Spin-coated planar Sb₂S₃ hybrid solar cells approaching 5% efficiency

• Pascal Kaienburg,
• Benjamin Klingebiel and
• Thomas Kirchartz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2114–2124, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.200

• routes based on different precursors reported in the literature. By studying the film morphology, sub-bandgap absorption and solar cell performance, improved annealing procedures are found and the crystallization temperature is shown to be critical. In order to determine the optimized processing

• annealing process that considerably improves substrate coverage. We compare both process routes in terms of morphology, electronic defects and device performance with a focus on the crystallization step. For optimized annealing conditions, we vary the hole transport material and illustrate a qualitatively

• visible. For better comparison, SEM images of substrates without Sb2S3 can be found in Figure S1, Supporting Information File 1. The morphology is improved by annealing the films at 100 °C directly after spin-coating for approximately 60 minutes prior to thermal decomposition at 180 °C. Figure 2b shows

Phosphorus monolayer doping (MLD) of silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates

• Noel Kennedy,
• Ray Duffy,
• Luke Eaton,
• Dan O’Connell,
• Scott Monaghan,
• Shane Garvey,
• James Connolly,
• Chris Hatem,
• Justin D. Holmes and
• Brenda Long

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2106–2113, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.199

• capping layer the dopant monolayer is essentially “burnt” off during high-temperature annealing. Cap removal was carried out using a standard buffered oxide etch. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to acquire high-resolution topographic images to evaluate the surface quality throughout MLD processing

• × 1020 cm−3. However, due to the inaccuracy of SIMS in this region it is difficult to assess these values. One possible reason for these elevated values may be dopant trapping by SiO2 during the annealing process. The surface oxidation found after functionalization (Figure 6) has the potential to inhibit

• diffusion into the substrate. Other research groups [7][8][18], working on P diffusion doping using a variety of techniques have also seen limitations at 2 × 1019 cm−3. This was further examined by using longer annealing times of 10 and 100 s. Figure S1 (Supporting Information File 1) shows that this leads

Localized photodeposition of catalysts using nanophotonic resonances in silicon photocathodes

• Evgenia Kontoleta,
• Sven H. C. Askes,
• Lai-Hung Lai and
• Erik C. Garnett

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2097–2105, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.198

• . Post-annealing of the samples in a tube oven, in air, at 350 °C for 3 h with a ramp of 11 °C/min was needed for the formation of anatase TiO2 (Figure S2, Supporting Information File 1). Photo-electrochemical deposition For the deposition of platinum nanoparticles, a photo-electrochemical cell (Zahner

Metal-free catalysis based on nitrogen-doped carbon nanomaterials: a photoelectron spectroscopy point of view

• Mattia Scardamaglia and
• Carla Bittencourt

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2015–2031, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.191

• valence band (VB) spectra with high energy resolution [58]. They correlated the change in the DOS to the different types of nitrogen functionalities incorporated in the carbon matrix, using X-ray photoemission spectroscopy and in situ annealing. Specifically, it was shown that through annealing at

• ion kinetic energy or plasma parameters as well as the annealing conditions [81][82]. Recently, in accordance with the theoretical report of Krasheninnikov et al. [83], Scardamaglia et al. showed that for the doping of carbon nanostructures in a suspended geometry, the use of energetic ions with

• , Scardamaglia et al. [37] showed that the sp2-character of the material is maintained or easily recovered through thermal annealing (Figure 6). A nitrogen atom can be hosted in the hexagonal carbon network in many forms. The three most common configurations are pyridinic (N1), pyrrolic (N2) and graphitic (N3

Recent highlights in nanoscale and mesoscale friction

• Andrea Vanossi,
• Dirk Dietzel,
• Andre Schirmeisen,
• Ernst Meyer,
• Rémy Pawlak,
• Thilo Glatzel,
• Marcin Kisiel,
• Shigeki Kawai and
• Nicola Manini

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1995–2014, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.190

