Assembling semiconducting molecules by covalent attachment to a lamellar crystalline polymer substrate

• Rainhard Machatschek,
• Patrick Ortmann,
• Renate Reiter,
• Stefan Mecking and
• Günter Reiter

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 784–798, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.70

• semiconducting molecules. Results Nanocrystal analysis by AFM The model of an ideal CPE45 nanocrystal Nanocrystal dispersions were prepared via nanoprecipitation with the impact of shear forces generated by ultrasonication. By cryo-transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies on the dispersions, a thickness of

• , hairpin-like folds [9]. The remaining 38 bonds define the crystal thickness of 4.8 nm, derived from the projected length of 0.127 nm of a carbon–carbon single bond in a crystalline polyethylene lamella (Figure 1) [10]. Lateral sizes In Figure 2, we show typical phase and height images of a nanocrystal

• . Accordingly, a smaller value of the crystal height would be detected. Therefore, and within the limitations described above, we have extracted the value for the thickness of the platelet-shaped nanocrystals from large area AFM scans of nanocrystal films, where occasional voids were large enough for the AFM

Surface coating affects behavior of metallic nanoparticles in a biological environment

• Darija Domazet Jurašin,
• Marija Ćurlin,
• Ivona Capjak,
• Tea Crnković,
• Marija Lovrić,
• Michal Babič,
• Daniel Horák,
• Ivana Vinković Vrček and
• Srećko Gajović

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 246–262, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.23

• of seed into nanocrystals. The mechanism behind such a synthesis is extremely complicated, but the type of coating agent proved to be crucial for the final shape of a nanocrystal [66]. The micrographs presented in Figure 8 suggest that our initially small AgNPs appeared as seeds in WhBl or BlPl

Linear and nonlinear optical properties of hybrid metallic–dielectric plasmonic nanoantennas

• Mario Hentschel,
• Bernd Metzger,
• Bastian Knabe,
• Karsten Buse and
• Harald Giessen

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 111–120, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.13

• an artist’s impression in Figure 1. These materials can be fabricated as nanoparticles, either directly from a wet chemical process or by mechanical milling [71][72]. Another benefit afforded by the nanocrystal/nanoantenna array approach is as follows: As the nanoantenna array is inversion symmetric

• , LiNbO3 nanocrystal, bowtie nanoantenna array. Figure adapted from [2]. Linear extinction (1 − T) spectra for bowtie antenna arrays (blue) and bowtie antennas selectively filled with lithium niobate (red) for excitation polarized along the antenna axis (left column) and perpendicular to the antenna axis

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering by colloidal CdSe nanocrystal submonolayers fabricated by the Langmuir–Blodgett technique

• Alexander G. Milekhin,
• Larisa L. Sveshnikova,
• Tatyana A. Duda,
• Ekaterina E. Rodyakina,
• Volodymyr M. Dzhagan,
• Ovidiu D. Gordan,
• Sergey L. Veber,
• Cameliu Himcinschi,
• Alexander V. Latyshev and
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2388–2395, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.245

Surfactant-controlled composition and crystal structure of manganese(II) sulfide nanocrystals prepared by solvothermal synthesis

• Elena Capetti,
• Anna M. Ferretti,
• Vladimiro Dal Santo and
• Alessandro Ponti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2319–2329, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.238

• the surfactants adsorbed on the NCs. Keywords: manganese oxide; manganese sulfide; nanocrystal; polymorphism control; solvothermal synthesis; sulfur; surfactant; Introduction Manganese(II) sulfide (MnS) is a wide bandgap (Eg ≈ 3 eV) [1], p-type, antiferromagnetic semiconductor that crystallizes in

• Conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images (medium resolution), high resolution TEM (HRTEM) images and electron diffraction (ED) patterns were recorded by a Zeiss LIBRA 200FE-HR TEM. The samples for microscopy were prepared by evaporating a drop of the nanocrystal dispersion in hexane on a

Framework for automatic information extraction from research papers on nanocrystal devices

• Thaer M. Dieb,
• Masaharu Yoshioka,
• Shinjiro Hara and
• Marcus C. Newton

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1872–1882, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.190

• , Sapporo 060-8628, Japan Physics & Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK 10.3762/bjnano.6.190 Abstract To support nanocrystal device development, we have been working on a computational framework to utilize information in research papers on nanocrystal devices. We developed an

• annotated corpus called “ NaDev” (Nanocrystal Device Development) for this purpose. We also proposed an automatic information extraction system called “NaDevEx” (Nanocrystal Device Automatic Information Extraction Framework). NaDevEx aims at extracting information from research papers on nanocrystal devices

