Design of V-shaped cantilevers for enhanced multifrequency AFM measurements

• Mehrnoosh Damircheli and
• Babak Eslami

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1525–1541, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.135

• focused on finding the optimum for these geometrical dimensions of a V-shaped cantilever with the aim to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and, consequently, to enhance the second eigenmode phase signal. A numerical study is carried out to model the V-shaped cantilevers given the abovementioned

Helium ion microscope – secondary ion mass spectrometry for geological materials

• Matthew R. Ball,
• Richard J. M. Taylor,
• Joshua F. Einsle,
• Fouzia Khanom,
• Christelle Guillermier and
• Richard J. Harrison

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1504–1515, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.133

• ZrO+ fragment at m/z 106 and the ZrO2+ fragment at m/z 122, signals became measurable significantly above the background noise. Figure 2 shows the same zircon sample as Figure 1, immediately after the first mass spectrum in Figure 2b and immediately before the second mass spectrum in Figure 2c. The

• conductivity across the sample surface, it can dampen the signal to a point where some elements fall below the background noise level. However, the primary beam is not designed for the rapid removal of material and if the applied coating is thicker than 5–10 nm, its removal can take an unreasonable amount of

• mica and the HIM–SIMS signal from a subregion of the same sample. Both isotopes of Li can be clearly seen in HIM–SIMS where no Li signal can be detected above background noise in the SEM–EDS data. The Fe signal is also shown, which should be inversely proportional to the Li signal as Fe and Li

A wideband cryogenic microwave low-noise amplifier

• Boris I. Ivanov,
• Dmitri I. Volkhin,
• Ilya L. Novikov,
• Dmitri K. Pitsun,
• Dmitri O. Moskalev,
• Ilya A. Rodionov,
• Evgeni Il’ichev and
• Aleksey G. Vostretsov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1484–1491, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.131

• str. 5, Moscow, 105005, Russia Dukhov Automatics Research Institute, (VNIIA), 22 ul. Sushchevskaya, Moscow, Russia, 127055 Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, PO Box 100239, D-07702 Jena, Germany 10.3762/bjnano.11.131 Abstract A broadband low-noise four-stage high-electron-mobility transistor

• amplifier was designed and characterized in a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator at the 3.8 K temperature stage. The obtained power dissipation of the amplifier is below 20 mW. In the frequency range from 6 to 12 GHz its gain exceeds 30 dB. The equivalent noise temperature of the amplifier is below 6 K for

• the presented frequency range. The amplifier is applicable for any type of cryogenic microwave measurements. As an example we demonstrate here the characterization of the superconducting X-mon qubit coupled to an on-chip coplanar waveguide resonator. Keywords: cryogenic low-noise amplifier; high

Wafer-level integration of self-aligned high aspect ratio silicon 3D structures using the MACE method with Au, Pd, Pt, Cu, and Ir

• Mathias Franz,
• Romy Junghans,
• Paul Schmitt,
• Adriana Szeghalmi and
• Stefan E. Schulz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1439–1449, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.128

• metal–insulator–semiconductor or metal–insulator–metal capacitors with a high effective area on a small footprint. The high surface area of a silicon nanowire array can be used to fabricate ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) with a high signal-to-noise ratio. An ISFET is a pH sensing

Protruding hydrogen atoms as markers for the molecular orientation of a metallocene

• Linda Laflör,
• Michael Reichling and
• Philipp Rahe

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1432–1438, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.127

• in the constant-height mode (adapted from [22]). The orientations of the two geometries geo 1 and geo 2 are marked by solid green and dashed blue lines, respectively, and are included in all images with the respective orientation. (A five pixel averaging filter was applied to reduce noise within the

• to reduce noise within the frequency shift images. A slight tilt of the constant-height plane leads to a small modulation along the row. (f–i) Simulated NC-AFM images using a CO tip model. (k–n) Simulated NC-AFM images for a Xe tip model positioned with the tip backbone positioned at the same heights

Superconductor–insulator transition in capacitively coupled superconducting nanowires

• Alex Latyshev,
• Andrew G. Semenov and
• Andrei D. Zaikin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1402–1408, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.124

• experiments [7][8][9][10]. Likewise, quantum phase slips in superconducting nanowires yield shot noise of the voltage [11] which originates from the process of quantum tunneling of magnetic flux quanta across the wire. One can also proceed beyond the voltage–voltage correlator and evaluate all cumulants of

Cryogenic low-noise amplifiers for measurements with superconducting detectors

• Ilya L. Novikov,
• Boris I. Ivanov,
• Dmitri V. Ponomarev and
• Aleksey G. Vostretsov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1316–1320, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.115

