In the article “Gentle plasma process for embedded silver-nanowire flexible transparent electrodes on temperature-sensitive polymer substrates “ Lukas Kinner, Emil J W List-Kratochvil and Theodoros Dimopoulos investigate processing routes to obtain highly conductive and transparent electrodes of silver nanowires (AgNWs) on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate.*

Their study shows that both thermally stable polyimide, as well as temperature-sensitive PET can be used as flexible host substrates, combined with a gentle, AgNW plasma curing. This is possible by adjusting the fabrication sequence to accommodate the plasma curing step, depending on the host substrate. As a result, embedded AgNW electrodes, transferred from polyimide-to-PET and from PET-to-PET are obtained, with optical transmittance of ~80% (including the substrate) and sheet resistance of ~13 Ω/sq., similar to electrodes transferred from glass-to-glass substrates.*

The embedded AgNW electrodes on PET show superior performance in bending tests, as compared to indium-tin-oxide electrodes and can be easily combined with metal oxide films for device implementation. The introduced approach, involving low-cost flexible substrates, AgNW spray-coating and plasma curing, is compatible with high-throughput, roll-to-roll processing.*

The impact of the introduced processes concerns therefore applications where high-throughput production must be combined with sensitive, flexible substrates and ultra-thin device architectures, like OLEDs and organic- or perovskite-based photovoltaics.*

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

*Lukas Kinner, Emil J W List-Kratochvil and Theodoros Dimopoulos
Gentle plasma process for embedded silver-nanowire flexible transparent electrodes on temperature-sensitive polymer substrates
Nanotechnology, Volume 31, Number 36 (2020)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6528/ab97aa

Please follow this external link to read the full article: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6528/ab97aa

Open Access: The article “Gentle plasma process for embedded silver-nanowire flexible transparent electrodes on temperature-sensitive polymer substrates” by Lukas Kinner, Emil J W List-Kratochvil and Theodoros Dimopoulos 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 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/.