• annealing, dehalogenation as well as cyclodehydrogenation can be achieved, which leads to clean, defect-free GNRs. Therefore, ideal contacts, free of contaminants, can be grown on the gold surface. The GNRs are observed to move preferentially in the [−101] direction, where the moiré pattern forming with Au

Electromigrated electrical optical antennas for transducing electrons and photons at the nanoscale

• Arindam Dasgupta,
• Mickaël Buret,
• Nicolas Cazier,
• Marie-Maxime Mennemanteuil,
• Reinaldo Chacon,
• Kamal Hammani,
• Jean-Claude Weeber,
• Juan Arocas,
• Laurent Markey,
• Gérard Colas des Francs,
• Alexander Uskov,
• Igor Smetanin and
• Alexandre Bouhelier

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1964–1976, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.187

• momentary rise of the conductance, which we attribute to the desorption of surface contaminants as well as a temperature annealing of the constriction due to dissipation of the electrical power in this area. This effect can be traced in Figure 2a at around t = 150 s. An example of another temperature effect

• . We substantiate this hypothesis by the temporary improvement of the conductance at t = 150 s before the onset of electromigration discussed in Figure 2a. The SEM image of Figure 2c is also providing additional confirmation of a partial annealing of the constriction. In the area marked “annealed zone

• connections. The areas colored in red are made by electron-beam lithography, the regions in blue are those fabricated by photolithography. (a) Temporal extract of the electromigration sequence featuring the effect of partial annealing, Joule heating and onset of electromigration on the evolution of the

Defect formation in multiwalled carbon nanotubes under low-energy He and Ne ion irradiation

• Santhana Eswara,
• Jean-Nicolas Audinot,
• Brahime El Adib,
• Maël Guennou,
• Tom Wirtz and
• Patrick Philipp

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1951–1963, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.186

• , ion irradiation can also be used to modify the electronic properties. The presence of defects can increase the resistivity by several orders of magnitude [2][16]. When combining low-fluence ion irradiation with subsequent annealing, the electrical conductivity of SWCNTs can be improved [17]. The

A differential Hall effect measurement method with sub-nanometre resolution for active dopant concentration profiling in ultrathin doped Si_1−xGe_x and Si layers

• Richard Daubriac,
• Emmanuel Scheid,
• Hiba Rizk,
• Richard Monflier,
• Sylvain Joblot,
• Rémi Beneyton,
• Pablo Acosta Alba,
• Sébastien Kerdilès and
• Filadelfo Cristiano

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1926–1939, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.184

• thick SiGe test structure fabricated by CVD and uniformly doped in situ during growth. The developed method is finally applied to the investigation of dopant activation achieved by advanced annealing methods (including millisecond and nanosecond laser annealing) in two material systems: 6 nm thick

• mobility; contact resistance; differential Hall effect; dopant activation; fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI); laser annealing; sub-nanometre resolution; Introduction The research efforts made throughout the last decades have made it possible to keep the momentum for a continuous miniaturization

• increase of the active dopant concentration at the surface of the source/drain material (usually Si or SiGe) is a key factor for obtaining a resistance reduction [6], and several process solutions have been proposed to this purpose, involving advanced implanting or annealing techniques [7]. Within this

Electrical characterization of single nanometer-wide Si fins in dense arrays

• Steven Folkersma,
• Janusz Bogdanowicz,
• Andreas Schulze,
• Paola Favia,
• Dirch H. Petersen,
• Ole Hansen,
• Henrik H. Henrichsen,
• Peter F. Nielsen,
• Lior Shiv and
• Wilfried Vandervorst

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1863–1867, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.178

• implantation and annealing treatment. This increase in sheet resistance when going to nanoscale elongated geometries was expected and understood to originate from the presence of interface states as well as defects at the fin sidewalls [6]. Conclusion This paper demonstrates the capability of μ4pp to

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

Light extraction efficiency enhancement of flip-chip blue light-emitting diodes by anodic aluminum oxide

