Ultraviolet patterns of flowers revealed in polymer replica – caused by surface architecture

• Anna J. Schulte,
• Matthias Mail,
• Lisa A. Hahn and
• Wilhelm Barthlott

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 459–466, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.45

• and Exner [26] suspect that flowers with a saturated color have a better chance of being seen and therefore have higher reproduction success. It can be assumed that conical papillate cells (for the definition see [21]) increase the amount of light absorbed by the petal (light trapping), reaching the

Nanocomposite–parylene C thin films with high dielectric constant and low losses for future organic electronic devices

• Marwa Mokni,
• Gianluigi Maggioni,
• Abdelkader Kahouli,
• Sara M. Carturan,
• Walter Raniero and
• Alain Sylvestre

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 428–441, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.42

• gate dielectric, which is a crucial requirement for the performance of the OFETs and for the device reliability. Charge-carrier mobility is improved in the presence of this polymer [17]. PPXC is also an appropriate hydroxyl-free gate dielectric and prevents trapping of electrons at the semiconductor

• –dielectric interface in contrast to polymers containing hydroxyl groups such as poly(vinyl phenol) and polyimides (due to residual COOH groups) [18][19][20]. The stability of the devices, which is impacted by this charge trapping at the interfaces, is improved when parylene C is integrated in the device [21

Advanced scanning probe lithography using anatase-to-rutile transition to create localized TiO₂ nanorods

• Julian Kalb,
• Vanessa Knittel and
• Lukas Schmidt-Mende

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 412–418, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.40

• charging by trapping of electrons from the electron beam in neutral traps such as OH groups [43]. However, this effect becomes significantly stronger with increasing beam intensity and remains for many days in a humid environment. Hence, it results more likely from electron-beam-induced surface smoothing

Geometrical optimisation of core–shell nanowire arrays for enhanced absorption in thin crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells

• Robin Vismara,
• Olindo Isabella,
• Andrea Ingenito,
• Fai Tong Si and
• Miro Zeman

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 322–331, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.31

• light trapping schemes is of paramount importance for the development of high-efficiency thin silicon solar cells. The most common approach is the texturing of interfaces, to increase the path length of light inside the absorber. This allows for the use of thinner absorbers, which can decrease

Pull-off and friction forces of micropatterned elastomers on soft substrates: the effects of pattern length scale and stiffness

• Peter van Assenbergh,
• Marike Fokker,
• Julian Langowski,
• Jan van Esch,
• Marleen Kamperman and
• Dimitra Dodou

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 79–94, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.8

• pull-off and friction forces, such as defect control and crack trapping, as reported in the literature for hard substrates, seem to disappear on soft substrates. The dimple geometry with a terminal layer generated significantly higher pull-off forces compared to other geometries, presumably due to

• between micropillars, and 9-times higher forces were generated compared to flat control samples at a spacing of 87 μm. The authors suggested that the increase in pull-off forces was caused by a crack-trapping mechanism during pulling off [17]. Bae et al. argued that the presence of a terminal layer leads

• elastocapillary length of PVA, and conformation to the micropattern is expected to be elastically dominated. As a result of the conformation properties of the substrate, a single larger contact area is formed, and advantageous effects of defect control and crack trapping mechanisms, as reported for rigid

Threshold voltage decrease in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal doped with graphene oxide flakes

• Mateusz Mrukiewicz,
• Krystian Kowiorski,
• Paweł Perkowski,
• Rafał Mazur and
• Małgorzata Djas

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 71–78, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.7

• composites [11][12][13][14]. NLCs doped with graphene or carbon nanotubes show a faster response in electro-optical switching than pure liquid crystal compounds. This effect is caused by trapping of some free ion concentrations [15][16] or reduction in the rotational viscosity [17]. Furthermore, due to

Surface plasmon resonance enhancement of photoluminescence intensity and bioimaging application of gold nanorod@CdSe/ZnS quantum dots

• Siyi Hu,
• Yu Ren,
• Yue Wang,
• Jinhua Li,
• Junle Qu,
• Liwei Liu,
• Hanbin Ma and
• Yuguo Tang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 22–31, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.3

• emission. This greater lifetime resulted from the trapping states caused by surface defects located within the bandgap, which led to a rise of nonradioactive recombination. When the GNRs were doped with CdSe/ZnS QDs, more radiative and nonradioactive processes occurred at the particle surface, which

Polarization-dependent strong coupling between silver nanorods and photochromic molecules

