Dry adhesives from carbon nanofibers grown in an open ethanol flame

• Christian Lutz,
• Julia Syurik,
• C. N. Shyam Kumar,
• Christian Kübel,
• Michael Bruns and
• Hendrik Hölscher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2719–2728, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.271

• in a good agreement with XPS investigations of CNFs by other authors [41][42]. The weak component at 285.0 eV (blue dashed line) originates from so-called ’adventitious carbon’ sp3, describing hydrocarbon contamination due to the exposure to ambient atmosphere. The HRTEM images in Figure 4 b reveal

Localized growth of carbon nanotubes via lithographic fabrication of metallic deposits

• Fan Tu,
• Martin Drost,
• Imre Szenti,
• Janos Kiss,
• Zoltan Kónya and
• Hubertus Marbach

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2592–2605, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.260

• contain high amounts of carbon as contamination. For example, Sharma et al. [20] presented the possibility to control the deposited particle size by varying the EBID parameters (i.e., electron dose and beam current) but no further CNTs were shown to grow on these as-deposited Fe-containing nanoparticles

• . Carbon contamination had a pronounced negative influence on the activity of the EBID deposits. The CNT yield on these deposits was low and post-treatment with oxygen plasma was necessary to clean the EBID Co deposits before the corresponding CVD experiment could be successfully conducted with sufficient

• CNT yield [21]. The existence of the corresponding carbon contamination was traced back to deposits from the residual gas in the high-vacuum (HV) environment and the dissociation of the carbon-containing precursor ligands [19]. With our “surface science approach” to FEBIP, that is, working in an ultra

Direct writing of gold nanostructures with an electron beam: On the way to pure nanostructures by combining optimized deposition with oxygen-plasma treatment

• Domagoj Belić,
• Mostafa M. Shawrav,
• Emmerich Bertagnolli and
• Heinz D. Wanzenboeck

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2530–2543, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.253

• microstructures can be fabricated by one-step direct-write lithography process using focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID). Typically, as-deposited gold nanostructures suffer from a low Au content and unacceptably high carbon contamination. We show that the undesirable carbon contamination can be

• only slightly increased under deposition in reactive environments [43][44]. Logically, it would seem that the best way to avoid carbon contamination is to use a carbon-free precursor. Indeed, FEBID experiments using the PF3AuCl precursors yielded almost pure Au structures [32], but this precursor was

• content of the deposit. The carbon contamination, which mainly originates from the imperfect chemical decomposition of the precursor, is a strong limitation for possible usage of FEBID nanomaterials in optical, magnetic, electronic or information storage devices. It is therefore essential to improve their

Strategy to discover full-length amyloid-beta peptide ligands using high-efficiency microarray technology

• Clelia Galati,
• Natalia Spinella,
• Lucio Renna,
• Danilo Milardi,
• Francesco Attanasio,
• Michele Francesco Maria Sciacca and
• Corrado Bongiorno

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2446–2453, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.243

• controlled rate in order to reproducibly grow layers of silicon oxide of a defined thickness. Thermal growth allows high-quality SiO2 films to be obtained with very low auto-fluorescence and very low contamination. The wafers were then cut in pieces to the exact dimensions of conventional microscope slides

Au nanostructure fabrication by pulsed laser deposition in open air: Influence of the deposition geometry

• Rumen G. Nikov,
• Anna Og. Dikovska,
• Nikolay N. Nedyalkov,
• Georgi V. Avdeev and
• Petar A. Atanasov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2438–2445, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.242

• their fabrication. Such applications require contamination-free nanostructures, suggesting that the development and use of physical nanofabrication methods is further warranted. One of the physical vapor deposition techniques widely applied in bottom-up nanotechnology is pulsed laser deposition (PLD

Surfactant-induced enhancement of droplet adhesion in superhydrophobic soybean (Glycine max L.) leaves

• Oliver Hagedorn,
• Ingo Fleute-Schlachter,
• Hans Georg Mainx,
• Viktoria Zeisler-Diehl and
• Kerstin Koch

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2345–2356, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.234

