Microheated substrates for patterning cells and controlling development

Here, we seek to control cellular development by devising a means through which cells can be subjected to a microheated environment in standard culture conditions. Numerous techniques have been devised for controlling cellular function and development via manipulation of surface environmental cues at the micro- and nanoscale. It is well understood that temperature plays a significant role in the rate of cellular activities, migratory behavior (thermotaxis), and in some cases, protein expression. Yet, the effects and possible utilization of micrometer-scale temperature fields in cell cultures have not been explored. Toward this end, two types of thermally isolated microheated substrates were designed and fabricated, one with standard backside etching beneath a dielectric film and another with a combination of surface and bulk micromachining and backside etching. The substrates were characterized with infrared microscopy, finite element modeling, scanning electron microscopy, stylus profilometry, and electrothermal calibrations. Neuron culture studies were conducted on these substrates to 1) examine the feasibility of using a microheated environment to achieve patterned cell growth and 2) selectively accelerate neural development on regions less than 100$mu m$wide. Results show that attached neurons, grown on microheated regions set at 37$~^circ C$, extended processes substantially faster than those incubated at 25$~^circ C$on the same substrate. Further, unattached neurons were positioned precisely along the length of the heater filament (operating at 45$~^circ C$) using free convection currents. These preliminary findings indicate that microheated substrates may be used to direct cellular development spatially in a practical manner.$hfillhbox[1414]

Contact Line Instability and Pattern Selection in Thermally Driven Liquid Films

Liquids spreading over a solid substrate under the action of various forces are known to exhibit a long wavelength contact line instability. We use an example of thermally driven spreading on a horizontal surface to study how the stability of the flow can be altered, or patterns selected, using feedback control. We show that thermal perturbations of certain spatial structure imposed behind the contact line and proportional to the deviation of the contact line from its mean position can completely suppress the instability. Due to the presence of mean flow and a spatially nonuniform nature of spreading liquid films the dynamics of disturbances is governed by a nonnormal evolution operator, opening up a possibility of transient amplification and nonlinear instabilities. We show that in the case of thermal driving the nonnormality can be significant, especially for small wavenumber disturbances, and trace the origin of transient amplification to a close alignment of a large group of eigenfunctions of the evolution operator. However, for values of noise likely to occur in experiments we find that the transient amplification is not sufficiently strong to either change the predictions of the linear stability analysis or invalidate the proposed control approach.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure

Growth, thermal desorption and low dose ion bombardment damage of C60 films deposited on Cu(111)

Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED) and Reflection Electron Energy Loss Spectrometry (REELS) were used to characterize the growth and thermal stability of C60 films deposited on Cu(111). By means of LEED we found that while C60 grows in an ordered fashion up to the first monolayer (ML) at room temperature (RT), it turns amorphous beyond that point. On the other hand, when the substrate temperature is kept at 450K films up to two ML with crystalline structure are obtained. For substrate temperatures beyond 570K thick films (more than 1 ML) do not grow at all. By using AES, we found that a thick C60 film starts to desorb at a temperature around 470K but the first monolayer remains stable up to temperatures as high as 900K. A monolayer with a better crystalline order is obtained after desorption than that growth with the substrate at RT or higher temperatures. When the substrate is heated at 970K, the first monolayer is not fully removed but the C60 molecular structure is altered or molecules break up into smaller pieces. The ion induced damage on C60 on Cu(111) films was studied for typical ions, incoming energies and irradiation doses used in Low Energy Ion Scattering (LEIS) experiments. The D-value of C(KLL) Auger spectra and the -plasmon of REELS, were monitored to characterize the damage caused to the film. We found that, at low doses ( 1014 ions/cm2), damage is only detectable for massive ions like Ar, but not for H and He in the 2-8 keV range.Fil: Bonetto, Fernando Jose. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Física del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Física del Litoral; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería Química. Departamento de Materiales; ArgentinaFil: Vidal, Ricardo Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Física del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Física del Litoral; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería Química. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Quintero Riascos, Vanessa Alexandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Física del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Física del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Bonin, Claudio Julio. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería Química. Departamento de Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Física del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Física del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Ferron, Julio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Física del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Física del Litoral; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería Química. Departamento de Materiales; Argentin

Annealing-induced reduction in nanoscale heterogeneity of thermally evaporated amorphous As2S3 films

