945 research outputs found
Growth of vertically aligned Si wire arrays over large areas (>1 cm^2) with Au and Cu catalysts
Arrays of vertically oriented Si wires with diameters of 1.5 µm and lengths of up to 75 µm were grown over areas >1 cm^2 by photolithographically patterning an oxide buffer layer, followed by vapor-liquid-solid growth with either Au or Cu as the growth catalyst. The pattern fidelity depended critically on the presence of the oxide layer, which prevented migration of the catalyst on the surface during annealing and in the early stages of wire growth. These arrays can be used as the absorber material in novel photovoltaic architectures and potentially in photonic crystals in which large areas are needed
Secondary ion mass spectrometry of vapor−liquid−solid grown, Au-catalyzed, Si wires
Knowledge of the catalyst concentration within vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) grown semiconductor wires is needed in order to assess potential limits to electrical and optical device performance imposed by the VLS growth mechanism. We report herein the use of secondary ion mass spectrometry to characterize the Au catalyst concentration within individual, VLS-grown, Si wires. For Si wires grown by chemical vapor deposition from SiCl_4 at 1000 °C, an upper limit on the bulk Au concentration was observed to be 1.7 x 10^16 atoms/cm^3, similar to the thermodynamic equilibrium concentration at the growth temperature. However, a higher concentration of Au was observed on the sidewalls of the wires
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Cost effective, experimentally robust differential-expression analysis for human/mammalian, pathogen and dual-species transcriptomics.
As sequencing read length has increased, researchers have quickly adopted longer reads for their experiments. Here, we examine 14 pathogen or host-pathogen differential gene expression data sets to assess whether using longer reads is warranted. A variety of data sets was used to assess what genomic attributes might affect the outcome of differential gene expression analysis including: gene density, operons, gene length, number of introns/exons and intron length. No genome attribute was found to influence the data in principal components analysis, hierarchical clustering with bootstrap support, or regression analyses of pairwise comparisons that were undertaken on the same reads, looking at all combinations of paired and unpaired reads trimmed to 36, 54, 72 and 101 bp. Read pairing had the greatest effect when there was little variation in the samples from different conditions or in their replicates (e.g. little differential gene expression). But overall, 54 and 72 bp reads were typically most similar. Given differences in costs and mapping percentages, we recommend 54 bp reads for organisms with no or few introns and 72 bp reads for all others. In a third of the data sets, read pairing had absolutely no effect, despite paired reads having twice as much data. Therefore, single-end reads seem robust for differential-expression analyses, but in eukaryotes paired-end reads are likely desired to analyse splice variants and should be preferred for data sets that are acquired with the intent to be community resources that might be used in secondary data analyses
Diagnosis by peritoneal scintigraphy of peritoneal dialysis–associated hydrothorax in an infant
Salt-assisted vapor-liquid-solid growth of one-dimensional van der Waals materials
We have combined the benefits of two catalytic growth phenomena to form
nanostructures of transition metal trichalcogenides (TMTs), materials that are
challenging to grow in a nanostructured form by conventional techniques, as
required to exploit their exotic physics. Our growth strategy combines the
benefits of vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth in controlling dimension and growth
location, and salt-assisted growth for fast growth at moderate temperatures.
This salt-assisted VLS growth is enabled through use of a catalyst that
includes Au and an alkali metal halide. We demonstrate high yields of NbS3 1D
nanostructures with sub-ten nanometer diameter, tens of micrometers length, and
distinct 1D morphologies consisting of nanowires and nanoribbons with [010] and
[100] growth orientations, respectively. We present strategies to control the
growth location, size, and morphology. We extend the growth method to
synthesize other TMTs, NbSe3 and TiS3, as nanowires. Finally, we discuss the
growth mechanism based on the relationships we measure between the materials
characteristics (growth orientation, morphology and dimensions) and the growth
conditions (catalyst volume and growth time). Our study introduces
opportunities to expand the library of emerging 1D vdW materials and their
heterostructures with controllable nanoscale dimensions.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
The pH-responsive PacC transcription factor of Aspergillus fumigatus governs epithelial entry and tissue invasion during pulmonary aspergillosis
Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Raw data have been deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) under accession number GSE54810. Funding: This work was supported in part by grants to EMB from the MRC (G0501164) and BBSRC (BB/G009619/1), to EMB and NDR from the Wellcome Trust (WT093596MA), to MB from Imperial College London (Division of Investigative Sciences PhD Studentship), to HH from the ERA-NET PathoGenoMics project TRANSPAT, Austrian Science Foundation (FWF I282-B09), to SGF from the National Institutes of Health, USA (R01AI073829). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
High Aspect Ratio Silicon Wire Array Photoelectrochemical Cells
In an effort to develop low-cost solar energy conversion techniques, high uniformity vertically oriented silicon wire arrays have been fabricated. These arrays, which allow for radial diffusion of minority charge carriers, have been measured in a photoelectrochemical cell. Large photovoltages (∼400 mV) have been measured, and these values are significantly greater than those obtained from the substrate alone. Additionally, the wire array samples displayed much higher current densities than the underlying substrate, demonstrating that significant energy conversion was occurring due to the absorption and charge-carrier transport in the vertically aligned Si wires. This method therefore represents a step toward the use of collection-limited semiconductor materials in a wire array format in macroscopic solar cell devices
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