| 1. |
- Chen, Jianing, et al.
(author)
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Probing Strain in Bent Semiconductor Nanowires with Raman Spectroscopy.
- 2010
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In: Nano Letters. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1530-6992 .- 1530-6984. ; 10:4, s. 1280-1286
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present a noninvasive optical method to determine the local strain in individual semiconductor nanowires. InP nanowires were intentionally bent with an atomic force microscope and variations in the optical phonon frequency along the wires were mapped using Raman spectroscopy. Sections of the nanowires with a high curvature showed significantly broadened phonon lines. These observations together with deformation potential theory show that compressive and tensile strain inside the nanowires is the physical origin of the observed phonon energy variations.
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| 2. |
- Conache, Gabriela, et al.
(author)
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Bias-controlled friction of InAs nanowires on a silicon nitride layer studied by atomic force microscopy
- 2010
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In: Physical Review B Condensed Matter. - College Park, Md. : American Physical Society. - 0163-1829 .- 1095-3795. ; 82:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- By studying how nanowires lying on a surface bend when pushed by an atomic force microscopy tip we are able to measure the friction between them and the substrate. Here, we show how the friction between InAs nanowires and an insulating silicon nitride layer varies when a dc voltage is applied to the tip during manipulation. The bias charges the capacitor formed by the wire and the grounded silicon back contact. Electrostatic forces increase the contact pressure and allow us to tune the friction between the wire and the silicon nitride surface. Using nanowires of about 40-70 nm diameter and a few microns in length we have applied biases in the range +12 to -12 V. A monotonic increase of the sliding friction with voltage was observed. This increase in friction with the normal force implies that the mesoscopic nanowire-surface system behaves like a macroscopic contact, despite the nanometer size of the contact in the direction of motion. The demonstrated bias-controlled friction has potential applications in MEMS/NEMS devices.
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| 3. |
- Conache, Gabriela, et al.
(author)
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Comparative friction measurements of InAs nanowires on three substrates
- 2010
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In: Journal of Applied Physics. - College Park, MD : American Institute of Physics (AIP). - 0021-8979 .- 1089-7550. ; 108:9
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We have investigated friction between InAs nanowires and three different substrates: SiO2, fluorosilanized SiO2, and Si3N4. The nanowires were pushed laterally with the tip of an atomic force microscope and the friction force per unit length for both static and sliding friction was deduced from the equilibrium shape of the bent wires. On all three substrates, thick wires showed a difference between sliding and static friction of up to three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, all substrates display a transition to stick-slip motion for nanowires with a diameter of less than about 40 nm. Hydrophobic and hydrophilic substrates display similar friction behavior suggesting that a condensed water layer does not strongly influence our results. The patterns and trends in the friction data are similar for all three substrates, which indicates that they are more fundamental in character and not specific to a single substrate. ©2010 American Institute of Physics.
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| 4. |
- Pettersson, Håkan, 1962-, et al.
(author)
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Nanowire friction with an applied bias
- 2010
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In: Bulletin of the American Physical Society. - : American Physical Society.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recently, we have shown how the friction experienced by nanowires pushed by an AFM tip can be determined by measuring their radius of curvature after manipulation [1]. It is of fundamental interest to know whether the wires behave like macroscopic objects, or if they are more like true atomic-scale point contacts where friction becomes independent of the applied normal force. Here we study how the friction between InAs nanowires and a SiN layer on conductive silicon varies when a DC voltage is applied. The tip charges the capacitor formed by the wire and the silicon back contact, causing attractive Coulomb forces and so increasing the contact pressure. A monotonic increase of the sliding friction with voltage was observed. This implies that the friction increases with the normal force and that this mesoscopic system behaves more like a macroscopic contact, despite being only nanometers in size in the direction of motion.
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| 5. |
- Sawcer, Stephen, et al.
(author)
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Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis
- 2011
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In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 476:7359, s. 214-219
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.
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