• applied droplets, even on superhydrophobic leaves, to reduce undesirable soil contamination by roll-off of agrochemical formulations from the plant surfaces. The wettability and morphology of soybean (Glycine max L.) leaf surfaces before and after treatment with six different surfactants (Agnique® SBO10

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

• damage induced by constant tip drag. Additionally, these methods are prone to significant tip wear and contamination which could make quantitative characterization unreliable due to constant changes in tip geometry. Dynamic methods have been designed to overcome the above issues, whereby tapping-mode AFM

Ester formation at the liquid–solid interface

• Nguyen T. N. Ha,
• Thiruvancheril G. Gopakumar,
• Nguyen D. C. Yen,
• Carola Mende,
• Lars Smykalla,
• Maik Schlesinger,
• Roy Buschbeck,
• Tobias Rüffer,
• Heinrich Lang,
• Michael Mehring and
• Michael Hietschold

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2139–2150, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.213

• location of esterification, respectively: 1) The ester molecules originate all from the solution (either as contamination or as the result of an esterification in the bulk liquid phase); 2) the seed molecules for the ordered adsorbed ester pattern originate from the solution but around them further

Magnetic properties of optimized cobalt nanospheres grown by focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) on cantilever tips

• Soraya Sangiao,
• César Magén,
• Darius Mofakhami,
• Grégoire de Loubens and
• José María De Teresa

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2106–2115, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.210

• reports on Co-FEBID, which have confirmed this layer to be non-ferromagnetic [50]. Furthermore, a thin layer containing carbon and oxygen of about 7 nm is formed due to contamination before and during the electron beam irradiation in the TEM experiment. As a result, the average diameter of cobalt under

• ). Figure 5a shows the bright field image of the Co nanosphere overlapped with the interference fringe pattern of the hologram, revealing a significant amount of contamination which did not disappear after standard Ar/O2 plasma cleaning procedures. Furthermore, the holograms before and after (not shown

• ) reversing the object show how contamination builds up during the experiment, which affects the quantitative properties of the technique (particularly for the smaller sphere of 90 nm, shown in the Supporting Information File 1). The electrostatic (φE) and magnetic (φM) contributions to the phase shift

A systematic study of the controlled generation of crystalline iron oxide nanoparticles on graphene using a chemical etching process

• Peter Krauß,
• Jörg Engstler and
• Jörg J. Schneider

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2017–2025, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.202

• quality of the transferred graphene. The protective polymer coatings typically used generate residues and contamination on the ultrathin graphene layer. In this work, we have developed a graphene transfer process which works without a coating and allows the transfer of graphene onto arbitrary substrates

• without the need for any additional post-processing. During the course of our transfer studies, we found that the etching process that is usually employed can lead to contamination of the graphene layer with the Faradaic etchant component FeCl3, resulting in the deposition of iron oxide FexOy

• ][34]. As graphene is close to or even atomically thin, even very minor amounts of contamination can affect its electronic properties [22][33][34]. Additional processing such as thermal annealing in vacuum or hydrogen atmosphere is required to completely remove the protective layer, making polymer

Bi-layer sandwich film for antibacterial catheters

• Gerhard Franz,
• Florian Schamberger,
• Hamideh Heidari Zare,
• Sara Felicitas Bröskamp and
• Dieter Jocham

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1982–2001, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.199

• above mentioned concepts do not address these deficits: 1. The exterior side of the catheter has intimate contact to the urethra along its whole length. Therefore, it is most likely that contamination with bacteria only happens during its implantation. Depositing an antibacterial layer only on 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

• layers) is about 17–18%, as obtained by comparing the area of the O–C=O contribution to the total area of the C 1s line. The lower proportion can be ascribed to contamination during exposure to air. From Figure 5a,b we observe that the proportions are about 7% and 13% for the unexposed and exposed

• samples, respectively. Apart from surface contamination, the lower values are due to the contribution from the underlying PS–OH brush layer, which adds to the main C–C/C–H line, and to a lesser extent, to the C–OH line. The lower the values, the larger the contribution from the brush layer, so that we can