• Gwénaëlle Lamri,
• Alessandro Veltri,
• Jean Aubard,
• Pierre-Michel Adam,
• Nordin Felidj and
• Anne-Laure Baudrion

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2657–2664, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.247

• nanosource would be useful in nano-optics applications. As an example, Zhou et al. were able to fabricate a two-color hybrid nanosource by trapping different emitters in the close vicinity of a cylindrical nanoparticle [17]. The color emitted by this nanosource then depends on the incident in-plane

Exploring the photoleakage current and photoinduced negative bias instability in amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors with various active layer thicknesses

• Dapeng Wang and
• Mamoru Furuta

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2573–2580, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.239

• shift of Vth without SS degradation is well fitted to the commonly used stretched-exponential equation [28]. The obtained results suggest that electron trapping at the back-channel interface between a-IGZO and etch-stopper layers occurs because a negative gate bias is performed during NBIS. On the basis

• oxygen vacancies in the bulk of the IGZO for the enhancement of electrical properties and stress stability of the TFTs, the following two aspects should be mainly considered: (i) oxidizing the densities of the defect state of oxide semiconductors to suppress charge trapping, for example by oxygen

Friction reduction through biologically inspired scale-like laser surface textures

• Johannes Schneider,
• Vergil Djamiykov and
• Christian Greiner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2561–2572, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.238

• lizards and insects [39][40][45]. There are four effects that are classically used to argue why laser surface texturing has a beneficial influence on tribological properties – the trapping of wear debris [46], changes in the contact angle [47], the storage of lubricant [48] and an additional micro

Nanocellulose: Recent advances and its prospects in environmental remediation

• Katrina Pui Yee Shak,
• Yean Ling Pang and
• Shee Keat Mah

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2479–2498, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.232

• Cladophora cellulose suggests higher inertness of its cellulose which reduces its susceptibility to chemical treatments compared to most native cellulose derived from conventional land plants. The filters fabricated from Cladophora algae cellulose have been tested and proven for trapping swine influenza

Hydrothermal-derived carbon as a stabilizing matrix for improved cycling performance of silicon-based anodes for lithium-ion full cells

• Mirco Ruttert,
• Florian Holtstiege,
• Jessica Hüsker,
• Markus Börner,
• Martin Winter and
• Tobias Placke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2381–2395, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.223

• contribute to a decreasing capacity with each cycle, either due to consumption of active Li, trapping of Li in disconnected Si or a growing resistivity [17][21][22][23][24][25]. With the aim to tackle these problems and to obtain Si anodes with a stable cycling performance at high capacity, several promising

• , the trapping of Li inside detached Si, exposure of fresh Si to the electrolyte and breaking and reformation of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer [16][21][22][24]. All these factors contribute to an ongoing capacity loss with each cycle, leading to poor capacity retention. With higher Si

Performance analysis of rigorous coupled-wave analysis and its integration in a coupled modeling approach for optical simulation of complete heterojunction silicon solar cells

• Ziga Lokar,
• Benjamin Lipovsek,
• Marko Topic and
• Janez Krc

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2315–2329, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.216

• simulation of solar cells, in particular heterojunction silicon (HJ Si) solar cells. The structure of HJ Si solar cells consists of thin and thick layers, and additionally, micro- and nano-textures are also introduced to further exploit the potential of light trapping. The RCWA was tested on the front

• conversion efficiency of solar cells. Such techniques aim to improve the coupling of light into the structure (e.g., antireflective coatings and nanostructures at the front side of solar cells) and the light trapping ability of the structure (e.g., nano- and micrometer size textures for light scattering and

• into solar cells [1][2][3][4][5]. The use of different techniques for the wet and dry etching of Si wafers [6] in combination with thermal or UV nanoimprint lithography [6][7] has opened new potential for design of (nano)textures with superior antireflection, light scattering and trapping properties

Two-dimensional photonic crystals increasing vertical light emission from Si nanocrystal-rich thin layers

• Lukáš Ondič,
• Marian Varga,
• Ivan Pelant,
• Alexander Kromka,
• Karel Hruška and
• Robert G. Elliman

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2287–2296, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.213

• inverted rough-surface LEDs [11] can be obtained. The main advantage therefore remains the ability to tune the far-field radiation pattern. It is worth noting that due to reciprocity of light propagation (in the linear regime), PhC structures can also be used for light-trapping. It was shown, both

Phosphorus monolayer doping (MLD) of silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates

