A novel protocol for precisely coating individual multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with an ultrathin layer of polypyrrole was developed. The nanocoated MWCNTs were successfully prepared by in situ chemical deposition of polypyrrole in an aqueous suspension of MWCNTs. The coating layer was very uniform and the thickness of the layer was determined by controlling the monomer concentration used...

A relativistic plasma shutter technique is proposed and tested to remove the sub-100 ps pedestal of a high-intensity laser pulse. The shutter is an ultrathin foil placed before the target of interest. As the leading edge of the laser ionizes the shutter material it will expand into a relativistically underdense plasma allowing for the peak pulse to propagate through while rejecting the low inte...

Conductometric gas sensors made of gas permeable metal oxide ultrathin membranes can combine the functions of a selective filter, preconcentrator, and sensing element and thus can be particularly promising for the active sampling of diluted analytes. Here we report a case study of the electron transport and gas sensing properties of such a membrane made of nanoporous Ta₂O₅. These membranes demo...

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a layered material with high thermal and chemical stability ideal for ultrathin corrosion resistant coatings. Here, we report the corrosion resistance of Cu with hBN grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Cyclic voltammetry measurements reveal that hBN layers inhibit Cu corrosion and oxygen reduction. We find that CVD grown hBN reduces the Cu corrosion rate b...

The morphology of ultrathin zinc oxide films grown on Pt(111) was studied as a function of preparation and exposure conditions. The results show that submonolayer films exhibit a large variety of structures that may transform into each other depending on ambient conditions. The transformations are accompanied by substantial mass transport across the surface even at room temperature, indicating ...

We present a study of double- and single-stranded DNA transport through nanopores fabricated in ultrathin (2-7 nm thick) freestanding hafnium oxide (HfO2) membranes. The high chemical stability of ultrathin HfO2 enables long-lived experiments with <2 nm diameter pores that last several hours, in which we observe >50 000 DNA translocations with no detectable pore expansion. Mean DNA velocities a...

Introduction Past experiments have already proven that silk, a natural protein produced by silkworms and spiders, exhibit intriguing physical properties such as exceptionally high moduli and toughness. Silk fibroins (SF) can be further reconstituted into ultrathin (<100 nm) films while retaining most of these properties for a wide variety of bioapplications. These ultrathin films can be further...

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The spin and orbital magnetic moments of the Fe3O4 epitaxial ultrathin film synthesized by plasma assisted simultaneous oxidization on MgO(100) have been studied with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). The ultrathin film retains a rather large total magnetic moment, i.e. (2.73±0.15)μB/f.u., which is ~ 70% of that for the bulk-like Fe3O4. A significant unquenched orbital moment up to (0.5...

The intrinsic anisotropy of nominally flat, ultrathin ferromagnetic films typically is augmented by a uniaxial anisotropy at step edges. We report model calculations of hysteresis for such systems with in-plane magnetization and monolayer scale roughness. The reversal process is a combination of domain nucleation at step edges, expansion of these domains through morphological constrictions, and...