• on these results, we discuss future research plans for improving the performance of the system. Keywords: annotated corpus; automatic information extraction; nanocrystal device development; nanoinformatics; text mining; Introduction Nanoscale research is a rapidly progressing domain and many

Possibilities and limitations of advanced transmission electron microscopy for carbon-based nanomaterials

• Xiaoxing Ke,
• Carla Bittencourt and
• Gustaaf Van Tendeloo

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1541–1557, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.158

• ]. Systematic studies of different metals on CNTs has been reported, including Au, Pt, Pd, Rh, Cu and Ti [67][70][71][72][73][74][75]. Early studies using HRTEM have revealed that Au and Pt form mostly well-crystallized nanocrystal islands with limited contact areas with the CNTs walls, whereas Pd and Rh form

Formation of pure Cu nanocrystals upon post-growth annealing of Cu–C material obtained from focused electron beam induced deposition: comparison of different methods

• Aleksandra Szkudlarek,
• Alfredo Rodrigues Vaz,
• Yucheng Zhang,
• Andrzej Rudkowski,
• Czesław Kapusta,
• Rolf Erni,
• Stanislav Moshkalev and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1508–1517, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.156

• cannot exclude possible reactions of the deposits with the residual gas (most likely water and residual hydrocarbons) but we judge the influence as negligible as TEM annealing experiments at pressures better than 1 × 10−6 mbar also resulted in nanocrystal formation (see below in Figure 6). An infrared

• microscope. EDX measurements were performed at 5 kV and 2 nA over 30 s with a 300 nm × 300 nm scan area on the squares to account for in homogeneities in the lateral copper nanocrystal precipitation. Standard EDX software was used to calculate the composition from the spectra. High-resolution TEM (HR-TEM

• nanocrystal precipitation on the deposit surface starts at around 150 °C for the Cu(hfac)2 deposits on the pre-patterned SiO2/Si substrate. Further heating to about 200 °C for 30 min did not visibly change the appearance of the Cu nanocrystal precipitation. EDX analysis after conventional heating to 200 °C

Addition of Zn during the phosphine-based synthesis of indium phospide quantum dots: doping and surface passivation

• Natalia E. Mordvinova,
• Alexander A. Vinokurov,
• Oleg I. Lebedev,
• Tatiana A. Kuznetsova and
• Sergey G. Dorofeev

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1237–1246, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.127

• nanocrystal surface under exposure to air [19]. However, the presence of zinc during the synthesis leads to an increase of QY in the particular case described here. The more zinc is accepted by the QDs the larger is QY. At the same time, starting from the double excess of zinc (Mnom = 2) the QY does not

• over time. Figure 7b shows the luminescence intensity evolution after synthesis for the sample with Mnom = 1, which is typical for all samples. Initially, QY slightly increases due to the oxidation of the nanocrystal surface, comparable to the case of non-doped QDs. After that, the competing process of

Nano-contact microscopy of supracrystals

• Adam Sweetman,
• Nicolas Goubet,
• Ioannis Lekkas,
• Marie Paule Pileni and
• Philip Moriarty

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1229–1236, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.126

• scanning tunnelling microscopy and dynamic force microscopy. Results: By exploring the evolution of both the force and tunnel current with respect to tip–sample separation, we arrive at the surprising finding that single nanocrystal resolution is readily obtained in tunnelling microscopy images acquired

• more than 1 nm into the repulsive (i.e., positive force) regime of the probe–nanocrystal interaction potential. Constant height force microscopy has been used to map tip–sample interactions in this regime, revealing inhomogeneities which arise from the convolution of the tip structure with the ligand

• distribution at the nanocrystal surface. Conclusion: Our combined STM–AFM measurements show that the contrast mechanism underpinning high resolution imaging of nanoparticle supracrystals involves a form of nanoscale contact imaging, rather than the through-vacuum tunnelling which underpins traditional

Observing the morphology of single-layered embedded silicon nanocrystals by using temperature-stable TEM membranes

• Sebastian Gutsch,
• Daniel Hiller,
• Jan Laube,
• Margit Zacharias and
• Christian Kübel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 964–970, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.99

• -von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany 10.3762/bjnano.6.99 Abstract We use high-temperature-stable silicon nitride membranes to investigate single layers of silicon nanocrystal ensembles by energy filtered transmission electron microscopy. The silicon nanocrystals are prepared

• ultrathin layers suffer from significant electron beam damage that needs to be minimized in order to image the pristine sample morphology. Finally we demonstrate how the silicon nanocrystal size distribution develops from a broad to a narrow log-normal distribution, when the initial precipitation layer

• thermal budget. Longer and higher temperature annealings would certainly lead to larger amounts of spherical particles with a reduced density due to late-stage coarsening [27][44]. Silicon nanocrystal size distribution and areal density Once the annealing conditions and TEM routines have been specified

