Biocalcite, a multifunctional inorganic polymer: Building block for calcareous sponge spicules and bioseed for the synthesis of calcium phosphate-based bone

• Xiaohong Wang,
• Heinz C. Schröder and
• Werner E. G. Müller

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 610–621, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.72

• engineering is that it is accepted by the cells as a suitable 3D platform for their growth, differentiation and mineralization (HA deposition). These requirements can be met by scaffolds made of natural fibers, which correspond in their structure and composition to the extracellular matrix. A suitable

The softening of human bladder cancer cells happens at an early stage of the malignancy process

• Jorge R. Ramos,
• Joanna Pabijan,
• Ricardo Garcia and
• Malgorzata Lekka

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 447–457, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.52

• underline that it is neither the spatial organization of the actin filaments nor the presence of stress fibers, but the overall density and their 3D-organization in a probing volume play the dominant role in controlling the elastic response of the cancerous cell to an external force. Keywords: actin

• cortex and well-formed linear actin bundles (i.e., stress fibers) that span over a whole cell. For softer cells, the actin filaments were less organized. Mostly, short filaments were observed. If F-actin bundles were present, they were shorter and randomly oriented. In particular for ovarian cancer, the

• correlation between the migratory behavior of cells and their stiffness has been demonstrated [21]. In other studies, the larger deformability of the mouse ovarian cells has been correlated with the dysregulation of actin (stress) fibers, which influences both fiber thickness and organization, as shown by

Exploring the complex mechanical properties of xanthan scaffolds by AFM-based force spectroscopy

• Hao Liang,
• Guanghong Zeng,
• Yinli Li,
• Shuai Zhang,
• Huiling Zhao,
• Lijun Guo,
• Bo Liu and
• Mingdong Dong

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 365–373, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.42

• structures are showed in Figure 1F. The above results confirmed our previous morphological studies on the temperature-enhanced re-organization of xanthan gels into 2D network of fibers. Based on this, we move forward to investigate the mechanical properties of the scaffolds by FS. FS was carried out on the

• of typical force curves after normalization of the separation length indicated that the force curves were measured from identical fibers. The persistence length is 0.35 ± 0.27 nm and contour length is 954 ± 157 nm (n = 92). It should be noted that the measured persistence length exhibits a much

A catechol biosensor based on electrospun carbon nanofibers

• Dawei Li,
• Zengyuan Pang,
• Xiaodong Chen,
• Lei Luo,
• Yibing Cai and
• Qufu Wei

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 346–354, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.39

• diameter of about 200 nm. The insert displays the diameter distribution of the ECNFs, which ranges from 50 to 380 nm and mainly focuses on 100 to 200 nm. Notably, many ECNFs were broken up into short fibers because the thermal treatment process enabled the fibers to become fragile. Figure 1b exhibits the

• surface morphology of the laccase–Nafion–ECNFs/GCE. It can be clearly seen that most of the short fibers were embedded into the laccase. Here, the short fibers may play a role of connecting the active center of laccase and the surface of GCE, which may be favorable for the electron transfer. Structure and

Friction behavior of a microstructured polymer surface inspired by snake skin

• Martina J. Baum,
• Lars Heepe and
• Stanislav N. Gorb

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 83–97, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.8

• the skin scales, so called microornamentation [1][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], and specific adaptations of the material architecture of the skin, like highly ordered embedded fibers [14], which can potentially influence material properties [15][16], might contribute to the frictional anisotropy

Dynamic nanoindentation by instrumented nanoindentation and force microscopy: a comparative review

• Sidney R. Cohen and
• Estelle Kalfon-Cohen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 815–833, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.93

• [100]. This approach is proposed as easy to implement, and allows for the measurement of the dynamic modulus while imaging the sample. This setup provided a quantitative measurement of the viscoelastic properties of PVA fibers. Also here, the instrumental phase response was assessed by a measurement of

A nano-graphite cold cathode for an energy-efficient cathodoluminescent light source

• Alexander N. Obraztsov,
• Victor I. Kleshch and
• Elena A. Smolnikova

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 493–500, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.58

• were observed on the anode screen after these measurements. This demonstrates the process of the deposition of material from the pencil core, degraded under the action of the electric field. These results are quite similar to other materials with a graphitic type of atomic bonding: carbon fibers [9

Photocatalytic antibacterial performance of TiO₂ and Ag-doped TiO₂ against S. aureus. P. aeruginosa and E. coli

• Kiran Gupta,
• R. P. Singh,
• Ashutosh Pandey and
• Anjana Pandey

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 345–351, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.40

• photocatalytic efficiency [8][9]. However, silver nanoparticles have prospective applications including biosensing, biodiagnostics, optical fibers, and antimicrobial and photocatalytic uses. Silver ions are known to cause denaturation of proteins present in bacterial cell walls and slow down bacterial growth [5

