Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B:Nanotechnology and Microelectronics最新文献

Conventional Raman scattering is a workhorse technique for detecting and identifying complex molecular samples. In surface enhanced Raman scattering, a nanorough metallic surface close to the sample enhances the Raman signal enormously. In this work, the surface is on a clear epoxy substrate. The epoxy is cast on a silicon wafer, using 20 nm of gold as a mold release. This single step process already produces useful enhanced Raman signals. However, the Raman signal is further enhanced by (1) depositing additional gold on the epoxy substrate and (2) by using a combination of wet and dry etches to roughen the silicon substrate before casting the epoxy. The advantage of a clear substrate is that the Raman signal may be obtained by passing light through the substrate, with opaque samples simply placed against the surface. Results were obtained with solutions of Rhodamine 6G in deionized water over a range of concentrations from 1 nM to 1 mM. In all cases, the signal to noise ratio was greater than 10:1.

Bifunctional nanoarrays were created to simulate the immunological synapse and probe the T-cell immune response at the single-molecule level. Sub-5 nm AuPd nanodot arrays were fabricated using both e-beam and nanoimprint lithography. The nanoarrays were then functionalized by two costimulatory molecules: antibody UCHT1 Fab, which binds to the T-cell receptor (TCR) and activates the immune response, bound to metallic nanodots; and intercellular adhesion molecule-1, which enhances cell adhesion, on the surrounding area. Initial T-cell experiments show successful attachment and activation on the bifunctional nanoarrays. This nanoscale platform for single-molecule control of TCR in living T-cells provides a new approach to explore how its geometric arrangement affects T-cell activation and behavior, with potential applications in immunotherapy. This platform also serves as a general model for single-molecule nanoarrays where more than one molecular species is required.

The creation of nanostructures on polycrystalline silicon wafer surface to reduce the solar reflection can enhance the solar absorption and thus increase the solar-electricity conversion efficiency of solar cells. The self-masking reactive ion etching (RIE) was studied to directly fabricate nanostructures on silicon surface without using a masking process for antireflection purpose. Reactive gases comprising chlorine (Cl₂), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), and oxygen (O₂) were activated by radio-frequency plasma in an RIE system at a typical pressure of 120-130 mTorr to fabricate the nanoscale pyramids. Poly-Si wafers were etched directly without masking for 6-10 min to create surface nanostructures by varying the compositions of SF₆, Cl₂, and O₂ gas mixtures in the etching process. The wafers were then treated with acid (KOH:H₂O = 1:1) for 1 min to remove the damage layer (100 nm) induced by dry etching. The damage layer significantly reduced the solar cell efficiencies by affecting the electrical properties of the surface layer. The light reflectivity from the surface after acid treatment could be significantly reduced to <10% for the wavelengths between 500 and 900 nm. The effects of RIE and surface treatment conditions on the surface nanostructures and the optical performance as well as the efficiencies of solar cells will be presented and discussed. The authors have successfully fabricated large-area (156 × 156 mm²) subwavelength antireflection structure on poly-Si substrates, which could improve the solar cell efficiency reproducibly up to 16.27%, higher than 15.56% using wet etching.

The authors developed a class of novel graphite-based field emitters, known as graphite field emitters inflamed at high temperature (GFEIHTs), which includes numerous edges and juts. The GFEIHT field emission characteristics are investigated in a vacuum tube (10^-7 Pa), and an anode current exceeding 2 mA is obtained. The authors also fabricated tipped-off x-ray tubes using GFEIHTs. No degradation in the anode current is observed under the operating conditions of 16.6 kV anode voltage and 160 μA anode current. The current dispersion, defined as the standard deviation (σ)/mean over 24 h, is 2.8%. The authors successfully demonstrated radiography and x-ray fluorescence spectrometry using an x-ray tube with GFEIHT.

Monochromatic, aberration-corrected, dual-beam low energy electron microscopy (MAD-LEEM) is a novel imaging technique aimed at high resolution imaging of macromolecules, nanoparticles, and surfaces. MAD-LEEM combines three innovative electron-optical concepts in a single tool: a monochromator, a mirror aberration corrector, and dual electron beam illumination. The monochromator reduces the energy spread of the illuminating electron beam, which significantly improves spectroscopic and spatial resolution. The aberration corrector is needed to achieve subnanometer resolution at landing energies of a few hundred electronvolts. The dual flood illumination approach eliminates charging effects generated when a conventional, single-beam LEEM is used to image insulating specimens. The low landing energy of electrons in the range of 0 to a few hundred electronvolts is also critical for avoiding radiation damage, as high energy electrons with kilo-electron-volt kinetic energies cause irreversible damage to many specimens, in particular biological molecules. The performance of the key electron-optical components of MAD-LEEM, the aberration corrector combined with the objective lens and a magnetic beam separator, was simulated. Initial results indicate that an electrostatic electron mirror has negative spherical and chromatic aberration coefficients that can be tuned over a large parameter range. The negative aberrations generated by the electron mirror can be used to compensate the aberrations of the LEEM objective lens for a range of electron energies and provide a path to achieving subnanometer spatial resolution. First experimental results on characterizing DNA molecules immobilized on Au substrates in a LEEM are presented. Images obtained in a spin-polarized LEEM demonstrate that high contrast is achievable at low electron energies in the range of 1-10 eV and show that small changes in landing energy have a strong impact on the achievable contrast. The MAD-LEEM approach promises to significantly improve the performance of a LEEM for a wide range of applications in the biosciences, material sciences, and nanotechnology where nanometer scale resolution and analytical capabilities are required. In particular, the microscope has the potential of delivering images of unlabeled DNA strands with nucleotide-specific contrast. This simplifies specimen preparation and significantly eases the computational complexity needed to assemble the DNA sequence from individual reads.

