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

• turning points varied between 252 μs and 3.9 ms. Hold times and velocities were varied randomly in order to identify possible systematic errors. The stationary contact in FFM is prone to unwanted movements caused by creep of the piezo actuator and by instrumental drift upon temperature changes. To

Nanocomposites comprised of homogeneously dispersed magnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles and poly(methyl methacrylate)

• Sašo Gyergyek,
• David Pahovnik,
• Ema Žagar,
• Alenka Mertelj,
• Rok Kostanjšek,
• Miloš Beković,
• Marko Jagodič,
• Heinrich Hofmann and
• Darko Makovec

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1613–1622, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.153

• -shift standard. The diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectra (DRIFT, Perkin Elmer Spectrum 400 equipped with DRIFT accessory) were recorded in KBr. The weight fraction of nanoparticles in the nanocomposites was determined with a Mettler Toledo thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) instrument

• copolymerization of the RA-MMA with the neat MMA (Supporting Information File 1, Figure S4). The DRIFT spectrum of the NP-RA showed absorption peaks at 1520 cm−1 (νa COO−) and 1417 cm−1 (νs COO−) (Figure 2). The difference Δν = νa(COO−) − νs(COO−) is 103 cm−1. According to Deacon and Philips [30], the change in

• disk between the containers is a permanent magnet. DRIFT spectra of the nanoparticle samples NP-RA, NP-MMA and NP-PMMA-3. Number-weighted hydrodynamic diameter size-distribution function of the NP-RA and NP-PMMA-3 nanoparticle samples. Cross-sectional TEM images of the nanocomposite sample NC-1 at

Optical near-field mapping of plasmonic nanostructures prepared by nanosphere lithography

• Gitanjali Kolhatkar,
• Alexandre Merlen,
• Jiawei Zhang,
• Chahinez Dab,
• Gregory Q. Wallace,
• François Lagugné-Labarthet and
• Andreas Ruediger

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1536–1543, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.144

• tips to ensure a detectable near-field contribution that will exceed the ubiquitous background far-field signal in the scattered light. In ideal conditions, fast scanning on the surface ensures a high sensitivity, and minimizes the drift. To achieve this objective, most nano-antennas used in aSNOM are

Cr(VI) remediation from aqueous environment through modified-TiO₂-mediated photocatalytic reduction

• Rashmi Acharya,
• Brundabana Naik and
• Kulamani Parida

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1448–1470, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.137

• quantum efficiency and a largely enhanced photocatalytic performance. It also caused a drift of photogenerated electrons to the CB of TiO2 for reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) and that of holes to the VB of Cu2O for oxidation of water to oxygen under visible-light irradiation. Since green colored

Electrostatically actuated encased cantilevers

• Benoit X. E. Desbiolles,
• Gabriela Furlan,
• Adam M. Schwartzberg,
• Paul D. Ashby and
• Dominik Ziegler

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1381–1389, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.130

• unstable imaging conditions. More importantly, the indirect excitation of the cantilever is often very sensitive to changes to external factors causing drift over time of the excitation signal complicating imaging and preventing quantitative interpretation of image data [3][4]. Attempts to reduce spurious

Formation mechanisms of boron oxide films fabricated by large-area electron beam-induced deposition of trimethyl borate

• Aiden A. Martin and
• Philip J. Depond

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1282–1287, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.120

• chemical composition was determined by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and scanning electron microscopy using a Phenom ProX SEM at 5 keV electron energy. The Phenom ProX SEM EDS subsystem consists of a silicon drift detector with a 25 mm2 active area and a resolution of ≤137 eV at Mn Kα, a Si3N4

A novel copper precursor for electron beam induced deposition

• Caspar Haverkamp,
• George Sarau,
• Mikhail N. Polyakov,
• Ivo Utke,
• Marcos V. Puydinger dos Santos,
• Silke Christiansen and
• Katja Höflich

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1220–1227, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.113

