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Ion exchange is one of the most interesting processes occurring at the interface between aqueous solutions and polymers, such as the well-known Nafion. If the exchanged ions have different diffusion coefficients, this interchange generates local electric fields which can be harnessed to drive fluid motion. In this work, we show how it is possible to design and fabricate self-propelling microswimmers based on Nafion, driven by ion-exchange, and fueled by innocuous salts. These Nafion micromotors are made using colloidal lithography by micro/nanostructuring Nafion in the form of asymmetric rods. These microswimmers exhibit fascinating collective motion in water driven by the interplay of their self-generated chemical/electric fields and their capability to pump matter nearby towards the collective motile structure. The pumping activity of the microswimmers induces the formation of growing mobile clusters, whose velocity increases with size. Such dynamic structures are able to trap nearby micro/nano-objects while purifying the liquid, which acts both as the transport media and as fuel. Such phenomenology opens the door to potential applications in water remediation that are currently under development.

The understanding of the dynamics of a glass above its devitrification temperature remains incomplete. Here, we build a spatio-temporal map of the relaxation dynamics of a highly stable glass into its supercooled liquid using real-time atomic force microscopy imaging. This methodology enables direct visualization of the progression of the liquid phase and clarifies and quantifies the presence of localized fast mobility regions separated by giant length scales. Our data establish a clear correlation between dynamic length and time scales in glasses. This approach may also be applicable to unveil the microscopic structure and dynamics of other glass-forming systems with much shorter length and time scales, including liquid-cooled glasses.

Epitaxial LaFeO3 (LFO)-based photocells, of different thicknesses (50-200 nm) have been grown on cubic LSAT (001) [(LaAlO3)0.3(Sr2TaAlO6)0.7] single-crystal substrates, using a La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 (LSMO) bottom electrode and different top electrodes [Pt,Ba0.95La0.05SnO3 (BLSO)], to determine their photoresponse. The measured short-circuit photocurrent first increases with LFO thickness and then decreases, and it is larger or smaller, when Pt or BLSO electrodes are used, respectively. The corresponding open-circuit voltage displays the opposite trend, being smaller or larger for Pt and BLSO, respectively, which is in excellent agreement with the electronic band alignments determined by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and also consistent with the rectifying character of the dark current-voltage data. It turns out that the films display a complex microstructure containing different variants, strained and relaxed, of the orthorhombic LaFeO3, that evolves with film thickness and entails the presence of strain gradients and, possibly, flexoelectric fields. We discuss these data and propose that the unavoidable grain boundaries between differently textured LaFeO3 crystallites play a significant role on the observed responsivity (2.6 × 10-4 A W-1), found to be larger than in related LFO-based structures.

Source data for manuscript "Real-time microscopy of the relaxation of a glass" (DOI: 10.1038/s41567-023-02125-0), including: AFM source images and data points for all plots in the manuscript.

Bipolar electrochemistry allows the development of processes in a wireless manner, with reactions occurring at the induced anodes and cathodes of an immersed conducting material in the electrolyte. As a result, a gradient oxidation state may appear along the main axis field on the surface or bulk of the material depending on the type of reaction available at each induced potential. Redox intercalation gradients have been observed, metal anodization, or deposition, and also reactions at the electrolyte in the nearby environment of the poles induced. The complex oxidation of copper and interconversion between phases formed yields in this work an oscillating redox gradient, thanks to the great resistance change when the oxidized phases are formed. Parallel stripes containing mainly Cu2O, CuO, and Cu(OH)2 with large resistance are formed perpendicular to the electric field, forming a sequence of secondary dipoles in intermediate Cu stripes, that depends on the external voltage applied, and that oscillates in time at the same spatial coordinates. With longer times, copper solubilizes at the larger induced potential zones, probably as Cu(OH)42−. A simple finite element electrostatic model defines the complex potential waves induced in the piece. The resulting dynamics offer an example of the complexity of order in unwired conducting materials in wet media, either in catalysis, bioelectrodes, electronics, photovoltaics, or energy storage.

