Temperature-tunable lasing from dye-doped chiral microdroplets encapsulated in a thin polymeric film

• Gia Petriashvili,
• Mauro Daniel Luigi Bruno,
• Maria Penelope De Santo and
• Riccardo Barberi

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 379–383, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.37

• 87036, Italy 10.3762/bjnano.9.37 Abstract In the last decade, much interest has grown around the possibility to use liquid-crystal droplets as optical microcavities and lasers. In particular, 3D laser emission from dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystals confined inside microdroplets paves the way for

• nm for a temperature variation of 18 °C. The tuning proves that, even if the droplets are embedded in a polymeric matrix, the liquid crystalline structure is fluid enough to allow the dissolution of more chiral dopant inside the nematic liquid crystal, increasing the winding of the cholesteric helix

• the coalescence of droplets and to induce the planar alignment of the liquid-crystal molecules at the interface. Inside the droplets, the cholesteric helices arrange in a radial configuration, with the cholesteric layers bent in concentric spherical surfaces. In order to study laser emission from

Review: Electrostatically actuated nanobeam-based nanoelectromechanical switches – materials solutions and operational conditions

• Liga Jasulaneca,
• Jelena Kosmaca,
• Raimonds Meija,
• Jana Andzane and
• Donats Erts

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 271–300, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.29

Al₂O₃/TiO₂ inverse opals from electrosprayed self-assembled templates

• Arnau Coll,
• Sandra Bermejo,
• David Hernández and
• Luís Castañer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 216–223, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.23

• shape, a so-called Taylor cone [44]. At the tip of the Taylor cone, a small jet is formed that breaks into fine droplets. During this first phase, the droplets travel towards the substrate and land on top of it. At this point, some liquid is left on the substrate even after the infusion pump is switched

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

• cholesteric droplets of concentrated suspensions of α-chitin and chitosan have been reported [45], and nematic order was also confirmed in the solutions of collagen type IV [46]. Similarly, the cholesteric phase behavior of cellulose fibrils is well established. For all these cases, the isotropic–nematic

Humidity-dependent wound sealing in succulent leaves of Delosperma cooperi – An adaptation to seasonal drought stress

• Olga Speck,
• Mark Schlechtendahl,
• Florian Borm,
• Tim Kampowski and
• Thomas Speck

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 175–186, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.20

• values of relative humidity can be associated with fog and the liquid water droplets with rain. The fast sealing of injuries in order to prevent dehydration might be an effective adaptation and selective advantage for D. cooperi plants growing in such semi-arid habitats. An additional aspect that may

• , the boundary layer energy is much higher in the case of water-saturated air (100% r.h.) than in the case of a macroscopic droplet of liquid water [20][21]. Third, liquid water from macroscopic droplets is sucked into the fissure by capillary and osmotic forces. This allows the hypothesis that the

Electrical properties of a liquid crystal dispersed in an electrospun cellulose acetate network

• Doina Manaila Maximean,
• Octavian Danila,
• Pedro L. Almeida and
• Constantin Paul Ganea

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 155–163, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.18

• spectroscopy; liquid crystal; optical transmission; Introduction The widely known polymer dispersed-liquid crystals (PDLCs) are a class of liquid crystal (LC)-based electro-optical devices, formed by LC droplets dispersed in a solid polymeric matrix [1][2][3][4][5]. The optical transmission of such devices is

• sensitive to external AC electric fields. Without external influence (the so called OFF state), PDLCs scatter the incident light due to the fact that the LC molecules are anchored to the inner surface of the droplets in the polymeric matrix, having a non-uniform orientation between different droplets. Since

• there is no uniform direction of alignment of the LC director between different droplets, the optical path of the incident light travelling through a PDLC is different from point to point, due to the mismatch between the effective refractive index of the LC and the refractive index of the polymer. The

Dopant-stimulated growth of GaN nanotube-like nanostructures on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

• Alexey D. Bolshakov,
• Alexey M. Mozharov,
• Georgiy A. Sapunov,
• Igor V. Shtrom,
• Nickolay V. Sibirev,
• Vladimir V. Fedorov,
• Evgeniy V. Ubyivovk,
• Maria Tchernycheva,
• George E. Cirlin and
• Ivan S. Mukhin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 146–154, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.17

• absence of a doping flux [16]. Compared to other widely studied III–V NWs (e.g., Al(Ga, In)As), which can be synthesized by MBE on Si substrates via a vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) mechanism that uses catalyst droplets, GaN NWs grow according to the self-induced mechanism in the absence of catalyst [17][18

