Nanomechanical Mapping of Amorphous Silicon Thin Film Electrodes in All-Solid-State Lithium-Ion Battery Configuration during Electrochemical Lithiation and Delithiation.

An bimodal atomic force microscopy system was constructed to perform nanomechanical mapping of an amorphous Si thin film electrode deposited on a LiLaZrTaO solid electrolyte sheet during electrochemical lithiation/delithiation. The evolution of Young's modulus maps of the Si electrode was successfully tracked as a function of apparent Li content in lithium silicide (LiSi) simultaneously with real-time surface topography observation. At the initial stage of lithiation, the average modulus steeply decreased due to the generation of LiSi from intrinsic Si, followed by a moderate modulus reduction until the electrode capacity reached 3300 mAh g (Li content = 3.

Adsorption and Conformation of Bovine Serum Albumin with Blue-Emitting Gold Nanoclusters at the Air/Water and Lipid/Water Interfaces.

Protein-encapsulated nanoclusters (NCs) are emerging as a versatile platform for in-vivo imaging and other biomedical applications due to their ultrasmall size and excitation in the near-infrared region. Encapsulation may however affect protein structure, size, charge, and its interaction with lipid membranes. In this study, bulk characterization methods along with surface-sensitive vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG) spectroscopy were employed to study the secondary structure of bovine serum albumin (BSA) with blue-emitting AuNCs at the air/water and 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-(1'-rac-glycerol) (DPPG) lipid/water interfaces.