Fabrication of sharp tungsten-coated tip for atomic force microscopy by ion-beam sputter deposition

Yukinori Kinoshita, Yoshitaka Naitoh, Yan Jun Li, and Yasuhiro Sugawara

Tungsten tips made from tungsten wires have been used very frequently for Field Ion Microscopy(FIM) and Atom-Probe (FIM). Si cantilevers have been much used for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). One reason for this is that they can be lithographically made, for example, as a ganged set. This paper shows how to wed these two technologies. This development has the potential to significantly impact both AFM and FIM.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 113707 (2011)

Circular mode: A new scanning probe microscopy method for investigating surface properties at constant and continuous scanning velocities

Hussein Nasrallah, Pierre-Emmanuel Mazeran, and Olivier Noël

The circular mode offers expanded capabilities for surface investigations—especially for measuring physical properties that require high scanning velocities and/or continuous displacement with no rest periods.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 113703 (2011)

A light emitting diode based photoelectrochemical screener for distributed combinatorial materials discovery

Gates R. Winkler and Jay R. Winkler

A system that uses an array of pulsed LEDs synchronized with a two-electrode potentiostat that can measure the photoelectrochemical responses of combinatorial sample arrays deposited on conducting glass plates is developed. Compared to raster scanning methods, this LED system trades spatial resolution for a substantial reduction in scan time.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 114101 (2011)

Invited Review Article: Interferometric gravity wave detectors

G. Cella and A. Giazotto

In this review, the authors discuss interferometric detection of gravitational waves from an instrumental point of view. Conceptually important issues are addressed with an audience of non-experts in mind. A particular emphasis is given to the description of the current limitations and to the perspectives of exceeding those limits.

 

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 101101 (2011)

A method to track rotational motion for use in single-molecule biophysics

Jan Lipfert, Jacob J. W. Kerssemakers, Maylon Rojer, and Nynke H. Dekker

Magnetic tweezers (MTs) are a single-molecule technique that enables the application of precisely calibrated stretching forces to nucleic acid tethers and to control their rotational motion. However, conventional magnetic tweezers do not directly monitor rotation or measure torque. Here, a method to directly measure rotational motion of particles in MT is described.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 103707 (2011)

Note: A novel method for in situ loading of gases via x-ray induced chemistry

Michael Pravica, Ligang Bai, Changyong Park, Yu Liu, Martin Galley, John Robinson, and Neelanjan Bhattacharya

A novel method to load oxygen in a sealed diamond anvil cell, via the x-ray induced decomposition of potassium chlorate is developed and demonstrated. It is anticipated that this technique will be useful in loading even more challenging, difficult-to-load gases such as hydrogen and also to load multiple gases.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 106102 (2011)

Detection of atomic and molecular mega-electron-volt projectiles using an x-ray charged coupled device camera

M. Chabot, G. Martinet, K. Béroff, T. Pino, S. Bouneau, B. Genolini, X. Grave, K. Nguyen, C. le Gailliard, P. Rosier, G. Féraud, H. Friha, and B. Villier

For molecular species, in order to increase the maximum kinetic energy detection limit, a thin foil was placed in front of the CCD. This foil breaks up the molecules into atoms and spreads the charges over many CCD pixels and therefore avoiding saturation effects. Left: CCD image of many carbon ion impacts at 2 MeV of kinetic energy.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 103301 (2011)

A new nonlinear reconstruction method based on total variation regularization of neutron penumbral imaging

Weixin Qian, Shuangxi Qi, Wanli Wang, Jinming Cheng, and Dongbing Liu

A new nonlinear reconstruction method based on total variation (TV) regularization is proposed in this paper. A TV-norm is used as regularized term to construct a smoothing functional for penumbral image reconstruction in the new method, in this way, the problem of penumbral image reconstruction is transformed to the problem of a functional minimization.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 093504 (2011)

A robotics platform for automated batch fabrication of high density, microfluidics-based DNA microarrays, with applications to single cell, multiplex assays of secreted proteins

Habib Ahmad, Alex Sutherland, Young Shik Shin, Kiwook Hwang, Lidong Qin, Russell-John Krom, and James R. Heath

Here, an integrated robotics/microfluidics platform for the automated preparation of such arrays is described, and we apply it to the batch fabrication of up to eighteen chips of flow-patterned DNA barcodes. The resulting substrates are comparable in quality with hand-made arrays and exhibit excellent substrate-to-substrate consistency.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 094301 (2011)

Linac Coherent Light Source soft x-ray materials science instrument optical design and monochromator commissioning

Philip Heimann, Oleg Krupin, William F. Schlotter, Joshua Turner, Jacek Krzywinski, Florian Sorgenfrei, Marc Messerschmidt, David Bernstein, Jaromir Chalupský, Vera Hájková, Stefan Hau-Riege, Michael Holmes, Libor Juha, Nicholas Kelez, Jan Lüning, Dennis Nordlund, Monica Fernandez Perea, Andreas Scherz, Regina Soufli, Wilfried Wurth, and Michael Rowen

Presented here is an x-ray optical design of the soft x-ray materials science instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source, consisting of a varied line-spaced grating monochromator and Kirkpatrick-Baez refocusing optics. Results from the commissioning of the monochromator are shown. A resolving power of 3000 was achieved, which is within a factor of two of the design goal.

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 093104 (2011)