• Noel Kennedy,
• Ray Duffy,
• Luke Eaton,
• Dan O’Connell,
• Scott Monaghan,
• Shane Garvey,
• James Connolly,
• Chris Hatem,
• Justin D. Holmes and
• Brenda Long

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2106–2113, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.199

• excess of 1 × 1019 cm−3 with minimal impact on surface quality. Hall effect data proved that reducing SOI dimensions from 66 to 13 nm lead to an increase in carrier concentration values due to the reduced volume available to the dopant for diffusion. Dopant trapping was found at both Si–SiO2 interfaces

• positive outcome. As a result of the increased carrier concentration the mobility drops, which is expected for silicon [15]. Dopant trapping MLD is a surface-diffusion technique in which the dopant source is applied to the substrate surface and requires further thermal treatment to promote diffusion into

• × 1020 cm−3. However, due to the inaccuracy of SIMS in this region it is difficult to assess these values. One possible reason for these elevated values may be dopant trapping by SiO2 during the annealing process. The surface oxidation found after functionalization (Figure 6) has the potential to inhibit

Localized photodeposition of catalysts using nanophotonic resonances in silicon photocathodes

• Evgenia Kontoleta,
• Sven H. C. Askes,
• Lai-Hung Lai and
• Erik C. Garnett

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2097–2105, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.198

• nanoparticles act as electron-trapping centers on the surface of TiO2 [45][46]. After the formation of the very first platinum nanoparticles, photogenerated electrons from the silicon nanostructures are transferred to TiO2 and in sequence to the already formed platinum. The Schottky barrier between TiO2 and

Controllable one-pot synthesis of uniform colloidal TiO₂ particles in a mixed solvent solution for photocatalysis

• Jong Tae Moon,
• Seung Ki Lee and
• Ji Bong Joo

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1715–1727, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.163

• light [34]. Another hypothesis regarding the exceptional activity of anatase and rutile P25 is that the presence of rutile crystallites generates a favorable structure in which rapid electron transfer from rutile to lower energy lattice trapping centers of anatase phase occurs under visible-light

Absence of free carriers in silicon nanocrystals grown from phosphorus- and boron-doped silicon-rich oxide and oxynitride

• Daniel Hiller,
• Julian López-Vidrier,
• Keita Nomoto,
• Michael Wahl,
• Wolfgang Bock,
• Tomáš Chlouba,
• František Trojánek,
• Sebastian Gutsch,
• Margit Zacharias,
• Dirk König,
• Petr Malý and
• Michael Kopnarski

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1501–1511, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.141

• SRO:B accelerated TT-dynamics exist. When fitting the curves, best results are obtained for a two-exponential fit where the fast component τ1 ≈ 0.5 … 1.5 ps for all samples is attributed to ultrafast carrier trapping and thermalization events. The long component τ2 is associated with the actual Auger

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

• Background: Encased cantilevers are novel force sensors that overcome major limitations of liquid scanning probe microscopy. By trapping air inside an encasement around the cantilever, they provide low damping and maintain high resonance frequencies for exquisitely low tip–sample interaction forces even when

• damping mechanism. The quality factor of the cantilever typically drops by a factor of 50 when immersed in water. By trapping air inside the hydrophobic encasement [26][27][28][29], the resonator maintains a high quality factor and resonance frequency. For the liquid air comparison a softer cantilever (L

Ag₂WO₄ nanorods decorated with AgI nanoparticles: Novel and efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts for the degradation of water pollutants

• Shijie Li,
• Shiwei Hu,
• Wei Jiang,
• Yanping Liu,
• Yu Liu,
• Yingtang Zhou,
• Liuye Mo and
• Jianshe Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1308–1316, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.123

• . The active species trapping experiment reveals that active species (O2•− and h+) dominantly contribute to RhB degradation. The AgI/Ag2WO4 heterojunction photocatalyst characterized in this work holds great potential for remedying environmental issues due to its simple preparation method and excellent

• ). These facts suggest that 0.3AgI/Ag2WO4 possesses long-term stability for photocatalytic reaction. Photocatalytic mechanism To elucidate the degradation mechanism, active-species trapping tests were performed during RhB degradation over 0.3AgI/Ag2WO4 (Figure 9) [13][48]. Figure 9 shows the effects of

• various trapping agents on the RhB degradation efficiency under visible-light irradiation. When IPA was introduced, the RhB degradation efficiency slightly reduced from 91.3 % to 70.7%, suggesting that very little •OH was involved in the reaction. However, when benzoquinone (a superoxide radical (•O2