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

• photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) [31]. It should be pointed out here that this study showed that the S 2p3/2 peak in MoS2 is at around 167.6 eV, which is considerably higher than the pure core-level line of pure S. This high value might be an indication of contamination with O [32] or Ni [33]. Here we revisit

(Metallo)porphyrins for potential materials science applications

• Lars Smykalla,
• Carola Mende,
• Michael Fronk,
• Pablo F. Siles,
• Michael Hietschold,
• Georgeta Salvan,
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn,
• Oliver G. Schmidt,
• Tobias Rüffer and
• Heinrich Lang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1786–1800, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.180

• predefined dimensions seems possible. Related structural aggregates were hitherto obtained through solution processing only [58]. The disadvantages of this wet-chemistry deposition technique are the possible contamination and/or substrate oxidation [11][15][59]. The dendrites could be particularly suitable

Fluorination of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes: from CF₄ plasma chemistry to surface functionalization

• Claudia Struzzi,
• Mattia Scardamaglia,
• Jean-François Colomer,
• Alberto Verdini,
• Luca Floreano,
• Rony Snyders and
• Carla Bittencourt

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1723–1733, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.173

• , XPS analysis shows an oxygen concentration in the plasma functionalized vCNT similar to the one detected on the pristine vCNT surface, thus indicating that the oxygen-containing species are not grafted on the vCNT. Therefore, surface contamination can be limited or avoided if the sample is not

• , therefore the surface contamination can be limited or even avoided if the sample is not immersed in the discharge. Furthermore, this is in agreement with the observation of the oxygen capacity in delivering fluorine atoms by rapidly reacting with fluorine-containing species in the discharge [8]. In order to

Collembola cuticles and the three-phase line tension

• Håkon Gundersen,
• Hans Petter Leinaas and
• Christian Thaulow

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1714–1722, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.172

• solid–liquid–vapor systems fall in the higher end of the range, the differences between the experimental results and the theoretical predictions can likely be explained by contamination of the solid surfaces or experimental error [17][18][20]. Pompe et al. accounted for substrate inhomogeneities with

Uptake and intracellular accumulation of diamond nanoparticles – a metabolic and cytotoxic study

• Antonín Brož,
• Lucie Bačáková,
• Pavla Štenclová,
• Alexander Kromka and
• Štěpán Potocký

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1649–1657, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.165

• measurements to eliminate sample cross contamination. A Nicolet 8700 FTIR spectrometer (Thermo Scientific, USA) was equipped with N2 purging, a KBr beamsplitter and an MCT detector cooled by liquid nitrogen. 50 µL of the water suspension with NDs was applied on the Au mirror by the drop-casting method just

Two-dimensional carbon-based nanocomposites for photocatalytic energy generation and environmental remediation applications

• Suneel Kumar,
• Ashish Kumar,
• Ashish Bahuguna,
• Vipul Sharma and
• Venkata Krishnan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1571–1600, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.159

Metal oxide nanostructures: preparation, characterization and functional applications as chemical sensors

• Dario Zappa,
• Angela Bertuna,
• Elisabetta Comini,
• Navpreet Kaur,
• Nicola Poli,
• Veronica Sberveglieri and
• Giorgio Sberveglieri

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1205–1217, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.122

• oxidizing and a reducing gas interesting for environmental monitoring). Moreover, we have integrated metal oxide nanowires into an electronic nose and proved its ability in a real case study, more specifically the detection of water contamination. Results and Discussion Preparation of metal oxide

• sensors. As a case study, we have chosen the analysis of water contamination. Nowadays, a fast and economic device for the early detection of microbial contamination and quality assurance is needed to reduce the number of food-borne related hospitalizations by year. Moreover, there is a strong need for a

Adsorption characteristics of Er₃N@C₈₀on W(110) and Au(111) studied via scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy

• Sebastian Schimmel,
• Zhixiang Sun,
• Danny Baumann,
• Denis Krylov,
• Nataliya Samoylova,
• Alexey Popov,
• Bernd Büchner and
• Christian Hess

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1127–1134, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.114

