Thermal desorption of carbon monoxide from model interstellar ice surfaces: revealing surface heterogeneity

ABSTRACT Temperature programmed desorption has been used to probe the distribution of binding energies of carbon monoxide (CO) to molecular solid thin films of astrophysical relevance. Measurements are reported for solid water (both compact amorphous solid water and crystalline water), ammonia, and methanol surfaces. Binding energy distributions and optimized pre-exponential factors based on the inversion method are tabulated. These are compared to existing data on these systems and astrophysical conclusions drawn.

Design and tailoring of inks for inkjet patterning of metal oxides

Inkjet printing has become a promising, efficient, inexpensive, scalable technique for materials deposition, mask-less and digital patterning in many device applications. Meanwhile, the ink preparation remains a challenge especially for printing functional oxide materials. Based on the principles of inkjet printing (especially relevant for piezoelectric drop-on-demand inkjet printer) and the process of the conversion of liquid ink into solid thin films of oxide materials, we present two approaches to the design and tailoring of inks: (i) oxide particle suspensions (e.g. SiO 2 , TiO 2 , Fe 3 O 4 ) and (ii) metal-acetates precursor solutions for directly printing oxide thin films (e.g. ZnO, MgO, ITO and so forth). The solution inks are stable and produce tunable oxide films with high density and smooth surface. For some of the inks containing multi-type acetates with possible phase separation even before calcinations, we have developed a chelating procedure in order to tailor the films into single-phase homogeneity. The work lays a foundation for inkjet printing of oxides films for functional applications in electronic, photonic and energy devices.

Plasmonic Nanoparticles Driven Enhanced Light Amplification in a Local 2D and 3D Self-Assembly

We present fluorescence and a random lasing enhancement effect due to the interaction between gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and Rhodamine 6G (Rh6G) dye. Non-covalently bounded dyes in the proximity of nanoparticles are studied in three systems of varying dimensionality: from (i) three-dimensional freely distributed suspensions, through (ii) quasi-two-dimensional multilamellar liposomes, to (iii) solid two-dimensional thin layers. Liposomes facilitate the formation of stable AuNPs/Rh6G composition showing enhanced fluorescence, while solid thin films exhibit plasmon-assisted random lasing.

Electron–phonon scattering effect on the lattice thermal conductivity of silicon nanostructures

The effect of electron–phonon scattering on the nanoscale thermal transport is investigated systematically in nanowires, solid thin films and nanoporous thin films by considering the phonon–phonon, phonon–boundary and electron–phonon scattering simultaneously.