The morphology and structural order of thermally deposited and annealed amorphous As2S3 films have been investigated using high resolution transmission electron microscopy. It was found that both the as-deposited and annealed films contained sparsely distributed nanocrystallites of the orpiment As2S3 crystalline phase. However, from selected area electron diffraction both films appeared amorphous. Fluctuation electron microscopy revealed that the as-deposited film contained greater nanoscale inhomogeneity. Low temperature annealing reduced the nanoscale inhomogeneity and resulted in a more homogeneous and energetically favorable network. The reduction in nanoscale inhomogeneity upon low temperature annealing was accompanied by the appearance of a first sharp diffraction peak in the diffraction pattern. This first-sharp diffraction peak has been attributed to chemical ordering of interstitial voids. Our measurements suggest that this chemical short-range ordering is associated with the dissolution of the energetically unfavorable larger correlated structures that contribute to the inhomogeneity of the as-deposited film

Phase Transformations of Metallorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition Processed Alumina Coatings Investigated by In Situ Deflection

Phase transformations of Al2O3 films, deposited by metallorganic chemical vapor deposition from aluminium tri-isopropoxide on AISI 301 stainless steel, were investigated using an original technique of deflection associated with X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The samples were first oxidized at 1123 K in air to obtain a 0.9 m thick Cr2O3 protective oxide film on one side of the samples. Then, 1 m thick amorphous Al2O3 films were deposited on the opposite side at 823 K and 2 kPa. The deflection of such dissymmetrical samples was recorded during anisothermal treatments, consisting in slow heating to 1173 K in Ar atmosphere. The coefficient of thermal expansion of both the Cr2O3 and the amorphous Al2O3 films was determined to be 710−6 K−1 and 14.7 10−6 K−1, respectively. Crystallization kinetics of amorphous to mainly –Al2O3 become significant at temperatures equal or greater than 983 K. Transformation of metastable Al2O3 to –Al2O3 is initiated below 1173 K. It is demonstrated that deflection is a powerful tool for investigating the behavior of thin films deposited on a substrate and especially to reveal transformations occurring in these films during heat-treatments

High temperature glass thermal control structure and coating

A high temperature stable and solar radiation stable thermal control coating is described which is useful either as such, applied directly to a member to be protected, or applied as a coating on a re-usable surface insulation (RSI). It has a base coat layer and an overlay glass layer. The base coat layer has a high emittance, and the overlay layer is formed from discrete, but sintered together glass particles to give the overlay layer a high scattering coefficient. The resulting two-layer space and thermal control coating has an absorptivity-to-emissivity ratio of less than or equal to 0.4 at room temperature, with an emittance of 0.8 at 1200 F. It is capable of exposure to either solar radiation or temperatures as high as 2000 F without significant degradation. When used as a coating on a silica substrate to give an RSI structure, the coatings of this invention show significantly less reduction in emittance after long term convective heating and less residual strain than prior art coatings for RSI structures

Ripple Texturing of Suspended Graphene Atomic Membranes

Graphene is the nature's thinnest elastic membrane, with exceptional mechanical and electrical properties. We report the direct observation and creation of one-dimensional (1D) and 2D periodic ripples in suspended graphene sheets, using spontaneously and thermally induced longitudinal strains on patterned substrates, with control over their orientations and wavelengths. We also provide the first measurement of graphene's thermal expansion coefficient, which is anomalously large and negative, ~ -7x10^-6 K^-1 at 300K. Our work enables novel strain-based engineering of graphene devices.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Latent olefin metathesis catalysts

Olefin metathesis is a versatile synthetic tool for the redistribution of alkylidene fragments at carbon-carbon double bonds. This field, and more specifically the development of task-specific, latent catalysts, attracts emerging industrial and academic interest. This tutorial review aims to provide the reader with a concise overview of early breakthroughs and recent key developments in the endeavor to develop latent olefin metathesis catalysts, and to illustrate their use by prominent examples from the literature

Differences in Thermal Tolerance Between Two Thermally Isolated and Genetically Indistinct Populations of \u3ci\u3eParagnetina Media\u3c/i\u3e (Walker) (Plecoptera: Perlodidae)

The critical thermal maximum (CTM) of Paragnetina media (Walker) (Plecoptera: Perlodidae) was studied at two sites of the Big Sable River in northwestern Lower Michigan during summer 2013. The sites were separated by ~8 km and differed in temperature by ~1°C in the early spring to ~5°C in mid-summer. Individual P. media specimens from the warm site had consistently higher CTM when acclimated to the mean temperature of the two sites for 3 days prior to experimental trials during May, June, and July. When acclimated for an additional 3 days to a higher or lower temperature, this thermal disadvantage disappeared. Groups of individuals from both sites simultaneously acclimated to both site temperatures for 3 days exhibited similar CTMs, except that cold site specimens acclimated to the cold temperature had a lower CTM than the other treatments. Sequencing of the CO1 gene revealed that nearly 75% of specimens shared a single haplotype, which was found in both warm and cold site individuals. Our results suggest that both long term and short term thermal history can influence thermal tolerance within populations of the same species that do not appear genetically distinct