•  1). In this case EDX was performed using a Hitachi S 4800 equipped with an EDAX silicon drift detector using an acceleration voltage of 8 kV and 1 nA beam current. The obtained k-ratios were evaluated using the software Stratagem according to a routine described earlier [26] and provided copper

• microscopy (TEM) images onto the nanostructures were acquired with a Gatan Orius CCD-Camera inside a CM12 (Phillips) at an accelerating voltage of 120 kV equipped with a EDAX Genesis silicon drift detector. For TEM investigations the nanostructures were directly deposited onto Omniprobe molybdenum TEM grids

Automated image segmentation-assisted flattening of atomic force microscopy images

• Yuliang Wang,
• Tongda Lu,
• Xiaolai Li and
• Huimin Wang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 975–985, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.91

• , which are mainly caused by mechanical drift in AFM systems [18][19][20][21]. As illustrated in Figure 1a, an AFM system is generally composed of two piezo-driven stages, an x–y sample stage and a z-scanner. The x–y sample stage is used to implement precise lateral motion for point-by-point scanning

• unavoidably influenced by the mechanical drift between the two stages (Figure 1b). Using the visual sensing approach, Wang et al. demonstrated that the vertical drift between the two stages can be up to 600 nm within a 30 min time period [21]. Therefore, mechanical drift becomes a major source of artifacts

• flattening During scanning, AFM images are constructed line by line. The time required for each scan line is around 1 s along the fast scanning direction, which is much shorter than that of several minutes required for an entire image. As a result, the direction of drift is normally perpendicular to that of

Nanoscale mapping of dielectric properties based on surface adhesion force measurements

• Ying Wang,
• Yue Shen,
• Xingya Wang,
• Zhiwei Shen,
• Bin Li,
• Jun Hu and
• Yi Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 900–906, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.84

• the adhesion forces mentioned in this paper are relative values to mica, the effect of system drift on force–distance curves during the imaging process can be eliminated (Supporting Information File 1, Figure S2). The increases in the adhesion forces of CRGO and TRGO when the tip bias increased from 0

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

• whole deposition series. High-resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was performed using a Hitachi S 4800 equipped with an EDAX silicon drift detector (SSD). EDX data acquisition was performed for acceleration voltages of 8 and 12 kV using a

• AgO2F5Prop. The red arrow on the right side depicts the direction in which the AFM profiles were taken. This was chosen such, that deposit deformations due to stage drift and beam blanker velocity do not influence the displayed topography below. The AFM profiles are the result of averaging over seven

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

• , following the Langmuir–Hinshelwood mechanism. Shi et al. [25] used DRIFT to investigate the chemical reaction of reactants with the Lewis acid site and Brønsted acid site to improve activity at low temperature. Chen et al. [26] found that CeO2 provided both acid sites, while WO3 helped in increasing the

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

• four considered cases are shown in Figure 4. The analysis of the trajectory indicates that on the fully hydroxylated surfaces (Figure 4a) the molecule exhibits significant changes in orientation and a drift similar as we found for carbonyl precursors [11]. The Pt–Cp ring and Pt–methyl bonds fluctuate

The nanofluidic confinement apparatus: studying confinement-dependent nanoparticle behavior and diffusion

• Stefan Fringes,
• Felix Holzner and
• Armin W. Knoll

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 301–310, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.30

• measured surface roughness values. During the measurements described in the subsequent sections, thermal drift and pressure changes may lead to a deflection of the relatively compliant cover glass. These deflections are compensated by implementing a closed-loop system, that registers changes in the

• 15 s. The gap distance can be stabilized to ≈1 nm (1σ). The stability of the setup in lateral direction was measured by observing the drift of a surface defect in the tool. A lateral drift of ≈100 nm/h was observed. We note that this drift is slow compared to the observed particle motion and does not

Gas-assisted silver deposition with a focused electron beam

• Luisa Berger,
• Katarzyna Madajska,
• Iwona B. Szymanska,
• Katja Höflich,
• Mikhail N. Polyakov,
• Jakub Jurczyk,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 224–232, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.24