• Yi-Ru Huang,
• Yao-Ching Chiu,
• Kuan-Chieh Huang,
• Shao-Ying Ting,
• Po-Jui Chiang,
• Chih-Ming Lai,
• Chun-Ping Jen,
• Snow H. Tseng and
• Hsiang-Chen Wang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1602–1612, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.152

• traditional LED by producing a TiO2 microstructure array on p-GaN through dipping and rapid convective deposition and using noncrystalline TiO2 and anatase TiO2 with a diameter of 520 nm [13]. Huang et al. used Zn and Mg for ion implantation at the GZO thin layer and then adopted rapid thermal annealing to

Absence of free carriers in silicon nanocrystals grown from phosphorus- and boron-doped silicon-rich oxide and oxynitride

• Daniel Hiller,
• Julian López-Vidrier,
• Keita Nomoto,
• Michael Wahl,
• Wolfgang Bock,
• Tomáš Chlouba,
• František Trojánek,
• Sebastian Gutsch,
• Margit Zacharias,
• Dirk König,
• Petr Malý and
• Michael Kopnarski

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1501–1511, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.141

• of thermal activation via, e.g., a high-temperature annealing process a significant fraction of potential dopants will remain on interstitial sites [3]. The decreasing number of Si–Si bonds per Si NC atom is a crucial point for the increase of dopant formation energies [4]. These factors impede

• broad overview of all available techniques and approaches [11]. Here, we focus on the Si NC growth via phase separation of PECVD-deposited, P- or B-doped silicon-rich oxide thin films via annealing at high temperatures. Additionally, we focus on comparatively lowly doped samples (on the order of 0.1–1

• incorporation efficiency of B in Si-rich oxides is approximately one order of magnitude lower than that of P. Since SIMS cannot reveal the distribution of the dopants in the heterogeneous sample system of Si NCs and SiO2 after annealing, atom probe tomography (APT) is used. APT was demonstrated to be a powerful

Nanoporous silicon nitride-based membranes of controlled pore size, shape and areal density: Fabrication as well as electrophoretic and molecular filtering characterization

• Axel Seidenstücker,
• Stefan Beirle,
• Fabian Enderle,
• Paul Ziemann,
• Othmar Marti and
• Alfred Plettl

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1390–1398, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.131

• silicon dioxide layers during rapid thermal annealing [13]. This fabrication offers the advantage of full compatibility to semiconductor fabrication techniques. While pore distance and pore size can be controlled within acceptable limits, the generated pores are random in position and the membrane

• of the micelle-grown Au NPs [35][40]. Up to a diameter of about 30 nm this process can be done in a single step. The spherical shape can be improved by additional annealing [35]. These Au NPs are then applied as an etching mask in a RIE process that was optimized to remove Si and Si compounds (oxide

• of the resulting membranes, may deteriorate their permeability. It turned out, however, that fluorocarbon surface contaminations could be removed by annealing in ultra-high vacuum (10−8 mbar) at 500 °C for 120 min (details are given in Supporting Information File 1). For membrane C with the smallest

Heterostuctures of 4-(chloromethyl)phenyltrichlorosilane and 5,10,15,20-tetra(4-pyridyl)-21H,23H-porphine prepared on Si(111) using particle lithography: Nanoscale characterization of the main steps of nanopatterning

• Phillip C. Chambers and
• Jayne C. Garno

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1211–1219, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.112

• drying, 10 µL of monodisperse silica microspheres in water was deposited on the clean silicon substrates and dried in air to produce a surface film of Si spheres. The substrate and dried microspheres were placed in an oven at 150 °C for 20 h. The annealing heating step was used to temporarily solder the

P3HT:PCBM blend films phase diagram on the base of variable-temperature spectroscopic ellipsometry

• Barbara Hajduk,
• Henryk Bednarski,
• Bożena Jarząbek,
• Henryk Janeczek and
• Paweł Nitschke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1108–1115, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.102

• post-deposition treatments, e.g., heat treatment [20][21]. One large branch of studies on OPV devices based on thin films of polymer:fullerene blend active layers deals with the optimization of their power conversion efficiency by applying thermal annealing [8]. Remarkably, it has been proven that the