Growth model and structure evolution of Ag layers deposited on Ge films

• Arkadiusz Ciesielski,
• Lukasz Skowronski,
• Ewa Górecka,
• Jakub Kierdaszuk and
• Tomasz Szoplik

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 66–76, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.9

• relatively low and cohesion of Ag adatoms dominates to induce Volmer–Weber growth. During the deposition process, clusters of silver adatoms behave as liquid droplets with high wetting angle. The measured height of these islands was 18.6 nm in the case of depositing an equivalent of 12 nm thick silver layer

• silver, the clusters of silver atoms behave as liquid droplets with low wetting angle as opposed to the case without using Ge [26][27]. Therefore, the silver grains located directly over the SiO2/Ge/Ag interface are large and flat – the in-plane (horizontal) sizes are large, but the out-of-plane

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

• be designed in different forms in the microreactor inside the optofluidic device, such as in the form of immobilized nanoparticles, films, plugs, droplets, etc. Fortunately, many works have contributed to the field of APS. The research efforts have mostly focus on aspects such as development of novel

Thermo- and electro-optical properties of photonic liquid crystal fibers doped with gold nanoparticles

• Agata Siarkowska,
• Miłosz Chychłowski,
• Daniel Budaszewski,
• Bartłomiej Jankiewicz,
• Bartosz Bartosewicz and
• Tomasz R. Woliński

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2790–2801, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.278

• droplets appeared in the sample. Figure 4 shows the behavior of undoped and Au-doped (0.5 wt % and 1 wt %) LC cells at a temperature near the phase transition. For the MCs the N–I phase transition temperature was defined as the temperature where the nematic phase begins to become distorted and slowly

Hyperthermic intracavitary nanoaerosol therapy (HINAT) as an improved approach for pressurised intraperitoneal aerosol chemotherapy (PIPAC): Technical description, experimental validation and first proof of concept

• Daniel Göhler,
• Stephan Große,
• Alexander Bellendorf,
• Thomas Albert Falkenstein,
• Mehdi Ouaissi,
• Jürgen Zieren,
• Michael Stintz and
• Urs Giger-Pabst

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2729–2740, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.272

• analyses of the MIP® aerosol by laser diffraction spectrometry showed that around 97.5 vol % of the aerosol is composed of droplets between 3–200 µm with a modal volume-weighted droplet size of ≈25 µm. Such droplets are deposited immediately on the opposite size of the nozzle outlet due to gravitational

• settling and inertial impaction. Thus, Göhler et al. [13] concluded that the fraction of coarse droplets based on the current PIPAC-MIP technology is too large to provide a homogenous drug distribution. The opportunities to optimize single-fluid nozzles (like the MIP®) required aerosol characteristics are

• plate to separate micrometre-sized droplets from submicrometre-sized ones. Impacted droplets flow as a liquid film back to the liquid reservoir, whereas submicrometre-sized droplets propagate within the chamber and leave the LAU through the aerosol outlet. Preliminary analysis concerning the ejection

Interface conditions of roughness-induced superoleophilic and superoleophobic surfaces immersed in hexadecane and ethylene glycol

• Yifan Li,
• Yunlu Pan and
• Xuezeng Zhao

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2504–2514, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.250

• a goniometer (DropMeterTM Element A-60, MAIST Vision Inc., China) and the Dropmeter software. For CA measurements, a droplet with a volume of 5 μL of each liquid was deposited on the prepared surface. The measurements were taken with three droplets at different positions for one surface, and the

• was captured by goniometer to obtain the CA. The difference between the CAs of the droplets was calculated as the CAH. On two more positions at the surface, the operation was repeated two times to obtain the average CAH. Boundary-slip measurements using an AFM Boundary slip measurements A colloidal

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

• decrease in the target–substrate distance below 3 mm resulted in the formation of denser, larger structures compared to deposition at larger distances [23]. In the latter case, micrometer-sized droplets and fine nanowires around and over them were obtained [21][23]. Despite the recent significant progress

• particles (Figure 4d). In this case, the deposition of the nanoparticles, aggregates and droplets, and their growth by accumulation of material, were the main mechanism driving the nanostructuring process. It could be concluded that the morphology of the structures obtained by PLD in open air depends

• nanostructures produced in this study focused our attention on their hydrophobic behavior. Table 2 presents the contact angle for the samples obtained at different deposition geometries, together with the images of the droplets formed on the sample surface. All samples present a hydrophobic behavior, except for

Increasing the stability of DNA nanostructure templates by atomic layer deposition of Al₂O₃ and its application in imprinting lithography