• in situ in a variable temperature STM. To provide contamination free substrate surfaces, cleaning treatments were applied to the used single crystals, prior to the measurement. According to the proceeding suggested by Bode et al. [10], the W(110)-surface was cleaned by repeated cycles of annealing (T

Growth, structure and stability of sputter-deposited MoS₂ thin films

• Reinhard Kaindl,
• Bernhard C. Bayer,
• Roland Resel,
• Thomas Müller,
• Viera Skakalova,
• Gerlinde Habler,
• Rainer Abart,
• Alexey S. Cherevan,
• Dominik Eder,
• Maxime Blatter,
• Fabian Fischer,
• Jannik C. Meyer,
• Dmitry K. Polyushkin and
• Wolfgang Waldhauser

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1115–1126, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.113

• work for instance reported significant oxygen and carbon incorporation during typical PVD conditions, where substitutional doping of MoS2 with oxygen recently was shown to drastically alter its electronic structure [37][38][50]. Also key effects of, e.g., Nb or Na contamination on electronic properties

• spacing and textured microstructure. Importantly both RT and 400 °C deposited films appear to have a metallic-like conduction character, which is unexpected for MoS2 films that are usually semiconducting. It is likely that a combination of Mo/S stoichiometry, add-atom contamination and local structural

The integration of graphene into microelectronic devices

• Guenther Ruhl,
• Sebastian Wittmann,
• Matthias Koenig and
• Daniel Neumaier

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1056–1064, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.107

• charge carrier mobility. Several studies have been conducted on this topic [35][36], but the impact on manufacturability is still not very clear. However, there is continuous improvement towards large crystallite sizes in the millimeter range [37][38]. 2.2 Contamination Another important intrinsic

• property of graphene is the amount of contaminations from the synthesis and transfer process. The synthesis process mainly introduces metallic contaminations typically in the range of 1013 to 1014 atoms·cm−2, which corresponds to every tenth to hundredth atom in a monolayer. The main contamination is Cu

• from the CVD process, but also Fe is found in remarkable amounts. Several cleaning processes have been evaluated, but no substantial contamination removal could be achieved [39]. These metal contamination levels do not only lead to difficult integration into CMOS process lines (the typical upper

CVD transfer-free graphene for sensing applications

• Chiara Schiattarella,
• Sten Vollebregt,
• Tiziana Polichetti,
• Brigida Alfano,
• Ettore Massera,
• Maria Lucia Miglietta,
• Girolamo Di Francia and
• Pasqualina Maria Sarro

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1015–1022, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.102

• advantage of the absence of damage or contamination of the synthesized graphene, because there is no need for the transfer onto a substrate. Moreover, a proper pre-patterning of the Mo catalyst allows one to obtain graphene films with different shapes and dimensions. The sensing properties of the material

• interface. More recently, Lukosius et al. have shown the successful growth of a graphene layer underneath Ni bars on insulating SiO2 layers, so avoiding the metal contamination problems and complexity associated to graphene transfer [21]. In the present work, we show the results of the sensing performances

• throughout the whole fabrication process: after CVD growth, after Mo etching and after lift-off. The absence of contamination has then been attested by EDX analysis. In Figure 1 a representative optical micrograph of the fabricated devices is reported. The graphene layer (dark strip highlighted in red) and

Needs and challenges for assessing the environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs)

• Michelle Romero-Franco,
• Hilary A. Godwin,
• Muhammad Bilal and
• Yoram Cohen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 989–1014, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.101

Triptycene-terminated thiolate and selenolate monolayers on Au(111)

• Jinxuan Liu,
• Martin Kind,
• Björn Schüpbach,
• Daniel Käfer,
• Stefanie Winkler,
• Wenhua Zhang,
• Andreas Terfort and
• Christof Wöll

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 892–905, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.91

• procedure considering the incident photon flux by division by a spectrum of a clean, freshly sputtered Au substrate. The energy was scaled using the signal of a carbon contamination of a gold grid with a characteristic peak at 284.81 eV. To obtain the molecular orientation of the thiolates/selenolates