Intro Understanding how the Au film coats the inner part of the npMgF2 is essential to understanding how the photonic properties of the npAu/npMgF2 sensor arise. From SEM, we are able to resolve little cones of Au, but unable to see how rough/homogeneous/open the Au layer is. Our hypothesis is that these little cones of…
Summary I want to imitate the material properties from 1085 as they have given us the best SERS performance to date. We have the best information that we’ve ever had before imitating the nanostructure and nanotopology from the MgF2. Our belief is that getting infilled Au close together in a nanopore dramatically enhances the electric…
Wafer 1148 was produced roughly around the same time that the wafer I used to make my oldest MgF2 material (wafer 1085) was produced. We know that some of the NPN material from that time was not etched all the way through, creating pores that look like a ‘bowl-with-hole’. I believe the shape of the…
Having generated some tomograms of various Au, NPN, and MgF2 nanostructures in the past months, I should be able to parameterize these structures. I have many questions about how the nanostructures actually effect SERS performance. In general, we can use these methods to more accurately and precisely describe our nanomembranes. Hypothetical Factors Surface Roughness ~=…
I’ve received some of the very first MgF2 material that I produced way back when and shipped off to Nottingham. These chips were produced from NPN wafer 1085 (5-slots). There are a few membranes still remaining, but mostly the chips are in tatters. Tomogram Reconstruction Weighted Back Projection (quick and dirty) We…
Thanks to Kilean for the TEMs. One of the properties that influences strong SERS behavior is surface roughness; rougher metals produce a better SERS effect. People have electrochemically roughened surfaces before to make better SERS sensors. The following quote is from a review paper (SERS Materials Review Paper, 5 years old now) After decades of debate,…
While I have been in Montreal with Albert Kamanzi and Sabrina Leslie, Albert mentioned to me a cleaning protocol that appears to strip off NPN. 5 mL of Hellmanex III in 100 mL of DI water Placed in heated water bath, covered with parafilm (setting 50C, actual 40C) for 2 hrs Delaminates NPN? The chips are mirror-like afterwards, indicating…
Previous work on Tomograms: TEM Tomography of NPN and npMgF2 Previous work on reconstructing the tomograms: Manual Reconstruction of Electron Tomograms Introduction This post examines another set of MgF2 pores that Kilean acquired. I want to compare the inner pore morphology of two different processing flows for MgF2 nanomembranes, one of which gives us excellent SERS properties (250C…
Our friends at McGill university have wanted to incorporate our chips directly into their platform for squeezing and confining DNA. Their desires come in a form of a device where we can seal the SiMPore chips into glass channels without any intermediate gasket layers. In the video above, we can see the relevant layers, a…
Using the techniques described in my previous post: TEM Tomography of NPN and npMgF2, we have recreated some tomograms that have contour (position) and height (depth) information contained in them. Our goal now is to express that height information in the form of a surface, or volume. Segmentation Having some evidence that…