| 1. |
- Ajalloueian, Fatemeh, et al.
(författare)
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Emulsion Electrospinning as an Approach to Fabricate PLGA/Chitosan Nanofibers for Biomedical Applications
- 2014
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Ingår i: BioMed Research International. - : Hindawi Publishing Corporation. - 2314-6133 .- 2314-6141. ; :475280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Novel nanofibers from blends of polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) and chitosan have been produced through an emulsion electrospinning process. The spinning solution employed polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the emulsifier. PVA was extracted from the electrospun nanofibers, resulting in a final scaffold consisting of a blend of PLGA and chitosan. The fraction of chitosan in the final electrospun mat was adjusted from 0 to 33%. Analyses by scanning and transmission electron microscopy show uniform nanofibers with homogenous distribution of PLGA and chitosan in their cross section. Infrared spectroscopy verifies that electrospun mats contain both PLGA and chitosan. Moreover, contact angle measurements show that the electrospun PLGA/chitosanmats are more hydrophilic than electrospun mats of pure PLGA. Tensile strengths of 4.94 MPa and 4.21 MPa for PLGA/chitosan in dry and wet conditions, respectively, illustrate that the polyblend mats of PLGA/chitosan are strong enough for many biomedical applications. Cell culture studies suggest that PLGA/chitosan nanofibers promote fibroblast attachment and proliferation compared to PLGA membranes. It can be assumed that the nanofibrous composite scaffold of PLGA/chitosan could be potentially used for skin tissue reconstruction.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Akhtar, Sultan, et al.
(författare)
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Real-Space Transmission Electron Microscopy Investigations of Attachment of Functionalized Magnetic Nanoparticles to DNA-Coils Acting as a Biosensor
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Physical Chemistry B. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-6106 .- 1520-5207. ; 114:41, s. 13255-13262
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present work provides the first real-space analysis of nanobead-DNA coil interactions. Immobilization of oligonucleotide-functionalized magnetic nanobeads in rolling circle amplified DNA-coils was studied by complex magnetization measurements and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and a statistical analysis of the number of beads hybridized to the DNA-coils was performed. The average number of beads per DNAcoil using the results from both methods was found to be around 6 and slightly above 2 for samples with 40 and 130 nm beads, respectively. The TEM analysis supported an earlier hypothesis that 40 nm beads are preferably immobilized in the interior of DNA-coils whereas 130 nm beads, to a larger extent, are immobilized closer to the exterior of the coils. The methodology demonstrated in the present work should open up new possibilities for characterization of interactions of a large variety of functionalized nanoparticles with macromolecules, useful for gaining more fundamental understanding of such interactions as well as for optimizing a number of biosensor applications.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Akhtar, Sultan
(författare)
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Transmission Electron Microscopy of Graphene and Hydrated Biomaterial Nanostructures : Novel Techniques and Analysis
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) on light element materials and soft matters is problematic due to electron irradiation damage and low contrast. In this doctoral thesis techniques were developed to address some of those issues and successfully characterize these materials at high resolution. These techniques were demonstrated on graphene flakes, DNA/magnetic beads and a number of water containing biomaterials. The details of these studies are given below.A TEM based method was presented for thickness characterization of graphene flakes. For the thickness characterization, the dynamical theory of electron diffraction is used to obtain an analytical expression for the intensity of the transmitted electron beam as a function of thickness. From JEMS simulations (experiments) the absorption constant λ in a low symmetry orientation was found to be ~ 208 nm (225 ± 9 nm). When compared to standard techniques for thickness determination of graphene/graphite, the method has the advantage of being relatively simple, fast and requiring only the acquisition of bright-field (BF) images. Using the proposed method, it is possible to measure the thickness change due to one monolayer of graphene if the flake has uniform thickness over a larger area.A real-space TEM study on magnetic bead-DNA coil interaction was conducted and a statistical analysis of the number of beads attached to the DNA-coils was performed. The average number of beads per DNA coil was calculated around 6 and slightly above 2 for samples with 40 nm and 130 nm beads, respectively. These results are in good agreement with magnetic measurements. In addition, the TEM analysis supported an earlier hypothesis that 40 nm beads are preferably attached interior of the DNA-coils while 130 nm beads closer to the exterior of the coils.A focused ion-beam in-situ lift-out technique for hydrated biological specimens was developed for cryo-TEM. The technique was demonstrated on frozen Aspergillus niger spores which were frozen with liquid nitrogen to preserve their cellular structures. A thin lamella was prepared, lifted out and welded to a TEM grid. Once the lamella was thinned to electron transparency, the grid was cryogenically transferred to the TEM using a cryo-transfer bath. The structure of the cells was revealed by BF imaging. Also, a series of energy filtered images was acquired and C, N and Mn elemental maps were produced. Furthermore, 3 Å lattice fringes of the underlying Al support were successfully resolved by high resolution imaging, confirming that the technique has the potential to extract structural information down to the atomic scale. The experimental protocol is ready now to be employed on a large variety of samples e.g. soft/hard matter interfaces.