Epithelial cells reside on specialized extracellular matrices that provide instructive cues to regulate and support cell function. The authors have previously demonstrated that substrate topography with dimensions similar to the native extracellular matrix (submicrometer and nanoscale features) significantly impacts corneal epithelial proliferation and migration. In this work, synthetic hydrogels were modified with both topographic and biochemical cues, where specified peptide ligands were immobilized within nanopatterned hydrogels. The efficient, systematic study of multiple instructive cues (peptide, peptide concentration, topographic dimensions), however, is contingent on the development of higher throughput platforms. Toward this goal, the authors developed a hydrogel array platform to systematically and rapidly evaluate combinations of two different peptide motifs and a range of nanoscale topographic dimensions. Specifically, distinct functional pegylated peptide ligands, RGD (GGGRGDSP) and AG73 (GRKRLQVQLSIRT), were synthesized for incorporation into an inert hydrogel network. Elastomeric stencils with arrays of millimeter-scale regions were used to spatially confine hydrogel precursor solutions on elastomeric stamps with nanoscale patterns generated by soft lithography. The resulting topographically and peptide-functionalized hydrogel arrays were used to characterize single cell migration. Epithelial cell migration speed and persistence were governed by both the biochemical and topographical cues of the underlying substrate.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) enables highly specific time-resolved imaging of vasculature by intravenous injection of ∼2 μm gas filled microbubbles. To develop a quantitative automated diagnosis of breast tumors with CEUS, breast tumors were induced in rats by administration of N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea. A bolus injection of microbubbles was administered and CEUS videos of each tumor were acquired for at least 3 min. The time-intensity curve of each pixel within a region of interest (ROI) was analyzed to measure kinetic parameters associated with the wash-in, peak enhancement, and wash-out phases of microbubble bolus injections since it was expected that the aberrant vascularity of malignant tumors will result in faster and more diverse perfusion kinetics versus those of benign lesions. Parameters were classified using linear discriminant analysis to differentiate between benign and malignant tumors and improve diagnostic accuracy. Preliminary results with a small dataset (10 tumors, 19 videos) show 100% accuracy with fivefold cross-validation testing using as few as two choice variables for training and validation. Several of the parameters which provided the best differentiation between malignant and benign tumors employed comparative analysis of all the pixels in the ROI including enhancement coverage, fractional enhancement coverage times, and the standard deviation of the envelope curve difference normalized to the mean of the peak frame. Analysis of combinations of five variables demonstrated that pixel-by-pixel analysis produced the most robust information for tumor diagnostics and achieved 5 times greater separation of benign and malignant cases than ROI-based analysis.

The authors report the synthesis, from simple salts, and the physical characterization of superparamagnetic iron platinum nanoparticles (SIPPs) suitable for use as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging. The properties of these particles were determined by means of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermogravimetric analysis, inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance relaxivity at 4.7 T. TEM showed that the diameters of the particles ranged from 9.3 to 10 nm, depending on the mole ratio of iron to platinum precursors, and on the concentration of octadecylamine (ODA) used in their preparation. The iron to platinum stoichiometry determined by ICP-OES varied from 1.4:1 to 3.7:1 and was similarly dependent on the initial mole ratios of iron and platinum salts, as well as on the concentration of ODA in the reaction. SQUID magnetometry showed that the SIPPs were superparamagnetic and had magnetic moments that increased with increasing iron content from 62 to 72 A·m²/kg Fe. The measured relaxivities of the SIPPs at 4.7 T were higher than commercially available superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, suggesting that these particles may be superior contrast agents in T₂-weighted magnetic resonance imaging.

In recent years, there have been increasing developments in the field of contrast-enhanced ultrasound both in the creation of new contrast agents and in imaging modalities. These contrast agents have been employed to study tumor vasculature in order to improve cancer detection and diagnosis. An in vivo study is presented of ultrasound imaging of gas filled hollow silica microshells and nanoshells which have been delivered intraperitoneally to an IGROV-1 tumor bearing mouse. In contrast to microbubbles, this formulation of microshells provided strong ultrasound imaging signals by shell disruption and release of gas. Imaging of the microshells in an animal model was facilitated by novel image processing. Although the particle signal could be identified by eye under live imaging, high background obfuscated the particle signal in still images and near the borders of the tumor with live images. Image processing techniques were developed that employed the transient nature of the particle signal to selectively filter out the background signal. By applying image registration, high-pass, median, threshold, and motion filtering, a short video clip of the particle signal was compressed into a single image, thereby resolving the silica shells within the tumor. © 2012 American Vacuum Society.

In this study the binding and assembly of bovine serum albumin (BSA) onto three different calcium phosphate phases (hydroxyapatite, dibasic calcium phosphate dihydrate, and β-tricalcium phosphate) was investigated using a combination of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). XPS was used to record adsorption isotherms and to quantify the amount of BSA adsorbed onto the different CaP surfaces. On all three surfaces a monolayer of adsorbed BSA was formed. ToF-SIMS was then used to investigate how the structure of BSA changes upon surface binding. ToF-SIMS data from BSA films on the three CaP surfaces showed intensity differences of secondary ions originating from both hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids. For a more quantitative examination of structural changes, we developed a ratio comparing the sum of intensities of secondary ions from hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues. A small, but statistically significant, increase in the value of this ratio (7%) was observed between a BSA film on hydroxyapatite versus dibasic calcium phosphate dihydrate. From this ratio we can make some initial hypotheses about what specific changes in BSA structure relate to these differences observed in the ToF-SIMS data.