Sharif Digital Repository

A mechano-chemical atomic force microscope (AFM) nanolithography on a metallic thin film (50 nm in thickness) covered by a spin-coated soft polymeric mask layer (50-60 nm in thickness) has been introduced. The surface stochastic properties of initial grooves mechanically patterned on the mask layer (grooves before chemical wet-etching) and the lithographed patterns on the metallic thin film (the grooves after chemical wet-etching) have been investigated and compared by using the structure factor, power spectral density, and AFM tip deconvolution analyses. The effective shape of cross section of the before and after etching grooves have been determined by using the tip deconvolution surface... 

To obtain metallic nanofingers applicable in surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors, a mechano-chemical atomic force microscope (AFM) nanolithography on a metallic thin film (50 nm in thickness)/piezoelectric substrate covered by a spin-coated polymeric mask layer (50-60 nm in thickness) was implemented. The effective shape of cross-section of the before and after etching grooves have been determined by using the AFM tip deconvolution surface analysis, structure factor, and power spectral density analyses. The wet-etching process improved the shape and aspect ratio (height/width) of the grooves and also smoothed the surface within them. We have shown that the relaxed surface tension of the... 

Silver nanoparticles (NPs) stored in pore-arrays (pa) SU-8 photoresist layer were utilized as an antibacterial nanocomposition against E. coli bacteria. The pa-SU-8 matrix was fabricated by an optical interference lithography method resulting in small pores with a diameter of ∼50 nm and a depth of ∼100 nm. The Ag NPs were deposited on the soft polymeric matrix at different drying temperatures of 50 and 90 °C. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that the deposited silver NPs were substantially in the metallic state, independent from the drying condition. However, the concentration of the immobilized Ag NPs on the film surface increased (by a factor of 2.5) at the higher drying... 

Mg2+-charged spongy graphene electrodes (SGEs) were fabricated by using electrophoretic deposition of chemically exfoliated graphene oxide sheets on graphite rods. The SGEs were able to present two distinguishable signals (originated from electrochemical oxidation of guanine) in differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) of leukemia and normal blood cells, in contrast to glassy carbon electrodes giving only one overlapped peak. Hence, the SGEs were applied in fast (60 min) and ultra sensitive detection of leukemia (single abnormal cells in ∼109 normal cells) in a blood serum. The sensitivity obtained by the SGEs was three orders of magnitude better than that of the best available and current... 

Vertically aligned multi-wall carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays were fabricated in tip-growth mode on Ni/Si substrates using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. In a purification process including hydrogenation and acid washing of the Ni/CNTs, the oxygen-containing functional groups were substantially reduced and a wide hollow core at the tip of the CNTs was formed by removing the Ni seeds. Sol-gel silver nanoparticles were deposited on the surface of the unpurified Ni/CNTs, while they could also be embedded within the hollow core of the Ni-removed CNTs. The persistency of the silver ions in the Ni-removed Ag-CNTs in comparison to the release of the silver ions from the Ag-Ni/CNTs in a... 

TiO2 nanoparticles were physically attached to chemically synthesized single-layer graphene oxide nanosheets deposited between Au electrodes in order to investigate the electrical, chemical, and structural properties of the TiO2/graphene oxide composition exposed to UV irradiation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that after effective photocatalytic reduction of the graphene oxide sheets by the TiO2 nanoparticles in ethanol, the carbon content of the reduced graphene oxides gradually decreased by increasing the irradiation time, while no considerable variation was detected in the reduction level of the reduced sheets. Raman spectroscopy indicated that, at first, the photocatalytic... 

TiO2/multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWNT) heterojunction arrays were synthesized and immobilized on Si(0 0 1) substrate as photocatalysts for inactivation of Escherichia coli bacteria. The vertically aligned MWNT arrays were grown on ∼5 nm Ni thin film deposited on the Si by using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at 650 °C. Then, the MWNTs were coated by TiO2 using dip-coating sol-gel method. Post annealing of the TiO2/MWNTs at 400 °C resulted in crystallization of the TiO2 coating and formation of Ti-C and Ti-O-C carbonaceous bonds at the heterojunction. The visible light-induced photoinactivation of the bacteria increased from MWNTs to TiO2 to TiO2/MWNTs, in which the bacteria could... 

The hard corona, the protein shell that is strongly attached to the surface of nano-objects in biological fluids, is recognized as the first layer that interacts with biological objects (e.g., cells and tissues). The decoration of the hard corona (i.e., the type, amount, and conformation of the attached proteins) can define the biological fate of the nanomaterial. Recent developments have revealed that corona decoration strongly depends on the type of disease in human patients from which the plasma is obtained as a protein source for corona formation (referred to as the 'personalized protein corona'). In this study, we demonstrate that graphene oxide (GO) sheets can trigger different... 

Bioinspired materials can mimic the stem cell environment and modulate stem cell differentiation and proliferation. In this study, biomimetic micro/nanoenvironments were fabricated by cell-imprinted substrates based on mature human keratinocyte morphological templates. The data obtained from atomic force microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy revealed that the keratinocyte-cell-imprinted poly(dimethylsiloxane) casting procedure could imitate the surface morphology of the plasma membrane, ranging from the nanoscale to the macroscale, which may provide the required topographical cell fingerprints to induce differentiation. Gene expression levels of the genes analyzed...