The effect of poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) concentration on the synthesis and properties of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was investigated. Nanoparticles have been prepared by a chemical reduction method from the aqueous solution of silver nitrate and PVP as a stabilizing agent in the presence of sodium borohydride as a reducing agent. The nanosized silver colloids have been characterized usin...

Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films with various Al concentrations were synthesized on Si(001) substrates with native oxide layers by atomic layer deposition process. The effects of the Al concentration on the microstructural characteristics of the AZO thin films grown at 250 degrees C and the correlation between their microstructural characteristics and electrical properties of the AZO thin films we...

Water was investigated on a h-BN/Rh(111) nanomesh template using variable temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Below 52 K, two distinct phases self-assemble within the 3.2 nm unit cell of the nanomesh that consists of "holes" and "wires". In the 2 nm holes, an ordered phase of nano-ice crystals with about 40 molecules is found. The ic...

Tailoring the nano-morphology and nano-architecture of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) is the most important task in the third generation solar cells (Dye sensitized solar cells/Quantum dot sensitized solar cells) (DSSCs/QDSSCs). In this article we present complete study of surfactant free synthesis of TiO₂ nanostructures by a simple and promising hydrothermal route. The plethora of nanostructures like...

Silver (Ag) is one of the seven metals of antiquity and an important engineering material in the electronic, medical, and chemical industries because of its unique noble and catalytic properties. Ag thin films are extensively used in modern electronics primarily because of their oxidation-resistance. Here we report a novel phenomenon of Ag nano-volcanic eruption that is caused by interactions b...

Reddish Au condensates, predominant atom clusters and minor amount of multiply twinned particles and fcc nanoparticles with internal compressive stress, were produced by pulsed laser ablation on gold target in de-ionized water under a very high power density. Such condensates were self-assembled as lamellae and then nano- to micro-diameter tubes with multiple walls when aged at room temperature...

Conventional protein kinase Cs (cPKCs) are key signaling proteins for transducing intracellular Ca2+ signals into downstream phosphorylation events. However, the lifetime of individual membrane-bound activated cPKCs is an order of magnitude shorter than the average time needed for target-protein phosphorylation. Here, we employed intermolecular Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) in living...

A Si/SiO(2)/CuPt structure is formed by depositing a very thin SiO(2) layer between CuPt and P-type Si layers using e-beam evaporation. SEM images show the formation of CuPt nano clusters with an average size of less than 100 nm. This structure shows high sensitivity to applied magnetic fields at 77K and at low and high dc voltages such that magnetic field as low as 6 mT is detected using I-V a...

The soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive fusion (NSF) attachment protein (SNAP) receptor (SNARE) protein syntaxin 1A forms nano-sized clusters (membrane rafts) on the plasma membrane (PM) that are in equilibrium with freely diffusing syntaxin molecules. SNARE-complex formation between syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25 (synaptosome-associated protein of 25 kDa) on the PM and synaptobrevin 2 on the vesicles ...

In this paper, we present three hierarchical multiscale architectures that are interconnected electrooptically at micro-scale level and via spin waves at nanoscale level. These architectures are derived from the Optical Reconfigurable Mesh (ORM), which is a MEMS architecture that supports several types of electrical and optical routings. The first multi-scale architecture presented here is a st...