Analysis of polished polycrystalline diamond using dual beam focused ion beam microscopy

This paper presents a study on polycrystalline diamond (PCD) polished by dynamic friction polishing (DFP) with the aid of advanced dual beam FIB (focused ion beam) microscopy. After disclosing a variety of wear tracks by DFP using electron imaging in combination with the ion channelling effect, a dual beam FIB was successfully employed at wear track sites to specifically create both the large cross-sectional specimen for microanalysis and thin foil for nanoanalysis. The study concluded that the polished PCD subsurface was free from microscale cracking. However, the attached debris layer on the top surface contained metal oxides and non-diamond carbon phase with inhomogeneous distributions of C, Fe, Cr, Ni, Si and O across the layer. An attached layer directly above a diamond grain was composed of essentially amorphous carbon, suggesting that a direct phase transformation from diamond crystalline to amorphous occurred during DFP.     

Dimerization of Colloidal Particles through Controlled Aggregation for Enhanced Properties and Applications

Devising syntheses capable of precisely manipulating matter on the nanoscale is central to many areas of research. The underlying motivation is fueled by the fact that at the nanometer scale, the property has a strong correlation with the structure. One such nanostructure that has accrued much attention is the dimer—a structure composed of two colloidal particles separated by a small gap. This Focus Review discusses how colloidal stability can be strategically manipulated to induce dimerization, together with effective purification steps to further improve yields. We conclude the article by providing representative examples for how dimers composed of plasmonic nanoparticles leads to structures with tunable optical properties and strong electric near‐fields, ideal for application in surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy.     

Synthesis of Cationic Dumbbell-shaped Fullerene Nanostructures as Potential Photodynamic Sensitizers

A design of novel hydrophilic tetracationic dumbbell-shaped [60]fullerene nanostructures was made by balancing the hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity characteristics of the fullerene adduct for their potential application as photodynamic sensitizers in the PDT treatment. A sequential protection-deprotection reaction pathway was applied for the functional differentiation between primary and secondary amine moieties of pentaethylene hexamine. Synthesis of the target molecule involves two key steps of unsymmetrical esterification and amidation of malonic acid and subsequent fullerenation. The synthetic strategy was accomplished using mild reaction conditions in the intermediate molecule preparation and led a moderate overall product yield.     

Solid support flame synthesis of 1-D and 3-D tungsten-oxide nanostructures

In this paper we report the growth of 1-D and 3-D tungsten-oxide nanostructures on tungsten wire probes inserted in an opposed-flow oxy-fuel flame. The probe diameter and oxygen content in the oxidizer were varied to study their influence on the growth of tungsten-oxide nanostructures. The introduction of a 1-mm diameter W probe into the flame environment with an oxidizer composition of 50%O₂ + 50%N₂, resulted in the formation of 1-D nanorods on the upper surface of the probe. The formation of triangular, rectangular, square, and cylindrical 3-D channels with completely hollow or semi-hollow morphology was achieved by reducing the probe diameter to 0.5 mm. Whereas, the increase of the O₂ content to 100% and the employment of a 1-mm probe resulted in the growth of ribbon-like micron-sized structures. The lattice spacing of ∼0.38 nm measured for the 1-D W-oxides closely matches a monoclinic WO₃ structure. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis revealed that the larger 3-D structures also consist of WO₃ confirming that the chemical composition of the structures remains the same while varying the probe and flame parameters. The proposed growth mechanism states that the 3-D WO₃ structures are formed through the lateral coalescence of 1-D W-oxide nanorods.     

Birefringence control by hydrogen bonding on compatible polymer pair composed of hydrogenated ring‐opening polymer and modified polystyrene

A new polymer blend composed of a hydrogenated ring‐opening polymer (HROP) with an ester group and hydroxyl functionalized polystyrene (HFP) produced the excellent transparent materials which enabled a precise birefringence control in keeping with the other physical properties for optical film use. The blend with a composition from 0.28 to 0.35 for the HFP weight fraction showed an extraordinary wavelength dispersion, transmitting through a zero birefringence point at the critical fraction of 0.45, while each polymer showed an ordinary wavelength dispersion. The observed excellent transparency even above those of the glass transition temperature was attributed to a depressed phase separation that resulted from strong hydrogen bond between the ester and hydroxyl groups. An IR analysis of the film demonstrated a remarkable red‐shift in the carbonyl peak with an increase of the hydroxylated polystyrene content, indicating a strong hydrogen bond between those groups. This new polymer blend provides a useful design to achieve practical demands for film use, both optical and mechanical under the fabrication conditions using the melt extrusion technique. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2013, 51, 3132–3143     

Growth limit of carbon onions – A continuum mechanical study

The growth of carbon onions is simulated using continuum mechanical shell models. With this models it is shown that, if a carbon onion has grown to a critical size, the formation of an additional layer leads to the occurrence of a structural instability. This instability inhibits further growth of carbon onions and, thus, can be a reason for the limited size of such particles. The loss of stability is mainly evoked by van der Waals interactions between misfitting neighboring layers leading to self-equilibrating stress states in the layers due to mutual accommodation. The influence of the curvature induced surface energy and its consequential stress state is investigated and found to be rather negligible. Furthermore, it is shown that the nonlinear character of the van der Waals interactions has to be considered to obtain maximum layer numbers comparable to experimental observations. The proposed model gives insight into mechanisms which are assumed to limit the size of carbon onions and can serve as basis for further investigations, e.g., of the formation of nanodiamonds in the center of carbon onions.