Green synthesized silver nanoparticles for iron and manganese ion removal from aqueous solutions.

Microalgae and Cyanobacteria extracts can be used for the synthesis of spherical silver nanoparticles by the reduction of AgNO under air atmosphere at room temperature. Here, we synthesized AgNPs using extracts of one cyanobacterium (Synechococcus elongatus) and two microalgae (Stigeoclonium sp. and Cosmarium punctulatum).

Mapping the local dielectric constant of a biological nanostructured system.

The aim of this work is to determine the varying dielectric constant of a biological nanostructured system via electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) and to show how this method is useful to study natural photonic crystals. We mapped the dielectric constant of the cross section of the posterior wing of the damselfly with nanometric resolution. We obtained structural information on its constitutive nanolayers and the absolute values of their dielectric constant.

CuInSe quantum dots grown by molecular beam epitaxy on amorphous SiO surfaces.

The currently most efficient polycrystalline solar cells are based on the Cu(In,Ga)Se compound as a light absorption layer. However, in view of new concepts of nanostructured solar cells, CuInSe nanostructures are of high interest. In this work, we report CuInSe nanodots grown through a vacuum-compatible co-evaporation growth process on an amorphous surface.

Observation of partial relaxation mechanisms via anisotropic strain relief on epitaxial islands using semiconductor nanomembranes.

In this work we attempt to directly observe anisotropic partial relaxation of epitaxial InAs islands using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and synchrotron x-ray diffraction on a 15 nm thick InAs:GaAs nanomembrane. We show that under such conditions TEM provides improved real-space statistics, allowing the observation of partial relaxation processes that were not previously detected by other techniques or by usual TEM cross section images. Besides the fully coherent and fully relaxed islands that are known to exist above previously established critical thickness, we prove the existence of partially relaxed islands, where incomplete 60° half-loop misfit dislocations lead to a lattice relaxation along one of the 〈110〉 directions, keeping a strained lattice in the perpendicular direction.