• bipolar junction transistor technology. The amplifiers show high gain values of more than 60 dB at 300, 77, and 48 K. The minimum voltage noise spectral density was achieved at 77 K and corresponded to 0.33 nV/Hz0.5 with a flicker noise of 20 Hz. The maximum voltage gain was 70 dB at 77 K for a frequency

• range from DC to 17 kHz. We experimentally show that the parallel differential circuit design allows for a reduction of the voltage noise from 0.55 to 0.33 nV/Hz0.5 at 77 K. Keywords: cryogenic amplifier; cryogenic low-noise amplifier; differential cryogenic amplifier; superconducting circuit readout

• Josephson junctions and superconducting thin films. Experimental studies of such sensors require the design of low-noise cryogenic readout electronics with a direct coupling to the sample. For example, investigations of noise sources in low-temperature tunnel Josephson junctions are still ongoing for high

An atomic force microscope integrated with a helium ion microscope for correlative nanoscale characterization

• Santiago H. Andany,
• Gregor Hlawacek,
• Stefan Hummel,
• Charlène Brillard,
• Mustafa Kangül and
• Georg E. Fantner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1272–1279, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.111

• [19]. Although optical beam deflection (OBD) techniques are traditionally preferred for their lower noise, they require bulky components and precise optical alignment. Prohibitively large instruments with optical readout are difficult to integrate into electron or ion microscopes and re-alignment of

• to a spring-loaded kinematic mount. Operating the AFM inside the HIM chamber has drawbacks regarding resolution and noise performance. Ideally, the mechanical loop between the cantilever probe and the sample needs to be compact and stiff for optimal AFM performance. The mechanical loop for the

Role of redox-active axial ligands of metal porphyrins adsorbed at solid–liquid interfaces in a liquid-STM setup

• Thomas Habets,
• Sylvia Speller and
• Johannes A. A. W. Elemans

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1264–1271, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.110

• solution or solutes therein. In most cases the additional current is of the order of the noise level of the STM (approx. 1 pA), or at least significantly smaller than the applied tunneling current. However, after the addition of a 1-phenyloctane solution of MnTUPCl (c = 1 × 10−4 M), significant currents

• not directly imply that the redox reactions in Equation 1 and Equation 2 do not occur under these conditions; the redox reaction rates may be very low, i.e., below 2.5 × 107 e−/s (comparable with a current of approx. 4 pA), and not exceed the noise level of the STM setup. Possible aspects that could

Magnetic-field-assisted synthesis of anisotropic iron oxide particles: Effect of pH

• Andrey V. Shibaev,
• Petr V. Shvets,
• Darya E. Kessel,
• Roman A. Kamyshinsky,
• Anton S. Orekhov,
• Sergey S. Abramchuk,
• Alexei R. Khokhlov and
• Olga E. Philippova

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1230–1241, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.107

• sufficient to avoid any structural changes or phase degradation in the samples. Under these conditions, the typical total acquisition time to obtain a spectrum with good signal-to-noise ratio was several hours. Temporal variation of pH when 2 mL of the ion mixture (1 M FeCl3 + 0.5 M FeSO4 in 0.1 M HCl) is

Influence of the magnetic nanoparticle coating on the magnetic relaxation time

• Mihaela Osaci and
• Matteo Cacciola

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1207–1216, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.105

• vacuum magnetic permeability. The random Brownian force and torque are usually modelled using the Gaussian noise [21][22]. Besides the random Brownian torque, the conservative torque acting on the nanoparticle is the magnetic torque: where is the local magnetic field on each nanoparticle, given by

Hybridization vs decoupling: influence of an h-BN interlayer on the physical properties of a lander-type molecule on Ni(111)

• Maximilian Schaal,
• Takumi Aihara,
• Marco Gruenewald,
• Felix Otto,
• Jari Domke,
• Roman Forker,
• Hiroyuki Yoshida and
• Torsten Fritz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1168–1177, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.101

• , respectively, and d being the film thickness. Each reflectance spectrum was accumulated over 30 s to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, we used the difference of consecutive reflectance spectra to calculate the ΔDRS intensity using the following formula: The lateral structure of the DBP films was

Thermophoretic tweezers for single nanoparticle manipulation

• Jošt Stergar and
• Natan Osterman

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1126–1133, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.97

• heating. While it is also possible to trap atoms and molecules in vacuum using electromagnetic traps, thermal noise is a governing factor when particles are under biological conditions, namely at room temperature in an aqueous medium. Laser tweezers [1][2][3], invented long ago and recognized with the

• quadrants to isolate fluorescent particles in the frame while eliminating possible background light. Areas of appropriate size are selected on the image, discarding too big or too small objects, corresponding to salt-and-pepper noise and aggregated blobs of particles, respectively. Centroids of remaining