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| 6. |
- Akhtar, Sultan, et al.
(författare)
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Visualization of functionalization of nano-particles and graphene in the TEM
- 2010
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Ingår i: Advanced Materials Workshop 2010.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, the activity on functionalized nano-objects has strongly increased. Yet, there are, to our knowledge no techniques available that visualize the attachment of molecules to nano-entities such as nanoparticles and graphene. In this work, we show a methodology to analyse the attachment of molecules to nanoparticles and graphene. The difficulty of such transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization consists in the high beam sensitivity of these nanoobjects. We employed a high resolution- as well as diffraction contrast-imaging methods to characterize graphene. First, we have developed a method to measure the thickness of free-standing graphene-like layers. The refinement of these imaging techniques enabled the imaging of functionalized C60 (fullerene) on top of a few-layer graphene flake by TEM. We also developed a methodology to visualize the attachment of functionalized gold and magnetic nanoparticles (different sizes) to nonstained and unlabeled single strand DNA-coils. This technique can be used to understand the interaction of a large variety of functionalized nanoparticles with their solution environment and/or macromolecular structures for their large applications.
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| 7. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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An electron energy loss spectrometer based streak camera for time resolved TEM measurements
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ultramicroscopy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0304-3991 .- 1879-2723. ; 176, s. 5-10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose an experimental setup based on a streak camera approach inside an energy filter to measure time resolved properties of materials in the transmission electron microscope (TEM). In order to put in place the streak camera, a beam sweeper was built inside an energy filter. After exciting the TEM sample, the beam is swept across the CCD camera of the filter. We describe different parts of the setup at the example of a magnetic measurement. This setup is capable to acquire time resolved diffraction patterns, electron energy loss spectra (EELS) and images with total streaking times in the range between 100 ns and 10 μs.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Atomic resolution energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism measurements enabled by patterned apertures
- 2020
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Ingår i: Physical Review Research. - College Park USA. - 2643-1564. ; 2:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Electron energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism (EMCD) has the potential to measure magnetic properties of the materials at atomic resolution but the complex distribution of magnetic signals in the zone axis and the overlapping diffraction discs at higher beam convergence angles make the EMCD signal acquisition challenging. Recently, the use of ventilator apertures to acquire the EMCD signals with atomic resolution was proposed. Here we give the experimental demonstration of several types of ventilator apertures and obtain a clear EMCD signal at beam semiconvergence angles of 5 mrad. To simplify the experimental procedures, we propose a modified ventilator aperture which not only simplifies the complex scattering conditions but reduces the influence of lens aberrations on the EMCD signal as compared to the originally proposed ventilator apertures. In addition, this modified aperture can be used to analyze magnetic crystals with various symmetries and we demonstrate this feature by acquiring EMCD signals on different zone axis orientations of an Fe crystal. With the same aperture we obtain EMCD signals with convergence angles corresponding to atomic resolution electron probes. After the theoretical demonstration of the EMCD signal on a zone axis orientation at high beam convergence angles, this work thus overcomes the experimental and methodological hurdles and enables atomic resolution EMCD on the zone axis by using apertures.
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| 10. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Quantitative EMCD by use of a double aperture for simultaneous acquisition of EELS
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ultramicroscopy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0304-3991 .- 1879-2723. ; 196, s. 192-196
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The weak signal strength in electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD) measurements remains one of the main challenges in the quantification of EMCD related EELS spectra. As a consequence, small variations in peak intensity caused by changes of background intervals, choice of method for extraction of signal intensity and equally differences in sample quality can cause strong changes in the EMCD signal. When aiming for high resolution quantitative EMCD, an additional difficulty consists in the fact that the two angular resolved EELS spectra needed to obtain the EMCD signal are taken at two different instances and it cannot be guaranteed that the acquisition conditions for these two spectra are identical. Here, we present an experimental setup where we use a double hole aperture in the transmission electron microscope to obtain the EMCD signal in a single acquisition. This geometry allows for the parallel acquisition of the two electron energy loss spectra (EELS) under exactly the same conditions. We also compare the double aperture acquisition mode with the qE acquisition mode which has been previously used for parallel acquisition of EMCD. We show that the double aperture mode not only offers better signal to noise ratio as compared to qE mode but also allows for much higher acquisition times to significantly improve the signal quality which is crucial for quantitative analysis of the magnetic moments.
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