In their article “Polymer interlayers on flexible PET substrates enabling ultra-high performance, ITO-free dielectric/metal/dielectric transparent electrode” Lukas Kinner, Martin Bauch, Rachmat Adhi Wibowo, Giovanni Ligorio, Emil J.W.List-Kratochvil and Theodoros Dimopoulos reports on the fabrication and properties of a dielectric/metal/dielectric (DMD) transparent electrode on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate with polymer interlayers.*

The presented electrode has a large potential for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications, outperforming the widely-used indium-tin-oxide (ITO) on flexible substrates.*

The sample surfaces were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM) in tapping mode with NANOSENSORS™ SuperSharpSilicon™ high resolution SSS-NCHR AFM probes.*

*Lukas Kinner, Martin Bauch, Rachmat Adhi Wibowo, Giovanni Ligorio, Emil J.W.List-Kratochvil, Theodoros Dimopoulos
Polymer interlayers on flexible PET substrates enabling ultra-high performance, ITO-free dielectric/metal/dielectric transparent electrode
Materials & Design, Volume 168, 15 April 2019, 107663
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2019.107663

Please follow this external link to read the full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264127519301005

Open Access: The article “Polymer interlayers on flexible PET substrates enabling ultra-high performance, ITO-free dielectric/metal/dielectric transparent electrode” by Lukas Kinner, Martin Bauch, Rachmat Adhi Wibowo, Giovanni Ligorio, Emil J. W.List-Kratochvil, Theodoros Dimopoulos which is cited above 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 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Amyloidogenesis of α-synuclein (αS) is considered to be a pathological phenomenon related to Parkinson’s disease (PD). In the publication “Morphological Evaluation of Meta-stable Oligomers of α-Synuclein with Small-Angle Neutron Scattering”  Ghibom Bhak, Soonkoo Lee, Tae-Hwan Kim, Ji-Hye Lee, Jee Eun Yang, Keehyoung Joo, Jooyoung Lee, Kookheon Char and Seung R. Paik have studied one particular type of meta-stable αS oligomers (Meta-αS-Os) since they act as a growing unit to exhibit the accelerated amyloid fibril formation in the presence of external stimuli such as shear force10, temperature change11, pH12, and organic solvents13 which are suspected to alter the structure of Meta-αS-Os into a self-associative state.*

“For the assessment of heat-induced oligomeric unit assembly, an aliquot (10 μl) containing αS oligomers was placed on a cleaved mica surface. Following 30-min incubation at room temperature, the mica was immersed in fresh 20 mM Mes (pH 6.5) and incubated at 80 °C for another 30 min. After the heat-treated mica was cleaned with excessive distillated water, the oligomeric and fibrillar species of αS on the mica were analyzed with AFM in a tapping mode with a Super Sharp AFM tip (SSS-NCHR, NANOSENSORS, Switzerland). To reveal coexistence of the oligomers and fibrils, the αS species (10 μl) was adsorbed on the mica coated with poly-l-lysine for 5 min at room temperature. After the mica was washed with distilled water 5 times and dried in vacuum chamber, AFM analysis was done in a tapping mode.”* “Meta-αS-Os have played a growing unit for the unit-assembly-based facilitated amyloid fibril formation. Their unit-assembly was examined on the surface of mica immersed in 20 mM Mes (pH 6.5) at 80 °C for 30 min. In the 3-D AFM images, the scattered Meta-αS-Os on the mica surface became aligned with each other to form the extended fibrils following the heat treatment (Fig. 2a). This phenomenon reflects general two-step process of protein-surface interaction showing initial reversible binding of the oligomers to the surface followed by their irreversible stabilization into the amyloid fibrils via the transition of Meta-αS-Os into type-Bon oligomers upon the heat treatment. […] AFM analysis revealed that the particulates and the short fibrils of αS obtained with 1.5 mM NaCl had almost identical height profile with the maximum height of 4 nm (Fig. 2d,e).”* […] “AFM analysis revealed that the particulates and the short fibrils of αS obtained with 1.5 mM NaCl had almost identical height profile with the maximum height of 4 nm (Fig. 2d,e).”* *Ghibom Bhak, Soonkoo Lee, Tae-Hwan Kim, Ji-Hye Lee, Jee Eun Yang, Keehyoung Joo, Jooyoung Lee, Kookheon Char and Seung R. Paik Morphological Evaluation of Meta-stable Oligomers of α-Synuclein with Small-Angle Neutron Scattering Nature Scientific Reports, volume 8, Article number: 14295 (2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32655-0 Open Access: The article “Morphological Evaluation of Meta-stable Oligomers of α-Synuclein with Small-Angle Neutron Scattering” by  Ghibom Bhak et al. 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 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

In this application image we used the small cantilever of the NANOSENSORS™ uniqprobe^® BioT to scan in ScanAsyst^® mode in air. We imaged crystallites with nanometer-sized edge features with a scan size of 1 µm and a speed of 2 µm/s. Even in a that large, micrometer size image of a surface with a distinct topography, feature sizes of 5 nm and below are clearly visible. ScanAsyst^® is a registered trademark of Bruker Corp.

http://www.nanosensors.com/pdf/NANOSENSORS-uniqprobe-brochure.pdf