At present the only surface electron microscope which allows true characteristic XPEEM (photoemission electron microscopy using synchrotron radiation) and structural characterization is the spectroscopic LEEM developed at the Technical University Clausthal in the early nineties. This instrument has in the past been used mainly for LEEM studies of various surface and thin film phenomena, because it had very limited access to synchrotron radiation. Now the microscope is connected quasipermanently to the undulator beamline 6.2 at the storage ring ELETTRA, operating successfully since the end of 1996 under the name SPELEEM (Spectroscopic PhotoEmission and Low Energy Electron Microscope). The high brightness of the ELETTRA light source, together with an optimized instrument, results in a spatial resolution better than 25 nm and an energy resolution better than 0.5 eV in the XPEEM mode. The instrument can be used alternately for XPEEM, LEEM, LEED (low energy electron diffraction), MEM (mirror electron microscopy) and other imaging modes, depending upon the particular problem studied. The combination of these imaging modes allows a comprehensive characterization of the specimen. This is of particular importance when the chemical identification of structural features is necessary for the understanding of a surface or thin film process. In addition, PED (photoelectron diffraction) and VPEAD (valence photoelectron angular distribution) of small selected areas give local atomic configuration and band structure information, respectively.
Low power consumption and reliable selectivity are the two main requirements for gas sensors to be applicable in mobile devices. [1] These technological platforms, e.g. smart phones or wireless sensor platforms will facilitate personalized detection of environmental and health conditions, and hence becoming the basis of the future core technology of ubiquitous sensing. Even today, health control as well as environmental monitoring is relying on immobile and complex detection systems with very limited availability in space and time. Recent works have shown promising concepts to realize selfpowered gas sensors that are capable of detecting gases without the need of external power sources to Submitted to 2 activate the sensor-gas interaction or to actively generate a read out signal. [2,3] These sensors drastically reduce power consumption compared to conventional semiconductor gas sensors and additionally reduce the required space for integration. All these attempts so far were based on purely nano structured inorganic metal oxide sensor materials that provide a good sensitivity towards different gases due to their high surface-to-volume ratio. However, due to their non-selective sensing mechanism based on oxygen vacancy-gas interactions, these purely inorganic sensors cannot accomplish a meaningful gas selectivity. [4,5] High selectivities towards single gas species have been recently reported via modifying the inorganic surface of nanostructured semiconductors with a defined organic functionality. [6][7][8][9] Theoretical simulations based on ab-initio density functional theory (DFT) for a system composed of SnO2 NWs modified with a defined self assembled monolayer (SAM) elucidated the reason for the high selectivity of such gas sensor: the energetic position of the SAM-gas frontier orbitals with respect to the NW Fermi level have been identified to be the crucial factor to ensure an efficient charge transfer upon gas-SAM binding interactions and thus to sense or discriminate a certain gas species. [7] The high flexibility of organic surface modifications in terms of functional groups as well as their sterical and electronic structure possibly might enable the targeted design of various specific gas sensors. However, all organic surface modified sensor systems so far are based on compact conductometric or field effect transistor (FET) sensor concepts that still require a remarkable amount of energy to generate a sensor signal (e.g. by applying a source-drain current). Up to date, none of the semiconductor based gas sensor systems could accomplish both, the selfpowered/low powered sensor operation and highly selective gas detection within a single and compact device.In this work, we present a semiconductor based gas sensor concept that combines the two substantial requirements of mobile gas sensing in a singular sensor device: self-powered operation combined with high gas selectivity. Beyond the combination of self-powered sensing and high selectivity, also a very high sensitivity could also been demonst...
Lithium migration in nanostructured electrode materials is important for an understanding and improvement of high energy density lithium batteries. An approach to measure lithium transport through nanometer thin layers of relevant electrochemical materials is presented using amorphous silicon as a model system. A multilayer consisting of a repetition of five [(6)LiNbO3(15 nm)/Si (10 nm)/(nat)LiNbO3 (15 nm)/Si (10 nm)] units is used for analysis, where LiNbO3 is a Li tracer reservoir. It is shown that the change of the relative (6)Li/(7)Li isotope fraction in the LiNbO3 layers by lithium diffusion through the nanosized silicon layers can be monitored nondestructively by neutron reflectometry. The results can be used to calculate transport parameters.
The quantum-size-effect structure of ultrathin Pb and Pb-In alloy films on Si(111)surfaces is studied by photoemission spectroscopy in the thickness range from 0 to about 30 monolayers and analyzed, taking into account electron scattering and film structure, which is characterized by high-energy-reflectionelectron diffraction.
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