Uniform Fe₃O₄/Gd₂O₃-DHCA nanocubes for dual-mode magnetic resonance imaging

• Miao Qin,
• Yueyou Peng,
• Mengjie Xu,
• Hui Yan,
• Yizhu Cheng,
• Xiumei Zhang,
• Di Huang,
• Weiyi Chen and
• Yanfeng Meng

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1000–1009, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.84

• imaging (T1WI) and T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) were performed in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. After intravenous injection of a 0.8 mg Fe/kg dose, FGDA nanocubes spread systemically through the bloodstream. The lumbar muscle was chosen as the MRI region of interest and the signal-to-noise ratio (ΔSNR) was

Electrochemical nanostructuring of (111) oriented GaAs crystals: from porous structures to nanowires

• Elena I. Monaico,
• Eduard V. Monaico,
• Veaceslav V. Ursaki,
• Shashank Honnali,
• Vitalie Postolache,
• Karin Leistner,
• Kornelius Nielsch and
• Ion M. Tiginyanu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 966–975, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.81

• biased at 5 V. The estimation of the detectivity D*, which is defined as where A is the active area of the photodetector, and e is the elementary charge, gives a value of ca. 1.2 × 109 cm·Hz1/2·W−1, under the assumption that shot noise is the primary source of noise in the detector [32]. Taking into

Microwave photon detection by an Al Josephson junction

• Leonid S. Revin,
• Andrey L. Pankratov,
• Anna V. Gordeeva,
• Anton A. Yablokov,
• Igor V. Rakut,
• Victor O. Zbrozhek and
• Leonid S. Kuzmin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 960–965, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.80

• significant improvement of the noise immunity of a device, radically decreasing the dark count rate, but it will also decrease the single-photon sensitivity of the considered threshold detector. Quantization of the switching probability tilt as a function of the signal attenuation for various bias currents

• the JJ constantly inspires new applications, such as thermometry [8][9], noise statistics [10][11][12] and single-photon detection [13]. There are, at least, two different approaches for the practical realization of single-photon detectors based on Josephson junctions, both having their advantages and

• than the switching time after the photon absorption (typically less than nanoseconds). In [4] it was shown theoretically that both the required sensitivity and the noise immunity can be reached at the same time in JJ with a suppressed critical current. Besides that, the mesoscopic junctions with low

Extracting viscoelastic material parameters using an atomic force microscope and static force spectroscopy

• Cameron H. Parvini,
• M. A. S. R. Saadi and
• Santiago D. Solares

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 922–937, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.77

• occurs (tmax(z), marked as t2 in Figure 2a) are removed from the dataset. The resulting curve is illustrated in Figure 2b. Due to a number of possible factors, e.g., calibration and noise, the deflection in the region t0 to t1 can be non-zero despite the probe not being in contact with the surface. To

• , smoothing the deflection data with a simple first-order Butterworth filter can remove some of the measurement noise and make finding the deflection minimum easier. While searching for the smallest value without filtering, noise can cause neighboring points to appear lower than the actual minimum and

• velocities were selected in a logarithmic distribution: 10, 100, and 1000 nm/s. The probe utilized was an OLYMPUS AC 240TS-R3, featuring a tip radius of roughly 10 nm. Before measurement, the tip was calibrated using the thermal noise method [29] in which a hard silicon sample was used after sonicating using

Measurement of electrostatic tip–sample interactions by time-domain Kelvin probe force microscopy

• Christian Ritz,
• Tino Wagner and
• Andreas Stemmer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 911–921, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.76

• effect is amplified when a significant change in the capacitance gradient is present. To reduce the impact of this component onto the height measurement, the modulation amplitude Uac must be minimized. Since the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scales with Uac, this is only possible to a certain extent

• , are introduced by the vector This vector, the so-called transition noise vector, is anticipated to be Gaussian white noise (0,QK) with the covariance matrix The output of the Kelvin system is the scalar value of the intrinsic frequency shift . It is defined by using the definition in Equation 10. The

• measurement noise is assumed to be Gaussian white noise and is defined by . This is the case for measurements where thermal noise is the dominating noise source, i.e., when the modulation frequency is below the crossover of thermal white noise and (with increasing frequency) detection noise [29]. The power

A Josephson junction based on a highly disordered superconductor/low-resistivity normal metal bilayer

• Pavel M. Marychev and
• Denis Yu. Vodolazov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 858–865, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.71

• achieve high noise immunity. Also many of these applications require to have a nonhysteretic current–voltage characteristic (IVC) and a large characteristic voltage Vc = IcRn, where Rn is the normal-state resistance of the junction. Tunnel superconductor–insulator–superconductor (SIS) Josephson junctions

