The electric dipole moments of (H2O)nDCl (n=3-9) clusters have been measured by the beam-deflection method. Reflecting the (dynamical) charge distribution within the system, the dipole moment contributes information about the microscopic structure of nanoscale solvation. The addition of a DCl molecule to a water cluster results in a strongly enhanced susceptibility. There is evidence for a noti...

Nanoscale Ga particles down to 5 nm were fabricated by an explosion via an in situ electron-beam irradiation on microscale silica-covered Ga balls in a transmission electron microscope. The explosion is confirmed to be a Coulomb explosion because it occurs on the surface rather than in the whole body of the insulating silica-covered Ga micro-balls, and on the pure Ga nano-balls on the edge of c...

Heavily boron-doped silicon layers and boron etch-stop techniques have been widely used in the fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). This paper provides an introduction to the fabrication process of nanoscale silicon thermoelectric devices. Low-dimensional structures such as silicon nanowire (SiNW) have been considered as a promising alternative for thermoelectric applications i...

Correlative light and electron microscopy promises to combine molecular specificity with nanoscale imaging resolution. However, there are substantial technical challenges including reliable co-registration of optical and electron images, and rapid optical signal degradation under electron beam irradiation. Here, we introduce a new approach to solve these problems: imaging of stable optical cath...

Laser interaction with nanoscale particles is distinct and different from laser-bulk material interaction, where a hot plasma is normally created. Here, we review our studies on 193 nm laser ablation of various nanoscale particles including NaCl, soot, polystyrene, and gold. The 20 ns laser beam with fluences up to 0.3 J/cm irradiates nanoparticles in a gas stream at laser repetition rates from...

The hybrid structure of Ag nanowires (AgNWs) covered with graphene (Gr) shows synergetic effects on the performance of transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs). However, these effects have been mainly observed via large-scale characterization, and precise analysis at the nanoscale level remains inadequate. Here, we present the nanoscale verification and visualization of the improved chemical an...

In this paper, we present the fabrication of nano optical elements by means of deep reactive ion etching technique (Bosch process) on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The nano structures are fabricated in a two step process. The first step consists of direct-writing nanoscale patterns on PMMA polymer by electron beam lithography. These nano patterns are then transferred to the silicon surface ...

To fabricate robust metallic nanostructures with top-down patterning methods such as electron-beam lithography, an initial nanometer-scale layer of a second metal is deposited to promote adhesion of the metal of interest. However, how this nanoscale layer affects the mechanical properties of the nanostructure and how adhesion layer thickness controls the binding strength to the substrate are st...

Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) has been shown to exhibit a strong potential for nanoscale electromagnetic field manipulation beyond the diffraction limit. Particularly dark mode plasmons circumvent radiation loss and store the energy long in time, which raise the prospect of interesting plasmonics applications, for example biochemical sensing and nanoscale lasing. Here we theoretica...

Focused ion beams (FIBs) are an invaluable tool for the creation and observation of materials with nanoscale feature sizes, providing key capabilities in integrated circuit sectioning, critical dimension measurement, and circuit repair. However, ion sources capable of both high brightness and low emittance operation are difficult to realize, with practical sources limited to very few atomic spe...