Chemically propelled micropumps are promising wireless systems to autonomously drive fluid flows for many applications. However, many of these systems are activated by nocuous chemical fuels, cannot operate at high salt concentrations, or have difficulty for controlling flow directionality. In this work we report on a self-driven polymer micropump fueled by salt which can trigger both radial and unidirectional fluid flows. The micropump is based on the cation-exchanger Nafion, which produces chemical gradients and local electric fields capable to trigger interfacial electroosmotic flows. Unidirectional pumping is predicted by simulations and achieved experimentally by nanostructuring Nafion into microarrays with a fine tune modulation of surrounding surface zeta potentials. Nafion micropumps work in a wide range of salt concentrations, are reusable, and can be fueled by different salt cations. We demonstrate that they work with the common water-contaminant cadmium, using the own capture of this ion as fuel to drive fluid pumping. Thus, this system has potential for efficient and fast water purification strategies for environmental remediation. Unidirectional Nafion pumps also hold promise for effective analyte delivery or preconcentration for (bio)sensing assays.

The metallic and semiconducting character of a large family of organic materials based on the electron donor molecule tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) is rooted in the partial oxidation (charge transfer or mixed valency) of TTF derivatives leading to partially filled molecular orbital-based electronic bands. The intrinsic structure of such complexes, with segregated donor and acceptor molecular chains or planes, leads to anisotropic electronic properties (quasi one-dimensional or two-dimensional) and morphology (needle-like or platelet-like crystals). Recently, such materials have been synthesized as nanoparticles by intentionally frustrating the intrinsic anisotropic growth. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) has emerged as a valuable technique to characterize the transfer of charge due to its ability to discriminate the different chemical environments or electronic configurations manifested by chemical shifts of core level lines in high-resolution spectra. Since the photoemission process is inherently fast (well below the femtosecond time scale), dynamic processes can be efficiently explored. We determine here the fingerprint of partial oxidation on the photoemission lines of nanoparticles of selected TTF-based conductors.

Carbon contamination of synchrotron and free-electron lasers beamline optics continues to be a major nuisance due to the interaction of the intense photon beams with the surfaces of the optical elements in the presence of residual gases even in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions. Among the available in situ cleaning strategies, low-pressure radio frequency (RF) plasma treatment has emerged as a useful and relatively simple approach to remove such carbon contamination. However, the irreversible damage that the plasma may induce in such critical surfaces has to be carefully characterized before its general application. In this study, we focus on reducing the amount of carbon from UHV chamber inside surfaces via silicon and titanium coatings using a low-pressure inductively-coupled downstream plasma source and we characterize the surface alterations by in situ X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). The in situ mirror cleaning is simulated by means of silicon wafers. We observe upward band bending, which translates into lower binding energies of the photoemission lines, that we attribute to the generation of vacancies and trapped charges in the oxide layers.

The development of effective autonomous micro- and nanomotors relies on controlling fluid motion at interfaces. One of the main challenges in the engineering of such artificial machines is the quest for efficient mechanisms to power them without using external driving forces. In the past decade, there has been an important increase of man-made micro- and nanomotors fueled by self-generated physicochemical gradients. Impressive proofs of concept of multitasking machines have been reported demonstrating their capabilities for a plethora of applications. While the progress toward applications is promising, there are still open questions on fundamental physicochemical aspects behind the mechanical actuation, which require more experimental and theoretical efforts. These efforts are not merely academic but will open the door for an efficient and practical implementation of such promising devices. In this Account, we focus on chemically driven motors whose motion is the result of a complex interplay of chemical reactions and (electro)hydrodynamic phenomena. A reliable study of these processes is rather difficult with mobile objects like swimming motors. However, pumps, which are the immobilized motor counterparts, emerge as simple manufacturing and well-defined platforms for a better experimental probing of the mechanisms and key parameters controlling the actuation. Here we review some recent studies using a new methodology that has turned out to be very helpful to characterize micropump chemomechanics. The aim was to identify the redox role of the motor components, to map the chemical reaction, and to quantify the relevant electrokinetic parameters (e.g., electric field and fluid flow). This was achieved by monitoring the velocity of differently charged tracers and by fluorescence imaging of the chemical species involved in the chemical reaction, for example, proton gradients. We applied these techniques to different systems of interest. First, we probed bimetallic pump

