“Fast growth in Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted a lot of attention of flexible and easily processable hybrid organic-inorganic nanomaterials, integrated into modern electronics and applied in multidisciplinary fields. Nanoporous and microporous thin films with regularly ordered pores exemplified by honeycomb films have received considerable interest due to its diverse potential applications, such as optoelectronics, microstructured electrodes, sensors, and charge storage devices, synthetic templates for nanoparticles, catalytic supports with large surface areas, scaffold materials in biotechnology and separation. Various materials have been applied for the synthesis of the honeycomb structures, such as star polymers, hyperbranched polymers, surfactant-encapsulated polyoxometalate for polystyrene, cross-linkable monomers,and biological molecules.”*

In the article cited here Sajjad Husain Mir and Bungo Ochiai have investigated the factors affecting the micro-structuration of the polymer-Ag honeycomb films and investigated the I-V characteristics. The pore sizes of the polymer-Ag honeycomb films were feasibly tuned by altering various parameters, namely, casting volume, polymer concentration, and molecular weight of the grafted poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) chain.*

The current-sensing scanning probe microscopy (CSSPM) images for this article were taken using a NANOSENSORS™ Platinum-Silicide AFM probe. ( PtSi-CONT ).

*Sajjad Husain Mir,  Bungo Ochiai
Conductive Polymer-Ag Honeycomb Thin Film: The Factors Affecting the Complexity of the Microstructure
Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 165 (8) B3030-B3034 (2018)
JES Focus issue on ubiquitous sensors and systems for IOT
DOI: 10.1149/2.0031808jes

Open Access The article “Conductive Polymer-Ag Honeycomb Thin Film: The Factors Affecting the Complexity of the Microstructure” by Sajjad Husain Mir and Bungo Ochiai is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

NANOSENSORS PPP-EFM AFM tips were used in the research for this article. Have a look at the abstract or follow the external link to the full article.

Raymond G.P. McQuaid, Michael P. Campbell, Roger W. Whatmore, Amit Kumar, J. Marty Gregg
Injection and controlled motion of conducting domain walls in improper ferroelectric Cu-Cl boracite. Nat. Commun. 8, 15105 doi: 10.1038/ncomms15105 (2017).

Abstract:
Ferroelectric domain walls constitute a completely new class of sheet-like functional material. Moreover, since domain walls are generally writable, erasable and mobile, they could be useful in functionally agile devices: for example, creating and moving conducting walls could make or break electrical connections in new forms of reconfigurable nanocircuitry. However, significant challenges exist: site-specific injection and annihilation of planar walls, which show robust conductivity, has not been easy to achieve. Here, we report the observation, mechanical writing and controlled movement of charged conducting domain walls in the improper-ferroelectric Cu₃B₇O₁₃Cl. Walls are straight, tens of microns long and exist as a consequence of elastic compatibility conditions between specific domain pairs. We show that site-specific injection of conducting walls of up to hundreds of microns in length can be achieved through locally applied point-stress and, once created, that they can be moved and repositioned using applied electric fields.

Please follow this external link for the full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15105

The article “Injection and controlled motion of conducting domain walls in improper ferroelectric Cu-Cl boracite” by McQuaid, R. G. P. et al. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

NANOSENSORS PtIr coated PPP-EFM AFM tips were used for the PFM imaging in this interesting paper.

Yogesh Sharma, Radhe Agarwal, Charudatta Phatak, Bumsoo Kim, Seokwoo Jeon, Ram S. Katiyar & Seungbum Hong Long-range Stripe Nanodomains in Epitaxial (110) BiFeO3 Thin Films on (100) NdGaO3 Substrate,
Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 4857 (2017), doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05055-z

Abstract: Here, we report the observation of ferroelectric and ferroelastic nanodomains in (110)-oriented BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films epitaxially grown on low symmetric (100) NdGaO3 (NGO) substrate. We observed long range ordering of ferroelectric 109° stripe nanodomains separated by periodic vertical domain walls in as-grown 130 nm thick BFO films. The effect of La 0.67 Sr0.33 CoO3 (LSCO) conducting interlayer on domain configurations in BFO/NGO film was also observed with relatively short range-ordering of stripe domains due to the modified electrostatic boundary conditions in BFO/LSCO/NGO film. Additional studies on B-site doping of Nb ions in BFO films showed change in the domain structures due to doping induced change in lattice anisotropy while maintaining the stripe domain morphology with 109° domain wall. This long-range array of ferroelectric and ferroelastic domains can be useful for optoelectronic devices and ferroelastic templates for strain coupled artificial magnetoelectric heterostructures.

For the full article please follow this external link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05055-z.epdf

The article “Long-range Stripe Nanodomains in Epitaxial (110) BiFeO 3 Thin Films on (100) NdGaO 3 Substrate” by Yogesh Sharma et. al. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/