There is now a significant body of literature which reports that stripes form in the ligand shell of suitably functionalised Au nanoparticles. This stripe morphology has been proposed to strongly affect the physicochemical and biochemical properties of the particles. We critique the published evidence for striped nanoparticles in detail, with a particular focus on the interpretation of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) data (as this is the only technique which ostensibly provides direct evidence for the presence of stripes). Through a combination of an exhaustive re-analysis of the original data, in addition to new experimental measurements of a simple control sample comprising entirely unfunctionalised particles, we show that all of the STM evidence for striped nanoparticles published to date can instead be explained by a combination of well-known instrumental artefacts, or by issues with data acquisition/analysis protocols. We also critically re-examine the evidence for the presence of ligand stripes which has been claimed to have been found from transmission electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, small angle neutron scattering experiments, and computer simulations. Although these data can indeed be interpreted in terms of stripe formation, we show that the reported results can alternatively be explained as arising from a combination of instrumental artefacts and inadequate data analysis techniques.

Optical microscopes are an essential tool for both the detection of disease in clinics, and for scientific analysis. However, in much of the world access to high-performance microscopy is limited by both the upfront cost and maintenance cost of the equipment. Here we present an open-source, 3D-printed, and fully-automated laboratory microscope, with motorised sample positioning and focus control. The microscope is highly customisable, with a number of options readily available including trans-and epi-illumination, polarisation contrast imaging, and epi-florescence imaging. The OpenFlexure microscope has been designed to enable low-volume manufacturing and maintenance by local personnel, vastly increasing accessibility. We have produced over 100 microscopes in Tanzania and Kenya for educational, scientific, and clinical applications, demonstrating that local manufacturing can be a viable alternative to international supply chains that can often be costly, slow, and unreliable.

Although mass is typically defined within the International System of Units (SI) at the kilogram level, the pending SI redefinition provides an opportunity to realize mass at any scale using electrical metrology. We propose the use of an electromechanical balance to realize mass at the milligram level using SI electrical units. An integrated concentric-cylinder vacuum gap capacitor allows us to leverage the highly precise references available for capacitance, voltage and length to generate an electrostatic reference force. Weighing experiments performed on 1 mg and 20 mg artifacts show the same or lower uncertainty than similar experiments performed by subdividing the kilogram. The measurement is currently limited by the stability of the materials that compose the mass artifacts and the changes in adsorbed layers on the artifact surfaces as they are transferred from vacuum to air.

We report the development of an ultrasensitive optomechanical sensor designed to improve the accuracy and precision of force measurements with atomic force microscopy. The sensors reach quality factors of 4.3 × 10 6 and force resolution on the femtonewton scale at room temperature. Self-calibration of the sensor is accomplished using radiation pressure to create a reference force. Self-calibration enables in situ calibration of the sensor in extreme environments, such as cryogenic ultra-high vacuum. The senor technology presents a viable route to force measurements at the atomic scale with uncertainties below the percent level.

Articles you may be interested inOptimal design and fabrication of three-dimensional calibration specimens for scanning probe microscopy Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 053708 (2012); 10.1063/1.4719661 TSP based Evolutionary optimization approach for the Vehicle Routing Problem AIP Conf.We describe the development and application of an imaging protocol, which evolves a scanning probe's atomic structure in parallel with automated optimization of the scan parameters. Our protocol coerces the system into a state that produces a specific atomic resolution image type without human involvement.

This work describes a metrological comparison between nanonewton force references derived from an electrostatic force balance and photon pressure from laser optical power in the 1-Watt range. An Electrostatic Force Balance is used to measure photon pressure force in the 10 nanonewton range from the reflection of a laser from a low (approximately 10 -5 ) loss III-V semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector mirror while the power of the reflected beam was simultaneously monitored with a traceable thermopile detector. This work demonstrates a method to link mass, force and laser power within the International System of Units with explicit treatment of absorption, diffuse reflection, and a detailed uncertainty analysis. Additionally, it demonstrates a viable method to scale this force continuously using a pulsed laser technique while maintaining the constant thermal load necessary for precision measurement of nanonewton forces with a mechanical balance.

Optical microscopes are an essential tool for both the detection of disease in clinics, and for scientific analysis. However, in much of the world access to high-performance microscopy is limited by both the upfront cost and maintenance cost of the equipment. Here we present an open-source, 3D-printed, and fully-automated laboratory microscope, with motorised sample positioning and focus control. The microscope is highly customisable, with a number of options readily available including trans-and epi-illumination, polarisation contrast imaging, and epi-florescence imaging. The OpenFlexure Microscope has been designed to enable lowvolume manufacturing and maintenance by local personnel, vastly increasing accessibility. We have produced over 100 microscopes in Tanzania and Kenya for educational, scientific, and clinical applications, demonstrating that local manufacturing can be a viable alternative to international supply chains that can often be costly, slow, and unreliable.

The Raspberry Pi camera module is widely used in open source hardware projects as a low cost camera sensor. However, when the stock lens is removed and replaced with other custom optics the sensor will return a non-uniform background and colour response which hampers the use of this excellent and popular image sensor. This effect is found to be due to the sensor's optical design as well as due to built-in corrections in the GPU firmware, which is optimised for a short focal length lens. In this work we characterise and correct the vignetting and colour crosstalk found in the Raspberry Pi camera module v2, presenting two measures that greatly improve the quality of images using custom optics. First, we use a custom "lens shading table" to correct for vignetting of the image, which can be done in real time in the camera's existing processing pipeline (i.e. the camera's low-latency preview is corrected). The second correction is a colour unmixing matrix, which enables us to reverse the loss in saturation at the edge of the image, though this requires postprocessing of the image. With both of these corrections in place, it is possible to obtain uniformly colour-corrected images, at the expense of slightly increased noise at the edges of the image.