Surface characterization of nanoparticles using near-field light scattering

• Eunsoo Yoo,
• Yizhong Liu,
• Chukwuazam A. Nwasike,
• Sebastian R. Freeman,
• Brian C. DiPaolo,
• Bernardo Cordovez and
• Amber L. Doiron

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1228–1238, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.114

• iron oxide nanoparticles (IPC-SPIOs). Nanophotonic force microscopy pushes particles against a waveguide surface, optically trapping the particles by light confinement [10][19][20]. The evanescent fields are created by the waveguide, and there are four forces operating on the field: the gradient force

• (trapping force), scattering force, coating force, and drag force (Figure 1) [21]. Nanoparticles are either trapped in the evanescent field and reside in a potential well or escape the potential well via Brownian motion due to inadequate trapping force [22]. The potential well is the sum of all forces, and

• it is generated by both the optical trapping force and surface repulsion of the nanoparticle [23]. The motion and behavior, i.e., velocity and local scattering intensity, of trapped nanoparticles is characteristic of the particle properties. When nanoparticles are trapped, the local refractive index

Non-equilibrium electron transport induced by terahertz radiation in the topological and trivial phases of Hg_1−xCd_xTe

• Alexandra V. Galeeva,
• Alexey I. Artamkin,
• Alexey S. Kazakov,
• Sergey N. Danilov,
• Sergey A. Dvoretskiy,
• Nikolay N. Mikhailov,
• Ludmila I. Ryabova and
• Dmitry R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1035–1039, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.96

• . An additional discrepancy may come out as a result of carrier trapping by acceptor resonant states [28][29]. Let us discuss now in more detail the experimental results obtained for the Hg1−xCdxTe topological phase (x < 0.16). The most unusual result is the absence of a threshold energy in the strong

Surface-plasmon-enhanced ultraviolet emission of Au-decorated ZnO structures for gas sensing and photocatalytic devices

• T. Anh Thu Do,
• Truong Giang Ho,
• Thu Hoai Bui,
• Quang Ngan Pham,
• Hong Thai Giang,
• Thi Thu Do,
• Duc Van Nguyen and
• Dai Lam Tran

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 771–779, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.70

• faceted ZnO nano- and microstructures [3][43][44], or trapping of surface and/or defect states [5][42]. In our experiment, the plausible photocatalytic mechanism could be related to the high plasmonic effect of the Au NP/ZnO film in which high-energy photoinduced electrons (hot electrons due to SPR effect

Perovskite-structured CaTiO₃ coupled with g-C₃N₄ as a heterojunction photocatalyst for organic pollutant degradation

• Ashish Kumar,
• Christian Schuerings,
• Suneel Kumar,
• Ajay Kumar and
• Venkata Krishnan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 671–685, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.62

• overall photocatalytic activity. Furthermore, the active species trapping experiments validate the major role played by superoxide radicals (O2−•) in the degradation of pollutants. Based on scavenger studies and theoretically calculated band positions, a plausible mechanism for the photocatalytic

• the photodegradation of the pollutant. The entire photocatalytic reaction mechanism under sunlight irradiation can be summarized as follows: To validate the proposed mechanism and to gain insight into the role played by active species, radical trapping experiments were performed for RhB degradation

• observed in the presence of TEA pointing towards the active role of h+ species in the degradation of RhB. However, •OH radicals do not contribute much as the addition of IPA and had only a small effect on the degradation process of RhB. Thus, the trapping experiment results also confirm that O2−• and h

Mechanistic insights into plasmonic photocatalysts in utilizing visible light

• Kah Hon Leong,
• Azrina Abd Aziz,
• Lan Ching Sim,
• Pichiah Saravanan,
• Min Jang and
• Detlef Bahnemann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 628–648, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.59

• with the holes at the valance bands by trapping the electrons excited to the conduction bands. The LPSR, along with this distinctive characteristic feature, strengthens and contributes to the improvement of the plasmonic photocatalyst. All these distinctive characteristics of plasmonic photocatalysts

• various ROSs, the rate constant of •OH is almost at the diffusion limit and hence the reactivity of •OH is considerably high. The detection methods utilized for •OH in photocatalysis are focussed on (1) laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), (2) spin-trapping ESR and (3) fluorescent probe methods. Laser

• [115]. Spin-trapping electron spin resonance Spin-trapping ESR is a conventional method and most often utilized to detect the •OH generated in biological systems with the support of a spin-trapping reagent, namely 5,5-dimethyl-1-pyrroline N-oxide (DMPO) [129][130]. The unstable •OH radicals released