Photochromic samarium oxyhydride thin films

Photochromism has been reported for several rare-earth (RE) metal oxyhydride thin films and is characterized by a reversible darkening of the sample when exposed to light with energy greater than its optical bandgap. Here, we extend the range of known photochromic RE-oxyhydrides to include samarium oxyhydrides. These SmH3−2xOx thin films are...

Gas-Phase Deposition of Ultrathin Aluminium Oxide Films on Nanoparticles at Ambient Conditions

We have deposited aluminium oxide films by atomic layer deposition on titanium oxide nanoparticles in a fluidized bed reactor at 27 ± 3 °C and atmospheric pressure. Working at room temperature allows coating heat-sensitive materials, while working at atmospheric pressure would simplify the scale-up of this process. We performed 4, 7 and 15...

Precursor-Less Coating of Nanoparticles in the Gas Phase

This article introduces a continuous, gas-phase method for depositing thin metallic coatings onto (nano)particles using a type of physical vapor deposition (PVD) at ambient pressure and temperature. An aerosol of core particles is mixed with a metal vapor cloud formed by spark ablation by passing the aerosol through the spark zone using a hollow...

Simultaneous capture of the color and topography of paintings using fringe encoded stereo vision

Introduction: Paintings are versatile near-planar objects with material characteristics that vary widely. The fact that paint has a material presence is often overlooked, mostly due to the fact that we encounter many of these artworks through two dimensional reproductions. The capture of paintings in the third dimension is not only interesting...

How to Determine the Core-Shell Nature in Bimetallic Catalyst Particles?

Nanometer-sized materials have significantly different chemical and physical properties compared to bulk material. However, these properties do not only depend on the elemental composition but also on the structure, shape, size and arrangement. Hence, it is not only of great importance to develop synthesis routes that enable control over the...

Inhibition of a Gold-Based Catalyst in Benzyl Alcohol Oxidation: Understanding and Remediation

Benzyl alcohol oxidation was carried out in toluene as solvent, in the presence of the potentially inhibiting oxidation products benzaldehyde and benzoic acid. Benzoic acid, or a product of benzoic acid, is identified to be the inhibiting species. The presence of a basic potassium salt (K2CO3 or KF) suppresses this inhibition, but promotes the...

Reaction-diffusion analysis for one-step plasma etching and bonding of microfluidic devices

A self-similar reaction front develops in reactive ion etching when the ions penetrate channels of shallow height h. This relates to the patterning of microchannels using a single-step etching and bonding, as described by Rhee et al. [Lab Chip 5, 102 (2005)] . Experimentally, we report that the front location scales as xf ? ht1/2 and the width...