• ) was done in a Hitachi S 4800 system with an EDAX silicon drift detector (SDD). Spectra were recorded with acceleration voltages of 5, 7 and 10 keV, a beam current of 0.74 nA, and a take-off angle of 38° for a duration of 50 s. With EDAX TEAMTM software the detector background signal was subtracted and

Atomic layer deposition and properties of ZrO₂/Fe₂O₃ thin films

• Kristjan Kalam,
• Helina Seemen,
• Peeter Ritslaid,
• Mihkel Rähn,
• Aile Tamm,
• Kaupo Kukli,
• Aarne Kasikov,
• Joosep Link,
• Raivo Stern,
• Salvador Dueñas,
• Helena Castán and
• Héctor García

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 119–128, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.14

• layer under certain polarity, and an opposite polarity with increasing, oppositely directed field is required to release the charge from the traps for the subsequent drift towards the counterelectrode. The current density to applied electric field curves are shown in Figure 7 to support the given

Comparative study of post-growth annealing of Cu(hfac)₂, Co₂(CO)₈ and Me₂Au(acac) metal precursors deposited by FEBID

• Marcos V. Puydinger dos Santos,
• Aleksandra Szkudlarek,
• Artur Rydosz,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez,
• Fanny Béron,
• Kleber R. Pirota,
• Stanislav Moshkalev,
• José Alexandre Diniz and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 91–101, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.11

• -4800 SEM equipped with a silicon EDAX drift detector (SDD), acceleration voltage of 3 keV and take-off angle of ca. 32° over 100 s. The used emission current of 10 μA at 3 kV acceleration voltage yields a sample current of ca. 150 nA onto the substrate, extracted by a Faraday cup in the sample holder

Exploring wear at the nanoscale with circular mode atomic force microscopy

• Olivier Noel,
• Aleksandar Vencl and
• Pierre-Emmanuel Mazeran

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2662–2668, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.266

• contact generated by an AFM tip and an interacting surface. However, the low wear rate at the nanoscale and the thermal drift require fastidious quantitative measurements of the wear volume for determining wear laws. In this paper, we describe a new, effective, experimental methodology based on circular

• mode AFM, which generates high frequency, circular displacements of the contact. Under such conditions, the wear rate is significant and the drift of the piezoelectric actuator is limited. As a result, well-defined wear tracks are generated and an accurate computation of the wear volume is possible

• conditions, producing a significant wear is long and fastidious due to the low sliding velocity. In addition, the typical AFM scanning velocity, in the µm/s range, does not allow well-defined wear tracks to be obtained as the piezoelectric actuator thermal drift continuously moves the sample under the probe

Robust nanobubble and nanodroplet segmentation in atomic force microscope images using the spherical Hough transform

• Yuliang Wang,
• Tongda Lu,
• Xiaolai Li,
• Shuai Ren and
• Shusheng Bi

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2572–2582, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.257

• potential for numerous applications. As a result, the automated segmentation and morphological characterization of NBs and NDs in atomic force microscope (AFM) images is highly awaited. The current segmentation methods suffer from the uneven background in AFM images due to thermal drift and hysteresis of

• which are as close as possible to their actual boundaries. Through segmentation, their size, density, contact angle and even volume can be extracted. The major difficulty in automated NB/ND segmentation is the uneven background of AFM images, either because of the thermal drift and hysteresis of AFM

• for smaller objects by assuming sample surfaces are actually flat, which is not always true. Figure 1a is a raw AFM image of NBs on a polystyrene (PS) surface. One can see that the image height of the background increases along the y direction. This is mostly due to thermal drift of the AFM scanner

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

• , as is indicated in Figure 1e. In prolonged experiments a small beam drift present during deposition resulted in rectangular structures instead of the original square pattern. The uneven (wrinkled) surface of planar FEBID structures can be the result of an inhomogeneous beam drift or of precursor flux

