Electron beam induced surface activation: a method for the lithographic fabrication of nanostructures via catalytic processes

In focused electron beam induced processing (FEBIP), the very narrow electron beam of a scanning electron microscope or transmission electron microscope is used to locally modify matter on the nanometer scale. Recently, the family of FEBIP could be considerably expanded by the technique of focused electron beam induced surface activation (EBISA). In EBISA, the surface itself gets chemically activated by the impact of the electron beam without the presence of precursor molecules. In the second EBISA processing step, the surface is exposed to a precursor molecule which is then catalytically decomposed at the pre-irradiated/activated areas and eventually continues to grow autocatalytically upon prolonged precursor dosage. In this way, electron irradiation and precursor dosage are effectively separated. One of the advantages is that, due to the autocatalytic growth, the size of the corresponding nanostructures can be controlled by the precursor dosage and corresponding electron proximity effects can be omitted. Another advantage is the parallel processing of the pre-irradiated regions during precursor dosage. This bears the potential to significantly reduce the fabrication times for larger deposits compared to the classical electron beam induced deposition approach, in which precursor molecules are sequentially dissociated by the impact of the electron. The fundamentals and apparent further developments as well as the potential and challenges of the comparably new EBISA technique, and more general of catalytic effects in FEBIP are presented and discussed.     

High temperature liquid chromatography hyphenated with ESI-MS and ICP-MS detection for the structural characterization and quantification of halogen containing drug metabolites

In this paper we describe the hyphenation of high temperature liquid chromatography with ICP-MS and ESI-MS for the characterization of halogen containing drug metabolites. The use of temperature gradients up to 200°C enabled the separation of metabolites with low organic modifier content. This specific property allowed the use of detection methods that suffer from (significant) changes in analyte response factors as a function of the organic modifier content such as ICP-MS. Metabolites of two kinase inhibitors (SB-203580-Iodo and MAPK inhibitor VIII) produced by bacterial cytochrome P450 BM3 mutants and human liver microsomes were identified based on high resolution MS(n) data. Quantification was done using their normalized and elemental specific response in the ICP-MS. The importance of these kinds of quantification strategies is stressed by the observation that the difference of the position of one oxygen atom in a structure can greatly affect its response in ESI-MS and UV detection.     

Structure and Conformation of Individual Molecules upon Adsorption of a Mixture of Benzoporphyrins on Ag(111), Cu(111), and Cu(110) Surfaces

The front cover artwork is provided by the groups of Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Steinrück and Prof. Dr. Norbert Jux at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg. The image shows a mixture of six 2H-tetrakis-(3, 5-di-tert-butyl-phenyl)(x)benzoporphyrins (2H-diTTBP(x)BPs, x = 0, 1, 2-cis, 2-trans, 3, or 4) molecules forming a porous square structure on Ag(111) as observed in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at room temperature. Read the full text of the Research Article at 10.1002/cphc.202300355 .     

Recent developments in living cationic polymerization

Scope and limitation of the vinyl ether polymerization initiated by NR₄ClO₄(KClO₄;LiClO₄)/CH₃CHI-OR was discussed. Besides isobutyl vinyl ether (IBVE), N-vinylcarbazole (NVC) and 2-chloroethyl vinyl ether (CEVE) were initiated by NR₄ClO₄/CH₃CHI-OR. These polymerizations exhibited the characteristics of a living polymerization. However, in order to observe narrow molar mass distribution NVC was initiated with CH₃CHI-OR, without salts. Block copolymers were synthesized by the method of sequential monomer addition (NVC, IBVE, CEVE). The PCEVE segment was modified by nucleophilic substitution, which allowed the synthesis of amphiphilic block copolymers.