Combination of surface- and interference-enhanced Raman scattering by CuS nanocrystals on nanopatterned Au structures

• Alexander G. Milekhin,
• Nikolay A. Yeryukov,
• Larisa L. Sveshnikova,
• Tatyana A. Duda,
• Ekaterina E. Rodyakina,
• Victor A. Gridchin,
• Evgeniya S. Sheremet and
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 749–754, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.77

• variation of the SiO2 layer thickness due to interference-enhanced Raman scattering. The pronounced enhancement of the Raman scattering from the nanocrystal ensembles deposited on arrays of Au nanoclusters evidences the surface enhanced Raman scattering effect. The combination of interference- and surface

Nanoparticle shapes by using Wulff constructions and first-principles calculations

• Georgios D. Barmparis,
• Zbigniew Lodziana,
• Nuria Lopez and
• Ioannis N. Remediakis

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 361–368, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.35

• lithium borohydride the Wulff construction of the nanocrystal does not provide features that can confirm or match experimental evidence. The reason is the low surface energy of compound, fast rotational motion of anions, and large enthalpy of formation of small clusters. Due to the weak interaction with

Tunable white light emission by variation of composition and defects of electrospun Al₂O₃–SiO₂ nanofibers

• Jinyuan Zhou,
• Gengzhi Sun,
• Hao Zhao,
• Xiaojun Pan,
• Zhenxing Zhang,
• Yujun Fu,
• Yanzhe Mao and
• Erqing Xie

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 313–320, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.29

• [18]. More recently, Korsunska et al. have investigated the PL behaviors of Si-rich Al2O3 films annealed at 1150 °C and observed intense emission in the visible spectral range from 575 to 600 nm, which is ascribed to defects in the matrix located near the nanocrystal/matrix interface [13][14][15][19

The effect of surface charge on nonspecific uptake and cytotoxicity of CdSe/ZnS core/shell quantum dots

• Vladimir V. Breus,
• Anna Pietuch,
• Marco Tarantola,
• Thomas Basché and
• Andreas Janshoff

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 281–292, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.26

• few monolayers of the nontoxic semiconducting material ZnS was found to reduce or even completely abolish cytotoxicity [9][10] Moreover, it was also suggested that the toxic effects of QDs depend more on the type and integrity of the surface coatings rather than the inorganic nanocrystal itself [11

Tunable light filtering by a Bragg mirror/heavily doped semiconducting nanocrystal composite

• Ilka Kriegel and
• Francesco Scotognella

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 193–200, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.18

Gas sensing properties of nanocrystalline diamond at room temperature

• Marina Davydova,
• Pavel Kulha,
• Alexandr Laposa,
• Karel Hruska,
• Pavel Demo and
• Alexander Kromka

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 2339–2345, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.243

• ) and a visible development of diamond nanocrystal faceting. Moreover, the NCD primarily grew on the IDEs as was previously found [9]. The gas-sensing properties of the hydrogenated NCD sensor with a sparse electrode arrangement of 200 µm were tested against a sequence of NH3 pulses (Figure 1b). These

Biopolymer colloids for controlling and templating inorganic synthesis

• Laura C. Preiss,
• Katharina Landfester and
• Rafael Muñoz-Espí

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 2129–2138, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.222

• example of a heterogeneous catalyst was reported by Taubert’s group with gold/cellulose nanocrystal hybrids produced in the presence of ionic liquids [88]. Also for catalytic applications, nanoparticles of silver, gold, and platinum were synthesized by using a cellulose aerogel [89]. Cellulose has been

Imaging the intracellular degradation of biodegradable polymer nanoparticles

• Anne-Kathrin Barthel,
• Martin Dass,
• Melanie Dröge,
• Jens-Michael Cramer,
• Daniela Baumann,
• Markus Urban,
• Katharina Landfester,
• Volker Mailänder and
• Ingo Lieberwirth

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1905–1917, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.201

• magnetite nanocrystal to be “free” if it is not obviously attached to a PLLA nanoparticle, that is, if the separation is more than twice the nanocrystal diameter. In our experimental outline the MSCs were incubated with the fluorescent-magnetite-labeled PLLA nanoparticles for a total time of 24 h during

• . Accordingly, this conservative and cautious error estimate leads to the large errors, especially for the long residence times. The intracellular degradation of the PLLA nanoparticles was investigated by monitoring free magnetite nanocrystals within the cell. In this regard we consider a magnetite nanocrystal

• regarding the fraction of endosomes that shows at least one free magnetite nanocrystal is shown in Figure 9B. At 24 h, approximately 80% of the endosomes contain at least one free nanoparticle. For all subsequent measurements, free magnetite was found in nearly every (100%) endosome of interest. To