• Hyojeong Kim,
• Kristin Arbutina,
• Anqin Xu and
• Haitao Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2363–2375, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.236

• from the template (Figure 1e). Droplets of water were added to the exposed edges of the template, separating the hydrophobic PLLA film from the hydrophilic master template by penetration into the interface between them. After one minute, the PLLA/PDMS film was peeled off and the negative replica of the

• template. A PDMS stamp with a thickness of ca. 1–2 mm was placed on top of the PLLA film as a backing stamp. Droplets of water were added to the exposed edges of the template. If the water droplets filled out the interface between the PLLA film and the PDMS backing stamp, they were removed using a paper

• a blade. (e) A PDMS film is adhered to the polymer film as a backing support. (f) Droplets of water are added to the exposed edges of the silicon wafer and the PLLA/PDMS film is peeled off. Comparison of features on a DNA nanotube master template with a ca. 2 nm thick Al2O3 film and a PLLA stamp

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

• epicuticular wax showed that 1-triacontanol (C30H61OH) is the main wax component of the soybean leaf surfaces. A water contact angle (CA) of 162.4° (σ = 3.6°) and tilting angle (TA) of 20.9° (σ = 10.0°) were found. Adherence of pure water droplets on the superhydrophobic leaves is supported by the hydrophilic

• surfaces, on which an applied drop of water tends to spread, have a low or zero-degree contact angle. Whether droplets adhere on a surface or not is described by the contact angle hysteresis (CAH). It is measured as the difference between the advancing and receding angles of a droplet (CAH = CAadv − CArec

In situ controlled rapid growth of novel high activity TiB₂/(TiB₂–TiN) hierarchical/heterostructured nanocomposites

• Jilin Wang,
• Hejie Liao,
• Yuchun Ji,
• Fei Long,
• Yunle Gu,
• Zhengguang Zou,
• Weimin Wang and
• Zhengyi Fu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2116–2125, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.211

• vapors (Figure 4b) [28][29][30]. Under high temperature, the TiB2 fragments melted into many small droplets (Figure 4c). And the energy balance at the surface of the TiB2 crystal depends strongly on the changes in the external environment conditions. Thus, the small droplets self-assembled into bubble

• nm. Proposed schematic illustration and the corresponding FSEM images related to the formation process of the as-synthesized TiB2/(TiB2–TiN) samples. (a) TiB2 hexagonal prism crystal. (b) (B1) The surface layer was broken into fragments. (c) (C1) TiB2 fragments melted into small droplets. (d) (D1

• ) Small droplets self-assembled into bubble-like short chains. (e) (E1) Bubble-like short chains transformed into nanorods. (f) (F1) TiN formed on the surface on the nanorods. (g) (G1) TiB2/(TiB2–TiN) hierarchical/heterostructured nanocomposites are the resulting product. Typical TEM and FSEM images of

Application of visible-light photosensitization to form alkyl-radical-derived thin films on gold

• Rashanique D. Quarels,
• Xianglin Zhai,
• Neepa Kuruppu,
• Jenny K. Hedlund,
• Ashley A. Ellsworth,
• Amy V. Walker,
• Jayne C. Garno and
• Justin R. Ragains

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1863–1877, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.187

• contact with the terminal methyl groups of the crystalline film. This suggests that Au–Me and Au–NHBoc films in this study are relatively disordered and that water droplets are in contact with the methylene-rich chains derived from Phth–Me and Phth–NHBoc. Indeed, the water contact angle measured on low

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

• argon sputtering followed by a 15 min annealing. The substrates were allowed to cool to room temperature prior to deposition. The samples were produced by preparing a 2 mg/mL solution of either 9,10-phenanthrenequinone or 9-fluorenone in tetrahydrofuran and injecting microliter droplets of this solution

Evaluation of preparation methods for suspended nano-objects on substrates for dimensional measurements by atomic force microscopy

• Petra Fiala,
• Daniel Göhler,
• Benno Wessely,
• Michael Stintz,
• Giovanni Mattia Lazzerini and
• Andrew Yacoot

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1774–1785, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.179

• droplets as generated by atomization are necessary as it can be realized by operating electrospray aerosol generators. In this study, a two-component atomizer (Modell ATM 220, Topas GmbH, Dresden, Germany) and an electrospray aerosol generator (ESG, Modell 3480, TSI Inc. Shoreview, USA) were operated for

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

• contact line (). Zheng et al. [16] developed Equation 3 to describe the case of droplets resting on top of small surface roughness features, treating the three-phase line tension as a parameter to describe different contact angles observed for surfaces with feature tops with different size scales but

Surface functionalization of 3D-printed plastics via initiated chemical vapor deposition