High-resolution nanomechanical analysis of suspended electrospun silk fibers with the torsional harmonic atomic force microscope

• Mark Cronin-Golomb and
• Ozgur Sahin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 243–248, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.25

• the influence of tension and bending modulus on the response of the suspended structures. Here we report mechanical measurements on electrospun silk fibers with various treatments that allow discriminating among the different mechanisms that determine the mechanical behavior of these complex

• structures. In particular we were able to identify the role of tension and boundary conditions (pinned versus clamped) in determining the mechanical response of electrospun silk fibers. Our findings show that high-resolution mechanical imaging with torsional harmonic atomic force microscopy provides a

• reliable method to investigate the mechanics of materials with complex geometries. Keywords: atomic force microscopy; nanomechanical characterization; silk fibers; tissue scaffolds; torsional harmonic cantilevers; Introduction Dynamic atomic force microscopy (AFM) methods provide opportunities for high

Electrospinning preparation and electrical and biological properties of ferrocene/poly(vinylpyrrolidone) composite nanofibers

• Ji-Hong Chai and
• Qing-Sheng Wu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 189–197, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.19

• could be controlled through adjusting solvents and Fc concentration. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the diameters of the obtained composite fibers were about 30–200 nm at different Fc concentrations. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results confirmed the presence of ferrocene within the

• PVP nanofibers. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the crystalline structure of Fc in the fibers was amorphous after the electrospinning process. A biological evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of Fc/PVP nanofibers was carried out by using Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) as

• is a simple and versatile technique for the production of polymers, composites and ceramic fibers [1][2]. Nanofibrous polymer materials produced by electrospinning have gained immense research interest because of their unique properties, such as high surface-area-to-volume and aspect ratios [3], and

Functionalization of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes

• Eloise Van Hooijdonk,
• Carla Bittencourt,
• Rony Snyders and
• Jean-François Colomer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 129–152, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.14

• fibers was solved by Feng et al. who made well-aligned MWCNTs/PANI hybrid materials. The methodology is the following: (i) VA-CNTs are grown on a quartz substrate by catalytic pyrolysis, (ii) the film is immersed in an aniline/HCl solution (0 °C, 12 h), (iii) polymerization on the CNTs surfaces. The

Paper modified with ZnO nanorods – antimicrobial studies

• Mayuree Jaisai,
• Sunandan Baruah and
• Joydeep Dutta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 684–691, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.78

• ]. Cellulose fibers used for papermaking are hygroscopic in nature [9][10] and this property was used to our advantage when developing the antimicrobial paper. The adsorbed moisture can be utilized for the production of hydroxyl radicals (·OH) and/or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) through photocatalysis. Both ·OH

• . As a result, the ZnO nanoparticles that are used for nucleating the nanorods get attached to the surface without the need for any further surface treatments, such as, for example, the surface treatment of polyethylene fibers with dodecane thiol for attachment of ZnO seed nanoparticles prior to

Nano-FTIR chemical mapping of minerals in biological materials

• Sergiu Amarie,
• Paul Zaslansky,
• Yusuke Kajihara,
• Erika Griesshaber,
• Wolfgang W. Schmahl and
• Fritz Keilmann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 312–323, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.35

• crystals in an organic matrix [18][19][20], and laminates of calcium phosphate nanoparticle reinforced chitin fibers [21][22]. FTIR spectroscopic microscopy is a well-established method and has been extensively used to study bone biominerals at several micrometers spatial resolution [23][24][25][26][27][28

Self-organizing bioinspired oligothiophene–oligopeptide hybrids

• Alexey K. Shaytan,
• Eva-Kathrin Schillinger,
• Elena Mena-Osteritz,
• Sylvia Schmid,
• Pavel G. Khalatur,
• Peter Bäuerle and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 525–544, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.57

• even greater structural polymorphism than observed in natural amyloid fibers, keeping in mind that synthetic chemistry provides more variability in the structure of the building blocks, including branched molecular topologies [16]. A number of hypothesized self-organized morphologies that may be

• extended into the dynamic domain. Since microcrystals usually only provide the structures of the basic aggregation units, different arrangements of these units into the protofilaments and then fibers may be probed in computer simulations. However, when no initial 3-D structural data is available, the

• twisted short fibers of 1' on the mica substrate. Due to the hybrid nature of 1', two opposing intermolecular interactions could dominate the self-assembly process, namely H-bonding and π–π stacking. Thus, a solvent-guided strategy was employed in order to gain control over the self-assembly process

Determination of object position, vortex shedding frequency and flow velocity using artificial lateral line canals

• Adrian Klein and
• Horst Bleckmann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 276–283, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.32

• as well as the vortex shedding frequency of a cylinder can be determined from the responses of primary lateral line afferents [13][14]. Lateral line nerve fibers also alter their discharge rate if an object passes the fish laterally. In this case the discharge pattern reflects both the position