• obtain high noise immunity. But due to large critical current and bad heat dissipation their IVCs are hysteretic due to Joule heating () and the subsequent formation of a stable region with suppressed superconductivity (a so-called “hot spot”) at I > Ic [6][7][8][9]. At temperatures near the critical

Light–matter interactions in two-dimensional layered WSe₂ for gauging evolution of phonon dynamics

• Avra S. Bandyopadhyay,
• Chandan Biswas and
• Anupama B. Kaul

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 782–797, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.63

• a function of P at T = 298 K. In order to minimize the laser-induced effects on the crystallinity and structural changes in the WSe2, a laser P ≤ 3.35 mW was used. It was also found that the minimum P required to get a good signal-to-noise ratio for the Raman and PL data was when P ≥ 0.31 mW

• cell allowed the temperature to reach 523 K. During the cooling process, it was found that the signal to noise ratio was very poor when both the T and P became very low, particularly in case of PL measurements. The best signal to noise ratio in both the Raman and PL measurements was found for P = 3.35

Hexagonal boron nitride: a review of the emerging material platform for single-photon sources and the spin–photon interface

• Stefania Castelletto,
• Faraz A. Inam,
• Shin-ichiro Sato and
• Alberto Boretti

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 740–769, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.61

• are plotted as a function of time with the time-interval histograms building up in real-time. These coincidences are collected over enough time duration to extract a decent coincidence curve for the incident light with acceptable noise limits. The total collection time is dependent on the intensity of

• the incoming light, being very large for dim or low-intensity light and very small for high-intensity light. This raw coincidence curve for the detection events on the two detectors also contains events from the background emission. The background noise comes from the dark counts on the two detectors

Quantitative determination of the interaction potential between two surfaces using frequency-modulated atomic force microscopy

• Nicholas Chan,
• Carrie Lin,
• Tevis Jacobs,
• Robert W. Carpick and
• Philip Egberts

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 729–739, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.60

• into an F(z) curve using the procedure of Sader and Jarvis [45]. It should be noted that there is a smoothing algorithm applied to the Δf–d curve to prevent spurious force jumps caused by noise in the Δf–d curves when converted to F(z) curves. Furthermore, we assumed that the interaction force relation

• measurement due to noise or step-like interaction force changes can significantly change an experimentally extracted F(z) curve converted from a measured Δf–d curve. This factor should be considered minimal due to relatively large oscillation amplitudes used in the present study. Sader showed that this ill

Effect of Ag loading position on the photocatalytic performance of TiO₂ nanocolumn arrays

• Jinghan Xu,
• Yanqi Liu and
• Yan Zhao

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 717–728, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.59

• . It can be seen from the figure that tiny Ag nanoparticles are supported on the TiO2 columns. Figure 4d shows the high-resolution TEM image of the Ag nanocolumns shown in Figure 4c. After removing the noise by performing Fourier transform on the selected area using software, we can clearly see lattice

Stochastic excitation for high-resolution atomic force acoustic microscopy imaging: a system theory approach

• Edgar Cruz Valeriano,
• José Juan Gervacio Arciniega,
• Christian Iván Enriquez Flores,
• Susana Meraz Dávila,
• Joel Moreno Palmerin,
• Martín Adelaido Hernández Landaverde,
• Yuri Lizbeth Chipatecua Godoy,
• Aime Margarita Gutiérrez Peralta,
• Rafael Ramírez Bon and
• José Martín Yañez Limón

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 703–716, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.58

• that gives a qualitative relationship between a set of contact resonance frequencies and the indentation modulus. It is based on white-noise excitation of the tip–sample interaction and uses system theory for the extraction of the resonance modes. During conventional scanning, for each pixel, the tip

• –sample interaction is excited with a white-noise signal. Then, a fast Fourier transform is applied to the deflection signal that comes from the photodiodes of the atomic force microscopy (AFM) equipment. This approach allows for the measurement of several vibrational modes in a single step with high

• compared to conventional techniques. Keywords: atomic force microscopy; fast Fourier transform; mechanical properties; system theory; white noise; Introduction There are several methods to measure mechanical properties at the nanoscale level, based on, e.g., nanoindentation or on other physical phenomena

Electromigration-induced directional steps towards the formation of single atomic Ag contacts

• Atasi Chatterjee,
• Christoph Tegenkamp and
• Herbert Pfnür

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 680–687, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.55

• peak at 0.6. Strong peaks below 0.5 again correspond to instabilities between other metastable configurations. On the other hand, a noticeable difference between Figure 3 and Figure 5 is that the contribution from the [111] orientation is absent in Figure 5. There is no peak above noise level at 1.3