Today is Children’s Day in Japan and many mulit-colored carp-shaped koinobori streamers are fluttering in the wind.
So it is the perfect day to repost and share the publication “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” by Y. Jiang et al. with you.
Piezoelectricity takes part in multiple important functions and processes in biomaterials often vital to the survival of organisms. In their publication , “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” Y. Jiang et al. investigate the piezoelectric properties of fish scales of green carp by directly examining their morphology at nanometer levels. From the clear distinctions between the composition of the inner and outer surfaces of the scales that could be found, the authors identified the piezoelectricity to originate from the presence of hydroxyapatite which only exists on the surface of the fish scales.*
koinobori – carp streamers on children’s day in Matsumoto Japan
These findings reveal a different mechanism of how green carp are sensitive to their surroundings and should be helpful to studies related to the electromechanical properties of marine life and the development of bio-inspired materials. As easily accessible natural polymers, fish scales can be employed as highly sensitive piezoelectric materials in high sensitive and high speed devices as well as be exploited for invasive diagnostics and other biomedical implications.*
For the harmonic responses of both 1st order and 2nd order described in this publication, NanoWorld Arrow-CONTPt AFM probes were used.
FIG. 6 from “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales “ by H. Y. Jiang et al.: First and second harmonic responses of (a) domain I and (b) domain IV. The straight line fitting for the amplitude of first harmonic response of (c) domain I and (d) domain IV by applying a series of bias.
*Y. Jiang, F. Yen, C. W. Huang, R. B. Mei, and L. Chen
Piezoelectricity of green carp scales
AIP Advances 7, 045215 (2017)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979503
Open Access The article “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” by Y. Jiang, F. Yen, C. W. Huang, R. B. Mei and L. Chen 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/.
Organic-inorganic halide perovskites are materials of high interest for the development of solar cells.
Learning more about the relationship between the electrical properties and the chemical compositions of perovskite at the nanoscale can help to understand how the interrelations of both can affect device performance and contribute to an understanding on how to best design perovskite active layer structures.*
For the article “Quantification of electron accumulation at grain boundaries in perovskite polycrystalline films by correlative infrared-spectroscopic nanoimaging and Kelvin probe force microscopy” Ting-Xiao Qin, En-Ming You, Mao-Xin Zhang, Peng Zheng, Xiao-Feng Huang, Song-Yuan Ding, Bing-Wei Mao and Zhong-Qun Tian used correlative infrared-spectroscopic nanoimaging ( IR-spectroscopy ) by scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy ( s-SNOM ) and Kelvin probe force microscopy ( KPFM ) to contribute to the discussion whether nanometer-sized grain boundaries (GBs) in polycrystalline perovskite films play a positive or negative role in solar cell performance.*
The integrated KPFM and s-SNOM measurements were performed by the authors to acquire the surface potential and infrared near-field image simultaneously through a single-pass scan and thereby learn more about the relationships between the electrical properties and spectral information at the grain boundaries of the investigated material ( polycrystalline CH3NH3Pbl3 perovskite films ).*
The results of the correlated s-SNOM and KPFM imaging presented in the article show that the electron accumulations are enhanced at the grain boundaries (GBs) of the investigated polycrystalline perovskite film, particularly under light illumination which would assist in electron-hole separation and therefore would be a positive influence on the performance of the solar cell.*
NanoWorld conductive platinum-iridium coated Arrow AFM probes ( Arrow-NCPt ) were used to perform the s-SNOM IR imaging.
Figure 4 from “Quantification of electron accumulation at grain boundaries in perovskite polycrystalline films by correlative infrared-spectroscopic nanoimaging and Kelvin probe force microscopy” by Ting-Xiao Qin et al. Correlative KPFM and s-SNOM nanoimaging on perovskite. a AFM topography (1 μm × 1 μm); b Contact potential difference (CPD); and c simultaneously acquired infrared near-field image; d one-dimensional line profiles of the topography, CPD and infrared near-field amplitude along the white dashed lines marked in a–c. The scale bars are 200 nm.
