Dynamics of thin precursor film in wetting of nanopatterned surfaces.

The spreading of a liquid droplet on flat surfaces is a well-understood phenomenon, but little is known about how liquids spread on a rough surface. When the surface roughness is of the nanoscopic length scale, the capillary forces dominate and the liquid droplet spreads by wetting the nanoscale textures that act as capillaries. Here, using a combination of advanced nanofabrication and liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy, we image the wetting of a surface patterned with a dense array of nanopillars of varying heights.

Novel Strategy for the Synthesis of Ultra-Stable Single-Site Mo-ZSM-5 Zeolite Nanocrystals.

The current energy transition presents many technological challenges, such as the development of highly stable catalysts. Herein, we report a novel "top-down" synthesis approach for preparation of a single-site Mo-containing nanosized ZSM-5 zeolite which has atomically dispersed framework-molybdenum homogenously distributed through the zeolite crystals. The introduction of Mo heals most of the native point defects in the zeolite structure resulting in an extremely stable material.

Selective Wet Etching of Silicon Germanium in Composite Vertical Nanowires.

Silicon germanium (SiGe or SiGe) is an important semiconductor material for the fabrication of nanowire-based gate-all-around transistors in the next-generation logic and memory devices. During the fabrication process, SiGe can be used either as a sacrificial layer to form suspended horizontal Si nanowires or, because of its higher carrier mobility, as a possible channel material that replaces Si in both horizontal and vertical nanowires. In both cases, there is a pressing need to understand and develop nanoscale etching processes that enable controlled and selective removal of SiGe with respect to Si.

Electron Tomography of Plasmonic Au Nanoparticles Dispersed in a TiO Dielectric Matrix.

Plasmonic Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) embedded into a TiO dielectric matrix were analyzed by combining two-dimensional and three-dimensional electron microscopy techniques. The preparation method was reactive magnetron sputtering, followed by thermal annealing treatments at 400 and 600 °C. The goal was to assess the nanostructural characteristics and correlate them with the optical properties of the AuNPs, particularly the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) behavior.

Evaluation of noise and blur effects with SIRT-FISTA-TV reconstruction algorithm: Application to fast environmental transmission electron tomography.

Fast tomography in Environmental Transmission Electron Microscopy (ETEM) is of a great interest for in situ experiments where it allows to observe 3D real-time evolution of nanomaterials under operating conditions. In this context, we are working on speeding up the acquisition step to a few seconds mainly with applications on nanocatalysts. In order to accomplish such rapid acquisitions of the required tilt series of projections, a modern 4K high-speed camera is used, that can capture up to 100 images per second in a 2K binning mode.