An accurate knowledge of the parameters governing the kinetics of block copolymer self-assembly is crucial to model the time- and temperature-dependent evolution of pattern formation during annealing as well as to predict the most efficient conditions for the formation of defect-free patterns. Here, the self-assembly kinetics of a lamellar PS-b-PMMA block copolymer under both isothermal and non-isothermal annealing conditions are investigated by combining grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) experiments with a novel modelling methodology that accounts for the annealing history of the block copolymer film before it reaches the isothermal regime. Such a model allows conventional studies in isothermal annealing conditions to be extended to the more realistic case of non-isothermal annealing and prediction of the accuracy in the determination of the relevant parameters, namely the correlation length and the growth exponent, which define the kinetics of the self-assembly.

Platinum thin films activated ex situ by oxygen plasma become reduced by the combined effect of an intense soft X-ray photon beam and condensed water. The evolution of the electronic structure of the surface has been characterized by near-ambient-pressure photoemission and mimics the inverse two-step sequence observed in the electro-oxidation of platinum, i.e. the surface-oxidized platinum species are reduced first and then the adsorbed species desorb in a second step leading to a surface dominated by metallic platinum. The comparison with measurements performed under high-vacuum conditions suggests that the reduction process is mainly induced by the reactive species generated by the radiolysis of water. When the photon flux is decreased, then the reduction process becomes slower.

Time resolution is one of the most severe limitations of scanning probe microscopies (SPMs), since the typical image acquisition times are in the order of several seconds or even few minutes. As a consequence, the characterization of dynamical processes occurring at surfaces (e.g. surface diffusion, film growth, self-assembly and chemical reactions) cannot be thoroughly addressed by conventional SPMs. To overcome this limitation, several years ago we developed a first prototype of the FAST module, an add-on instrument capable of driving a commercial scanning tunneling microscope (STM) at and beyond video rate frequencies. Here we report on a fully redesigned version of the FAST module, featuring improved performance and user experience, which can be used both with STMs and atomic force microscopes (AFMs), and offers additional capabilities such as an atom tracking mode. All the new features of the FAST module, including portability between different commercial instruments, are described in detail and practically demonstrated.

In this paper, we investigate the directed self-assembly of block copolymers in topographical guiding patterns with feature sizes in the range of the block copolymer half-pitch. In particular, we present the self-assembly of an 11.7 nm half-pitch block copolymer in sub-10 nm resolution guiding patterns fabricated by the direct e-beam exposure of hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ). One result of this analysis is that the block copolymer self-assembles such that the guiding pattern features form part of the 3-D architecture of the film. We are capable of determining a shift in the block copolymer pitch as a function of the guiding pattern pitch with sub-nanometer accuracy by means of both real-space (AFM, SEM) and reciprocal-space techniques (GISAXS). An interesting result is that the block copolymer self-assembly in the studied structures depends on the guiding pattern pitch rather than on the trench width as in standard graphoepitaxy. We analyze the structures by means of a free energy model and present both theoretical and experimental evidence of a narrower processing window for such kind of guiding patterns than for regular directed self-assembly using wide topographical guiding patterns, and discuss the origin of this effect. We argue that chain deformation in the vicinity of the top cap of the guiding pattern feature is responsible for an increase of the free energy of the ordered state, which leads to a smaller energy difference between the defect-free and defective self-assembly than that for the observed self-assembly morphology.