Robust procedure for creating and characterizing the atomic structure of scanning tunneling microscope tips

• Sumit Tewari,
• Koen M. Bastiaans,
• Milan P. Allan and
• Jan M. van Ruitenbeek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2389–2395, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.238

• and mechanical drift have been stabilized, we release the current feedback and move the tip towards surface at a rate of 0.5 Å/s using a custom-written program in MATLAB. The motion is stopped once the conductance reaches the quantum of conductance (G0 = 2e2/h, which is what we expect for a single

• by thermal drift and electrical noise of our system. The curve shows that the data are closely described by an exponential dependence. Conclusion We have demonstrated a method for shaping a metallic tip apex in STM. By placing an adatom on a smooth Au surface the structure of the tip apex can be

Velocity dependence of sliding friction on a crystalline surface

• Christian Apostoli,
• Giovanni Giusti,
• Jacopo Ciccoianni,
• Gabriele Riva,
• Rosario Capozza,
• Rosalie Laure Woulaché,
• Andrea Vanossi,
• Emanuele Panizon and
• Nicola Manini

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2186–2199, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.218

• global drift mode, Figure 15, provides the following estimation for vpull c = (2.385 ± 0.005) × 10−5 vs. An even better estimation of vpull c can be obtained from Fstatic by a simple relation with the damping terms of Equation 6 hindering the chain advancement. In low-speed vpull < vpull c regime the

• chain, the slider and the pulling support all drift rightward together at the same speed vpull. This constant-speed advancement requires a null total force acting on the chain. Accordingly, the total force FSL−chain that the slider exerts on the chain must be equal in strength but opposite in direction

High-stress study of bioinspired multifunctional PEDOT:PSS/nanoclay nanocomposites using AFM, SEM and numerical simulation

• Alfredo J. Diaz,
• Hanaul Noh,
• Tobias Meier and
• Santiago D. Solares

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2069–2082, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.207

• within the linear regime. Due to the difficulty and unreliability of holding the AFM probe steady during measurement (due to high drift in ambient conditions), which would be required in order to maintain a constant contact area during a current-voltage (I–V) measurement, we confirm linearity of the I–V

• similar for all the thin samples. Consecutive operation of C-AFM and CRFM was used to investigate spatial correlations between the electrical and mechanical response of the nanocomposites. Since sequential imaging is subject to lateral drift (lateral movement in between images), an automatic cross

• -correlation was performed to eliminate the drift effects. Figure 3 shows the electro-mechanical response of the transparent samples. The out-of-plane current showed a different distribution for the three samples, especially for MTM. The MTM nanocomposite shows segregation in the current and mechanical

Non-intuitive clustering of 9,10-phenanthrenequinone on Au(111)

• Ryan D. Brown,
• Rebecca C. Quardokus,
• Natalie A. Wasio,
• Jacob P. Petersen,
• Angela M. Silski,
• Steven A. Corcelli and
• S. Alex Kandel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1801–1807, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.181

• ° between the two axes. This spacing is approximately 1 Å shorter than predicted from bulk crystal structures, but this is likely due to uncertainty in the lateral calibration and possible drift or warping in the image. A careful inspection of the orientation of molecules within the rows in Figure 3 reveals

Nanotribological behavior of deep cryogenically treated martensitic stainless steel

• Germán Prieto,
• Konstantinos D. Bakoglidis,
• Walter R. Tuckart and
• Esteban Broitman

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1760–1768, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.177

• at the higher applied loads. The method utilizes a MatLab® script to eliminate the thermal drift. The software output gives the resulting friction coefficient, track roughness, and wear rate as a function of the number of cycles of the probe. The wear volume is estimated considering the projected

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

• temperature of the sensors was controlled independently by applying a known electrical power to the heaters. A temperature screening was performed, to identify the optimal working temperature of the materials. Metal oxide materials may exhibit a small drift in the electrical conductance during the heating