• Christine Cheng and
• Malancha Gupta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1629–1636, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.162

• methods of 3DP are most common. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) involves heating a feed filament past the melting point of the material and extruding it onto a platform, which moves progressively downwards as layers are printed [8][9]. Inkjet printing deposits droplets of ink onto a platform, with ink

• coated with P(HEMA-co-EGDA). The middle and top of the lattice wicked water, but less readily than the bottom of the lattice, indicating partial polymer coverage. Comparison of the droplets on the coated lattice show that the coated lattice is more hydrophilic than the uncoated lattice. A unique feature

• measured on a goniometer (ramé-hart 290) with 10 μL droplets of deionized water. Five measurements were taken per sample and averaged and profile images were taken using the goniometer camera. Additionally, because the lattice structure consists of alternating, crosshatched layers, the structure has

A biofunctionalizable ink platform composed of catechol-modified chitosan and reduced graphene oxide/platinum nanocomposite

• Peter Sobolewski,
• Agata Goszczyńska,
• Małgorzata Aleksandrzak,
• Karolina Urbaś,
• Joanna Derkowska,
• Agnieszka Bartoszewska,
• Jacek Podolski,
• Ewa Mijowska and
• Mirosława El Fray

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1508–1514, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.151

• ” effects. We developed our ink for a commercial microplotter system (Sonoplot GIX Microplotter Desktop), which uses a piezoelectric crystal to pump ink out of a glass micropipette [7]. This system does not generate droplets like an inkjet printer, instead it deposits continuous features via the fluid

• bridge formed between the substrate and dispenser tip. This allows for a broad range of viscosity of inks (up to 0.450 Pa·s), without concern for filaments/ligaments or satellite droplets. However, in order to assess the suitability of our ink for the more commonly used piezoelectric inkjet printing, we

Miniemulsion copolymerization of (meth)acrylates in the presence of functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes for reinforced coating applications

• Bertha T. Pérez-Martínez,
• Lorena Farías-Cepeda,
• Víctor M. Ovando-Medina,
• José M. Asua,
• Lucero Rosales-Marines and
• Radmila Tomovska

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1328–1337, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.134

• solid phase, miniemulsion polymerization is much more versatile [27][28][29][30][31]. The characteristic feature of this process is that particle formation predominantly occurs by nucleation of the preformed miniemulsion droplets, which minimizes the changes in the system during the particle nucleation

• . However, n-pentanol is rather water soluble and it cannot hinder Ostwald ripening. Therefore, it is doubtful that the monomer droplets were stable. Ha et al. [18] polymerized miniemulsions prepared by sonicating a mixture of surfactant-stabilized SWCNTs, monomers (styrene and isoprene) and a costabilizer

• formation of oligomers in the aqueous phase, and the large droplet size that reduced the total surface area of the droplets and consequently their ability to capture oligomers from the aqueous phase. For the 0.1 wt % sample, the particle size was similar to the droplet size, likely because the smaller

Fabrication of hierarchically porous TiO₂ nanofibers by microemulsion electrospinning and their application as anode material for lithium-ion batteries

• Jin Zhang,
• Yibing Cai,
• Xuebin Hou,
• Xiaofei Song,
• Pengfei Lv,
• Huimin Zhou and
• Qufu Wei

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1297–1306, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.131

• successfully. During the process of electrospinning, the viscous liquid was elongated quickly accompanied by the evaporation of solvent as well as the hydrolysis condensation of TBT. Herein, despite the fact that the oil droplets in the microemulsion were stable with a diameter of about 20 nm, several small

• oil droplets merged into larger ones and then were stretched strongly by electrostatic force along the direction of fluid jet, thus forming oriented and axially aligned oil droplets. After calcination, the axially aligned oil droplets would be removed, resulting in axially aligned pores with the

• the number of channels in each nanofiber decreased as the content of paraffin oil increased. This is because the pores stemmed from the vacancies of oil droplets after calcination, and a larger oil droplets were formed when more paraffin oil was added into the microemulsion [31]. The SEM image of

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of cell lysates mixed with silver nanoparticles for tumor classification

• Mohamed Hassoun,
• Iwan W.Schie,
• Tatiana Tolstik,
• Sarmiza E. Stanca,
• Christoph Krafft and
• Juergen Popp

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1183–1190, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.120

• all approaches mentioned above: generation of droplets with single cells in a microfluidic chip, addition of cell lysis buffer, nanoparticles and activation salt, mixing of all solvents and collection of SERS spectra for classification. Experimental Nanoparticle preparation Silver nitrate (ACS reagent