. Data were collected and analyzed using the Advantage data system (v.4.61). XPS survey spectra were collected from 0 to 1350 eV. Raman analyses were carried out in a Horiba Jobin-Yvon T64000 Raman spectrometer equipped with a Peltier

Revealing the interference effect of Majorana fermions in a topological Josephson junction

• Jie Liu,
• Tiantian Yu and
• Juntao Song

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 520–529, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.50

• [6]. Then, the low-energy effective Hamiltonian is Here, = ψ†ψ is the number operator and ψ = γ3 + iγ2. Then, the occupation number has two values: Nv = 0,1, with Nv = 0 corresponding to the even parity state, and Nv = 1 corresponding to the odd parity state. The Josephson current mediated by the

• junction shown in Figure 1a. While there are only two MFs, the parity of states will not be destroyed even if we consider the effective coupling induced by the finite length of the wire. In this case, the total low-energy effective Hamiltonian can be described as follows: Here, Γeff is the effective

Electron interaction with copper(II) carboxylate compounds

• Michal Lacko,
• Peter Papp,
• Iwona B. Szymańska,
• Edward Szłyk and
• Štefan Matejčík

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 384–398, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.38

• fragments of these complexes are formed through single particle resonant processes close to 0 eV. Keywords: amines; dissociative electron attachment; dissociative ionization; FEBID; low energy electrons interaction; Introduction Present technological changes require the development of new methods and new

• low energy electrons (below 100 eV). These electrons can diffuse to the surface and initiate reactions in the precursor molecules. As a result, a deposit is formed. This technique enables the production of free standing 3D nanostructures and is already used commercially for the repair of

• electron ionization (EI), dissociative ionization (DI) [17][18][19] processes. Their kinetic energy is only a few eV, with energy distribution determined by the type of wafer and energy of primary beam [20][21]. Thorman et al. have compared gas phase and surface data on low energy electron interactions

Sugarcane juice derived carbon dot–graphitic carbon nitride composites for bisphenol A degradation under sunlight irradiation

• Lan Ching Sim,
• Jing Lin Wong,
• Chen Hong Hak,
• Jun Yan Tai,
• Kah Hon Leong and
• Pichiah Saravanan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 353–363, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.35

• irradiation because the UCPL properties of CDs (which could overcome the low energy of NIR-light photons to initiate the excitation of electrons) are not detected in Figure 3b. The PL spectra in Figure 3d were evaluated to determine the charge separation efficiency of all composites. The recombination of

Liquid-crystalline nanoarchitectures for tissue engineering

• Baeckkyoung Sung and
• Min-Ho Kim

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 205–215, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.22

• lies in their self-assembly behavior and the formation of hierarchical 3D nanoarchitectures with long-range order. This spontaneous organization has strong advantages such as structural biomimicry, facile bottom-up processing, straightforward upscaling, and low energy cost. In tissue engineering

Bombyx mori silk/titania/gold hybrid materials for photocatalytic water splitting: combining renewable raw materials with clean fuels

• Stefanie Krüger,
• Michael Schwarze,
• Otto Baumann,
• Christina Günter,
• Michael Bruns,
• Christian Kübel,
• Dorothée Vinga Szabó,
• Rafael Meinusch,
• Verónica de Zea Bermudez and
• Andreas Taubert

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 187–204, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.21

• 8 eV electrons and low-energy argon ions to prevent any localized charge build-up. The spectra were fitted with one or more Voigt profiles (binding energy uncertainty: ±0.2 eV). The analyzer transmission function, Scofield sensitivity factors [54], and effective attenuation lengths (EALs) for

Response under low-energy electron irradiation of a thin film of a potential copper precursor for focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID)

• Leo Sala,
• Iwona B. Szymańska,
• Céline Dablemont,
• Anne Lafosse and
• Lionel Amiaud

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 57–65, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.8

• spontaneously lose amine ligands under vacuum. This loss can be enhanced by mild heating. The combination of mass spectrometry and low-energy electron irradiation (0–15 eV) shows that full amine ligands can be released upon irradiation, and that fragmentation of the perfluorinated ligands is induced by

• for ligands fragmentation allow one to envisage the use of the two precursors for FEBID studies. Keywords: amines; copper(II); electron-stimulated desorption; FEBID precursors; HREELS; low-energy electrons; perfluorinated carboxylates; Introduction The high electrical conductivity of copper makes it

• introduction into vacuum, like the work on Cis-platin particles by Warneke and co-workers [13]. We propose here a similar approach in the apparatus in Orsay devoted to the study of surface processes induced by low-energy electrons in the 0–20 eV range. This range is of particular interest as the low-energy

Transition from silicene monolayer to thin Si films on Ag(111): comparison between experimental data and Monte Carlo simulation

• Alberto Curcella,
• Romain Bernard,
• Yves Borensztein,
• Silvia Pandolfi and
• Geoffroy Prévot

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 48–56, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.7

• ) and low energy electron diffraction have been used to follow the growth of Si films on Ag(111) at various temperatures. Using a simple growth model, we have simulated the distribution of film thickness as a function of coverage during evaporation, for the different temperatures. In the temperature

• honeycomb-chained triangle (HCT) reconstruction observed on a Ag/Si(111) surface, it has been hypothesized that the observed films could result from the growth of diamond-like Si with Ag acting as a surfactant [28]. Such conclusions were also supported by low energy electron diffraction (LEED) [29][30

Review on optofluidic microreactors for artificial photosynthesis

• Xiaowen Huang,
• Jianchun Wang,
• Tenghao Li,
• Jianmei Wang,
• Min Xu,
• Weixing Yu,
• Abdel El Abed and
• Xuming Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 30–41, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.5

• low energy conversion efficiency (typically <1%) to capture sunlight and CO2 for the production of carbohydrates, even after billions of years of evolution, and it is far from its theoretical limit of 30% [48]. This gives great room to develop an improved scientific solution to produce basic food