*Ting-Xiao Qin, En-Ming You, Mao-Xin Zhang, Peng Zheng, Xiao-Feng Huang, Song-Yuan Ding, Bing-Wei Mao and Zhong-Qun Tian Quantification of electron accumulation at grain boundaries in perovskite polycrystalline films by correlative infrared-spectroscopic nanoimaging and Kelvin probe force microscopy Light: Science & Applications volume 10, Article number: 84 (2021) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-021-00524-7
Open Access : The article “Quantification of electron accumulation at grain boundaries in perovskite polycrystalline films by correlative infrared-spectroscopic nanoimaging and Kelvin probe force microscopy” by Ting-Xiao Qin, En-Ming You, Mao-Xin Zhang, Peng Zheng, Xiao-Feng Huang, Song-Yuan Ding, Bing-Wei Mao and Zhong-Qun Tian 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/.
Topological objects and defects (e.g. skyrmions, domain walls, vortices,) in condensed matters have attracted a lot of interest as a field for exploring emerging exotic phenomena and functionalities.*
In materials with ferroic order, these topological objects can also be manipulated and controlled by external fields without disrupting their host lattice, making them promising elemental building blocks for potential configurable topological nanoelectronics. *
Ferroelectric topological objects provide a promising area for investigating emerging physical properties that could potentially be utilized in future nanoelectronic devices. *
In the article “Quasi-one-dimensional metallic conduction channels in exotic ferroelectric topological defects” Wenda Yang, Guo Tian, Yang Zhang, Fei Xue, Dongfeng Zheng, Luyong Zhang, Yadong Wang, Chao Chen, Zhen Fan, Zhipeng Hou, Deyang Chen, Jinwei Gao, Min Zeng, Minghui Qin, Long-Qing Chen, Xingsen Gao and Jun-Ming Liu demonstrate the existence of metallic conduction superfine (<3 nm) channels in two types of exotic topological defects, namely a quadrant vortex core or simply vortex core and a quadrant center domain core or simply center core, in an array of BiFeO3 (BFO) nanoislands.*
The authors discover via the phase-field simulation that the superfine metallic conduction channels along the center cores arise from the screening charge carriers confined at the core region, whereas the high conductance of vortex cores results from a field-induced twisted state. These conducting channels can be reversibly created and deleted by manipulating the two topological states via electric field, leading to an apparent electroresistance effect with an on/off ratio higher than 103.*
The findings by Wenda Yang et al. open up the possibility of using these functional one-dimensional topological objects in high-density nanoelectronic devices, e.g. nonvolatile memory.*
NanoWorld PlatinumIdridium5 coated Arrow-EFM AFM probes were used to examine the domain structures by vector piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). By using vector PFM mode, the authors could simultaneously map the vertical and lateral piezoresponse signals from the nanoisland one by one.*
NanoWorld Conductive Diamond coated AFM probes CDT-NCHR were used for the conductive current distribution maps, current–voltage (I–V) measurements that were characterized by conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM).
Fig. 2 from “Quasi-one-dimensional metallic conduction channels in exotic ferroelectric topological defects” by Wenda Yang et al.: The domain structures and corresponding conductive properties for both a vortex and a center topological states confined in two nanoislands. a, b PFM and C-AFM images for both a vortex state (a) and a center state (b), the micrographs from the left to the right are PFM vertical phase images illustrating the uniform upward vertical polarization components for both nanoislands, the PFM lateral phase images recorded at sample rotation of 0o and 90o to evaluate the directions of lateral polarization components respectively along x axis ([100] axis) and y axis ([100] axis), the lateral polarization vector direction maps derived from the PFM data, and corresponding C-AFM maps. The thick arrows aside the PFM images mark the directions of the cantilever for each PFM scan, and the fine arrows inside the images mark the directions of polarization components perpendicular to the directions of the cantilever. c, d Extracted current spatial profiles from the C-AFM maps for both the vortex (c) and the center (d) cores, extracted from a and b, respectively. The inserts in c and d illustrate the C-AFM maps and schematic local polarization configurations for the two topological cores. e Temperature-dependent conductive current (I–V) curves for both topological cores and domain walls.*
Open Access : The article “Quasi-one-dimensional metallic conduction channels in exotic ferroelectric topological defects” by Wenda Yang, Guo Tian, Yang Zhang, Fei Xue, Dongfeng Zheng, Luyong Zhang, Yadong Wang, Chao Chen, Zhen Fan, Zhipeng Hou, Deyang Chen, Jinwei Gao, Min Zeng, Minghui Qin, Long-Qing Chen, Xingsen Gao and Jun-Ming Liu 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/.
