| 1. |
- Li, Hu, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Fabrication of BP2T functionalized graphene via non-covalent π-π stacking interactions for enhanced ammonia detection
- 2021
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Ingår i: RSC Advances. - : Royal Society of Chemistry. - 2046-2069. ; 11:57, s. 35982-35987
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Graphene has stimulated great enthusiasm in a variety of fields, while its chemically inert surface still remains challenging for functionalization towards various applications. Herein, we report an approach to fabricate non-covalently functionalized graphene by employing pi-pi stacking interactions, which has potentialities for enhanced ammonia detection. 5,5 '-Di(4-biphenylyl)-2,2 '-bithiophene (BP2T) molecules are used in our work for the non-covalent functionalization through strong pi-pi interactions of aromatic structures with graphene, and systematic investigations by employing various spectroscopic and microscopic characterization methods confirm the successful non-covalent attachment of the BP2T on the top of graphene. From our gas sensing experiments, the BP2T functionalized graphene is promising for ammonia sensing with a 3-fold higher sensitivity comparing to that of the pristine graphene, which is mainly attributed to the enhanced binding energy between the ammonia and BP2T molecules derived by employing the Langmuir isotherm model. This work provides essential evidence of the pi-pi stacking interactions between graphene and aromatic molecules, and the reported approach also has the potential to be widely employed in a variety of graphene functionalizations for chemical detection.
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| 2. |
- Wani, Ishtiaq Hassan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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A sub 20 nm metal-conjugated molecule junction acting as a nitrogen dioxide sensor
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nanoscale. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2040-3364 .- 2040-3372. ; 11:14, s. 6571-6575
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The interaction of a gas molecule with a sensing material causes the highest change in the electronic structure of the latter, when this material consists of only a few atoms. If the sensing material consists of a short, conductive molecule, the sensing action can be furthermore probed by connecting such molecules to nanoelectrodes. Here, we report that NO2 molecules that adhere to 4,4'-biphenyldithiol (BPDT) bound to Au surfaces lead to a change of the electrical transmission of the BPDT. The related device shows reproducible, stable measurements and is so far the smallest (<20 nm) gas sensor. It demonstrates modulation of charge transport through molecules upon exposure to nitrogen dioxide down to concentrations of 55 ppb. We have evaluated several devices and exposure conditions and obtained a close to linear dependence of the sensor response on the gas concentration.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- 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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| 6. |
- 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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| 7. |
- 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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| 8. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Simultaneous mapping of EMCD signals and crystal orientations in a transmission electron microscope
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Nature. - 2045-2322. ; 11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When magnetic properties are analysed in a transmission electron microscope using the technique of electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD), one of the critical parameters is the sample orientation. Since small orientation changes can have a strong impact on the measurement of the EMCD signal and such measurements need two separate measurements of conjugate EELS spectra, it is experimentally non-trivial to measure the EMCD signal as a function of sample orientation. Here, we have developed a methodology to simultaneously map the quantitative EMCD signals and the local orientation of the crystal. We analyse, both experimentally and by simulations, how the measured magnetic signals evolve with a change in the crystal tilt. Based on this analysis, we establish an accurate relationship between the crystal orientations and the EMCD signals. Our results demonstrate that a small variation in crystal tilt can significantly alter the strength of the EMCD signal. From an optimisation of the crystal orientation, we obtain quantitative EMCD measurements.
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| 9. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Single scan STEM-EMCD in 3-beam orientation using a quadruple aperture
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ultramicroscopy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0304-3991 .- 1879-2723. ; 251
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The need to acquire multiple angle-resolved electron energy loss spectra (EELS) is one of the several critical challenges associated with electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD) experiments. If the experiments are performed by scanning a nanometer to atomic-sized electron probe on a specific region of a sample, the precision of the local magnetic information extracted from such data highly depends on the accuracy of the spatial registration between multiple scans. For an EMCD experiment in a 3-beam orientation, this means that the same specimen area must be scanned four times while keeping all the experimental conditions same. This is a non-trivial task as there is a high chance of morphological and chemical modification as well as non-systematic local orientation variations of the crystal between the different scans due to beam damage, contamination and spatial drift. In this work, we employ a custom-made quadruple aperture to acquire the four EELS spectra needed for the EMCD analysis in a single electron beam scan, thus removing the above-mentioned complexities. We demonstrate a quantitative EMCD result for a beam convergence angle corresponding to sub-nm probe size and compare the EMCD results for different detector geometries.
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| 10. |
- Ali, Hasan, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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TEM analysis of multilayered nanostructures formed in the rapid thermal annealed silicon rich silicon oxide film
- 2016
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Ingår i: European Microscopy Congress 2016. - 9783527808465 ; , s. 965-966
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Silicon (Si) nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in an ultrathin silicon rich silicon oxide (SRSO) film through the thermal annealing process has emerged as a highly absorbing layer for third-generation solar cells 1. The concept of using Si NPs is to achieve a band gap tunable absorber layer by controlling the size and structure of Si NPs because of the quantum confinement effect 2. In our study, a multilayer stack of silicon oxide with 35 periods of alternating layers of 1-nm thick near-stoichiometric and 3-nm thick Si-rich hydrogenated silicon oxide were deposited on fused quartz substrate by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method. Two samples were annealed using a rapid thermal annealing (RTA) furnace in forming gas atmosphere (90% N2 + 10% H2) for 210s and 270s respectively. From the Raman spectroscopy, a reduction in crystallinity of Si has been discovered from 210s annealed sample to 270s annealed sample (shown in Figure 2). The goal of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis is to investigate the nanostructural change of Si in these two annealed samples and try to correlate the TEM observations to the Raman spectroscopy results.As the dimension of the Si nanostructures formed in SRSO films is in nanometer-scale, the energy-filtered TEM (EFTEM) tomography technique using the low-loss signals in electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) has been applied as a powerful technique to correlate the precipitated Si nanostructures to the phase transformation mechanisms in the thermally annealed SRSO films 3. In this case, EFTEM spectrum-imaging (SI) technique was applied to characterize the Si nanostructures formed in SRSO films by different annealing times. The EFTEM SI dataset was acquired from -4eV to 40eV using a 2eV energy slit and the reconstructed zero loss peak (ZLP) was used to calibrate the spectra shift. Si plasmon images were extracted by fitting a Gaussian into the low-loss region with a peak position at 16.7 eV 4 and FWHM of 4.5 eV. In order to analyze the multilayer structures at different annealing durations, the TEM samples were prepared in cross sectional geometry using the conventional polishing and ion milling methods.Figure 1 shows the EFTEM images extracted from the Si plasmon peak, in these images Si appears as bright contrasts. For shorter annealing time, an alternating bright and dark contrast can be observed which indicates that the multilayer structure still remains whereas for longer annealing time, Si shows nanoparticles like contrast. The continuous layer like contrasts shown in Figure 1(a) indicates the overlapping of the contrasts generated by small Si crystallites in a very high density. After longer annealing time (Figure 1(b)), the small Si crystallites grow in size but may take overall less volume fraction due to the Ostwald ripening process. Therefore, it explains the reduction in crystallinity of Si discovered from 210s annealed sample to 270s annealed sample by Raman. However, such a reduction in Si crystallinity was not observed in nitrogen annealed SRSO films, this indicates that samples annealed in the forming gas environment follow a different crystallization mechanism and hydrogen must play a decisive role during the Si crystallization at the initial stage.
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