Silicon and germanium nanocrystals: properties and characterization

• Ivana Capan,
• Alexandra Carvalho and
• José Coutinho

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1787–1794, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.189

• breakthroughs in photovoltaics. It is believed that quantum dot (QD) solar cells have the potential to reach a maximum conversion efficiency of about 66% [2]. A colloidal nanocrystal solar cell, which combines all the advantages of organics (scalable and controllable synthesis) with transport properties

• result in either a quenching or an enhancement of the Si NCs PL, depending on the dopant concentration and NC sizes [28][35]. Crowe et al. [35] have shown that as phosphorus accumulates at the nanocrystal oxide interface it leads to the passivation of the dangling bonds as observed by the luminescence

• same material, for example crystalline Si nanodots in amorphous Si. Free-standing nanocrystals in vacuum can be modeled by using real-space boundary conditions, i.e., requiring the wavefunction to vanish far from the nanocrystal. An alternative approach is to impose periodic boundary conditions

Controlling the optical and structural properties of ZnS–AgInS₂ nanocrystals by using a photo-induced process

• Takashi Yatsui,
• Fumihiro Morigaki and
• Tadashi Kawazoe

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1767–1773, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.187

• induce an oxidation–reduction reaction in the nanocrystals. Consequently, the etching of the deposited ZAIS atoms on the nanocrystals surface proceeds. The growth rate is controlled by the absorbed light intensity and wavelength, which control the nanocrystal size. Similar photo-synthesis for controlling

• -radiative energy dissipation, and resulted in the increase of the emission intensity of the band edge. Using the emission spectra to control the nanocrystal size For the investigation of ways to control the size of ZAIS nanocrystals, we synthesized ZAIS nanocrystals with 532 nm irradiation (λ2) during the

• nanocrystals [19] and 0.310 nm for ZnS nanocrystals [20]. These results also support the assertion that the observed decrease in R resulted from the reduction in Ag and In content. In other words, highly controlled nanocrystal size and uniform composition were realized by using photo-assisted synthesis

The cell-type specific uptake of polymer-coated or micelle-embedded QDs and SPIOs does not provoke an acute pro-inflammatory response in the liver

• Markus Heine,
• Alexander Bartelt,
• Oliver T. Bruns,
• Denise Bargheer,
• Artur Giemsa,
• Barbara Freund,
• Ludger Scheja,
• Christian Waurisch,
• Alexander Eychmüller,
• Rudolph Reimer,
• Horst Weller,
• Peter Nielsen and
• Joerg Heeren

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1432–1440, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.155

• injection, these nanocrystal-containing lipid micelles are internalized by adipose tissues and predominantly by the liver [18][20]. The liver is not only the most important organ for metabolism and detoxification but also the major target organ for injected polymer-coated QDs and SPIOs [21]. However, little

Microstructural and plasmonic modifications in Ag–TiO₂ and Au–TiO₂ nanocomposites through ion beam irradiation

• Venkata Sai Kiran Chakravadhanula,
• Yogendra Kumar Mishra,
• Venkata Girish Kotnur,
• Devesh Kumar Avasthi,
• Thomas Strunskus,
• Vladimir Zaporotchenko,
• Dietmar Fink,
• Lorenz Kienle and
• Franz Faupel

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1419–1431, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.154

• . Hence, the EDX-nanoprobe analysis of the TEM (Figure 9) confirms that the ratio of Ti:O in the nanocomposite is 1:2 and that it is 1:1 in the nanocrystal. Interestingly, the desired equimolar ratio of Ti and O is well adjusted even on the nanoscale. But in order to confirm this, further SHI irradiation

Review of nanostructured devices for thermoelectric applications

• Giovanni Pennelli

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1268–1284, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.141

• measured in nanostructured bismuth antimony telluride alloys, because phonon scattering at nanocrystal boundaries gives a reduced thermal conductivity [26]. Hovewer, TEGs based on bismuth telluride compounds have a small operating temperature range, because the Z factor rapidly decreases well below 2 × 10

An insight into the mechanism of charge-transfer of hybrid polymer:ternary/quaternary chalcopyrite colloidal nanocrystals

• Parul Chawla,
• Son Singh and
• Shailesh Narain Sharma

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1235–1244, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.137

• semiconductors and their optical energy gap engineering, which is tunable within the solar spectrum, renders CISe and related materials a very promising PV material in the near future. However, to the best of our knowledge, investigations of CISe and related nanocrystal-polymer based solar cells are scarce. A

• the above observations was provided by investigating the photoluminescence intensities of each of the prepared hybrid nanocomposites of CISe, CIGSe and CZTSe. Emission intensity studies for each of the nanocrystal inks: P3HT were investigated by photoluminescence spectroscopy to study trends of