• . They also related the value of the optimum annealing temperature for a given sample to their content of PCBM. What is important, these results were confirmed using two different experimental methods that allow for the determination of Tg. Namely, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and

Room-temperature single-photon emitters in titanium dioxide optical defects

• Kelvin Chung,
• Yu H. Leung,
• Chap H. To,
• Aleksandra B. Djurišić and
• Snjezana Tomljenovic-Hanic

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1085–1094, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.100

• treatment is also required. To the best of our knowledge, we can only conclude that we did not observe single-photon emission in some morphologies probably due to different fabrication methods and annealing temperatures. It can be inferred that for these two morphologies there is a pure non-radiative decay

• mechanism. This topic is beyond the scope of the current work, which focusses on the optical regime and single-photon emission. Morfa et al. [7] observed a dependence of the creation of defects in ZnO nanoparticles on the annealing temperature. Single-photon emission in TiO2 thin films The a-450 °C-TiO2

• single-photon emitting defects represent 5% of the total number of fluorescing features investigated. A previous work by Morfa et al. [7] on single-photon emitting defects in ZnO films showed that the annealing temperature plays an important role in the creation of defects. In our work, the films that

Single-crystalline FeCo nanoparticle-filled carbon nanotubes: synthesis, structural characterization and magnetic properties

• Rasha Ghunaim,
• Maik Scholz,
• Christine Damm,
• Bernd Rellinghaus,
• Rüdiger Klingeler,
• Bernd Büchner,
• Michael Mertig and
• Silke Hampel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1024–1034, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.95

• of the filling inside the CNTs and was confirmed by quantitative measurements performed by TGA as will be shown later (see Figure 6). It is important to emphasize the effect of annealing on the growth of the particles. For the as-prepared samples (i.e., only reduced, Figure 1a and 1b), different

• morphologies and particle sizes for the filling materials have been observed (small, large spheres, particle chains as indicated by arrows in Figure 1b), whereas after an additional heat treatment step (annealing at 600 °C for 48 h), a significant growth in the particles size was observed. This observation was

• treatment step. We attribute the observation of a pronounced increase in particle size to the prolonged heat treatment (i.e., annealing for 48 h), which provides a significantly higher amount of thermal energy. This increases the probability of particle merging, which in turn leads to particle growth. TEM

Effect of annealing treatments on CeO₂ grown on TiN and Si substrates by atomic layer deposition

• Silvia Vangelista,
• Rossella Piagge,
• Satu Ek and
• Alessio Lamperti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 890–899, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.83

• attention to the interface with the substrate. The annealing treatments have been performed in situ during the acquisition of X-Ray diffraction patterns to monitor the structural changes in the film. We find that ceria film is thermally stable up to annealing temperatures of 900 °C required for the complete

• structure with texturing. Further, after annealing at 900 °C an increase of grain dimensions and an enhanced preferential (200) orientation are evidenced. These findings are a strong indication that the texturing is an intrinsic property of the system more than a metastable condition due to the ALD

• ; in situ annealing; transmission electron microscopy; X-ray diffraction; Introduction Cerium dioxide (CeO2) has raised renewed interest in the recent years in many fields of research thanks to its properties, such as the ability to store and release oxygen, or its chemical stability [1][2]. For many

Comparative study of antibacterial properties of polystyrene films with TiO_x and Cu nanoparticles fabricated using cluster beam technique

• Vladimir N. Popok,
• Cesarino M. Jeppesen,
• Peter Fojan,
• Anna Kuzminova,
• Jan Hanuš and
• Ondřej Kylián

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 861–869, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.80

• formation of the particles with semiconducting properties required for the catalytic formation of reactive oxygen species. Cu NPs are used as deposited. Partial NP embedding into polystyrene is realised in a controllable manner using thermal annealing in order to improve surface adhesion and make the

