Thin films prepared under conditions of low adatom mobility are characterized by a highly anisotropic physical structure with a wide range of systematically varying column and void sizes. The structure zone models, previously developed to classify the larger sized physical structures, are revised to account for the evolutionary growth stages of structure development as well as the separate effects of thermal- and bombardment-induced mobility. The zone T introduced by Thornton is shown to be a subzone within zone 1.

A one-pot synthesis of extremely stable, water-soluble Cu quantum clusters (QCs) capped with a model protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA), is reported. From matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry, we assign the clusters to be composed of Cu(5) and Cu(13) cores. The QCs also show luminescence properties having excitation and emission maxima at 325 and 410 nm, respectively, with a quantum yield of 0.15, which are found to be different from that of protein alone in similar experimental conditions. The quenching of luminescence of the protein-capped Cu QCs in the presence of very low hydrogen peroxide concentration (approximately nanomolar, or less than part-per-billion) reflects the efficacy of the QCs as a potential sensing material in biological environments. Moreover, as-prepared Cu QCs can detect highly toxic Pb(2+) ions in water, even at the part-per-million level, without suffering any interference from other metal ions.

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MoS2 thin films are directly synthesized over FTO/glass substrate in a one-step process and used as an efficient electron transport layer (ETL) for perovskite solar cells (PSCs).

Conductive and stretchable electrodes that can be printed directly on a stretchable substrate have drawn intensive attention for wearable electronics and electronic skins. Printable inks containing liquid metal (LM) are strong candidates for these applications, but the insulating oxide skin forming around LM particles limits their conductivity. This study reveals that hydrogen doping (H-doping) introduced by ultrasonication in the presence of aliphatic polymers makes the oxide skin highly conductive and deformable. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atom probe tomography confirms hydrogen doping, and first-principles calculations are used to rationalize the obtained conductivity. Printed circuit lines show metallic conductivity (25,000 S/cm), excellent electromechanical decoupling at 500% uniaxial stretching, mechanical resistance to scratches, and long-term stability in wide ranges of temperature and humidity. The self-passivation of the printed lines allows direct printing of 3D circuit lines and double-layer planar coils that are used as stretchable inductive strain sensors.Stretchable electronic devices have received widespread attention for potential uses in healthcare monitoring 1-3 , electronic skins 4,5 , and wearable haptic devices 6,7 . One of the key technological issues in stretchable electronics is the fabrication of stretchable circuit lines, for which several characteristics are requested simultaneously; metallic conductivity, negligible resistance changes under deformations, electrical stability in harsh environments, printing of complicated circuit designs, passivation 8 , and good adhesion to elastomeric substrates 9 . Serpentine and buckled metal interconnections have achieved a few of the above requests such as metallic conductivity, small resistance changes, some degree of deformability, and environmental stability 10 . Other progress has been with conductive elastomer composites with respect to high

We herein demonstrate the successive epitaxial growth of Bi2Te3 and Bi2Se3 on seed nanoplates for the scalable synthesis of heterostructured nanoplates (Bi2Se3@Bi2Te3) and multishell nanoplates (Bi2Se3@Bi2Te3@Bi2Se3, Bi2Se3@Bi2Te3@Bi2Se3@Bi2Te3). The relative dimensions of the constituting layers are controllable via the molar ratios of the precursors added to the seed nanoplate solution. Reduction of the precursors produces nanoparticles that attach preferentially to the sides of the seed nanoplates. Once attached, the nanoparticles reorganize epitaxially on the seed crystal lattices to form single-crystalline core-shell nanoplates. The nanoplates, initially 100 nm wide, grew laterally to 620 nm in the multishell structure, while their thickness increased more moderately, from 5 to 20 nm. The nanoplates were pelletized into bulk samples by spark plasma sintering and their thermoelectric properties are compared. A peak thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) ∼0.71 was obtained at 450 K for the bulk of Bi2Se3@Bi2Te3 nanoplates by simultaneous modulation of electronic and thermal transport in the presence of highly dense grain and phase boundaries.

The development of luminescent mercury sulfide quantum dots (HgS QDs) through the bio-mineralization process has remained unexplored. Herein, a simple, two-step route for the synthesis of HgS quantum dots in bovine serum albumin (BSA) is reported. The QDs are characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, luminescence, Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), circular dichroism (CD), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), and picosecond-resolved optical spectroscopy. Formation of various sizes of QDs is observed by modifying the conditions suitably. The QDs also show tunable luminescence over the 680-800 nm spectral regions, with a quantum yield of 4-5%. The as-prepared QDs can serve as selective sensor materials for Hg(II) and Cu(II), based on selective luminescence quenching. The quenching mechanism is found to be based on Dexter energy transfer and photoinduced electron transfer for Hg(II) and Cu(II), respectively. The simple synthesis route of protein-capped HgS QDs would provide additional impetus to explore applications for these materials.

We report an unprecedented catalytic decomposition of aqueous bilirubin solution, without any photo-activation, by citrate functionalized Mn 3 O 4 nanoparticles (NPs). In vitro reactivity of the catalyst on the whole blood specimen of hyperbilirubinemia patients revealed that the catalyst can significantly suppress the total bilirubin level in the blood specimens.