• formed in a cluster source into polymer simultaneously synthesized by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition, by coating the NPs with a thin overlay or by soft landing of clusters on ex situ fabricated films followed by thermal annealing facilitating the partial embedding of clusters into the polymer

• the Cu clusters are size-selected prior the deposition (see Experimental section). The annealing leads to the immersion of NPs into PS by about 30–50% of their diameter as can be seen in Figure 1b while comparing the height scales in panels (a) and (b). These images are given just for the illustration

Facile synthesis of a ZnO–BiOI p–n nano-heterojunction with excellent visible-light photocatalytic activity

• Mengyuan Zhang,
• Jiaqian Qin,
• Pengfei Yu,
• Bing Zhang,
• Mingzhen Ma,
• Xinyu Zhang and
• Riping Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 789–800, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.72

• the previous studies without post-annealing treatment [33]. It is reasonable to believe that the bonding between ZnO and BiOI is stronger after the calcination and can be beneficial to the charge transfer in the photocatalytic activity process. Figure 2a–c shows the morphology of samples B-1, B-4 and

Dynamics and fragmentation mechanism of (C₅H₄CH₃)Pt(CH₃)₃ on SiO₂ surfaces

• Kaliappan Muthukumar,
• Harald O. Jeschke and
• Roser Valentí

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 711–720, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.66

• (such as annealing, post-deposition annealing in O2, exposure to atomic hydrogen, post-deposition electron irradiation) were proposed as viable techniques [7][8], but these approaches are not completely free from reproducibility issues. Therefore, to improve the metal content and to address the nature

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

• a combined system of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) for observations of insulator metal oxide surfaces. With this system, the long-period iterations of sputtering and annealing used in conventional methods for preparing a metal oxide film surface are

• ][22]. For observations of surface atoms of metal oxides using NC-AFM and STM, it is critical to prepare atomically flat and clean surfaces. A standard method for obtaining clean surfaces of metal oxides is performing iterations of Ar+ sputtering and annealing at high temperatures [23][24][25][26][37

• ][41][42]. Different conditions of annealing and sputtering result in different types of surface reconstruction even under the same preparation conditions [26]. As an example of an insulator metal oxide, an Al2O3(0001) surface prepared using iterations of annealing and sputtering was imaged with atomic

Optimisation of purification techniques for the preparation of large-volume aqueous solar nanoparticle inks for organic photovoltaics

• Furqan Almyahi,
• Thomas R. Andersen,
• Nathan A. Cooling,
• Natalie P. Holmes,
• Matthew J. Griffith,
• Krishna Feron,
• Xiaojing Zhou,
• Warwick J. Belcher and
• Paul C. Dastoor

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 649–659, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.60

• integrating sphere. Device testing The NP-OPV devices had a masked area of 3.8 mm2 and were tested under a nitrogen atmosphere in glovebox before and after annealing at 140 °C for 4 min. Current density–voltage (J–V) measurements were performed using Keithley 2400 source meter under illumination of a Newport

Sensing behavior of flower-shaped MoS₂ nanoflakes: case study with methanol and xylene

• Maryam Barzegar,
• Masoud Berahman and
• Azam Iraji zad

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 608–615, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.57

• nanoflakes. It was found that the nanoflakes form a flower-shaped structure with a large surface-to-volume ratio. The sensor device was successfully fabricated by spin coating of MoS2 flakes on an alumina substrate, on the back side of which a Pt heater circuit for thermal annealing was deposited. Our

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

• 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

• such as Pt and Au by post-growth treatment and in situ injection of water for carbon removal [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. These oxidative processes are suitable for precious metals, while other approaches such as annealing under vacuum [14] and hydrogen atmosphere [15][16] are suitable for metals such

• regions for this electron dose (1.3 × 1017 e−/cm2) are seen to be similar to those shown in Figure 9, with the dominant effects being the loss of signal intensity in the O 1s region (≈70% of its initial value) and a decrease of ≈1.6 eV in the binding energy of the Ru atoms. Upon annealing this irradiated