Functional coatings of sol-gel on glass substrate using CO2 laser irradiation

Often Glass products achieve their component functionality only by a specific surface finishing, such as coating or patterning. Compared to vacuum based CVD and PVD coating techniques, the equipment for wet-chemical deposition of sol-gels is less expensive. Heat is needed for a chemical reaction to cure gels and form solid functional layers. In this study, sols with titanium and zirconium were applied on glass substrates by dip coating. The investigated layer thicknesses were in the range between 320 nm and 650 nm. The gel layers were annealed with CO2 laser radiation. Different scanning speeds and laser powers were investigated. Microscope images were used to compare the laser-annealed layers with oven-annealed layers. To conclude, the oven-process can be substituted by laser annealing and additionally enables local patterning. This allows gradient coating solutions for architecture applications

An Improved Protocol for N-Glycosylation Analysis of Gel-Separated Sialylated Glycoproteins by MALDI-TOF/TOF

Different glycoforms of some proteins have been identified as differential spots for certain diseases in 2-DE, indicating disease-related glycosylation changes. It is routine to determine the site-specific glycosylation of nonsialylated N-glycoproteins from a single gel spot, but some obstacles still exist in analyzing sialylated glycoproteins due to the lability and higher detection limit of acid glycans in MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis. Thus, we present an improved protocol here. Tryptic glycopeptides were separated and subjected to MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis, resulting in the identification of site-specific glycosylation of high-intensity glycopeptides. Sequential deglycosylation and desialylation were used to improve the identification of glycosylation sites and desialylated glycans. The site-specific glycosylation of large glycopeptides and low-intensity glycopeptides was deduced based on the masses of glycopeptides, deglycosylated peptides and desialylated glycans. By applying it to 2-DE separated human serum, the difference of N-glycosylation was successfully determined for α1-antitrypsin between different gel spots

NIR-CW-laser annealing of room temperature sputtered ZnO:Al

Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCOs) are widespread as transparent electrodes in thin film photovoltaics and electronics. Post deposition furnace annealing improves the electrical and optical properties of TCOs. Disadvantages of furnace annealing are large energy consumption and long processing time due to long-lasting heating ramps. ZnO:Al thin films (AZO) with a low electrical resistivity and high transparency are usually sputtered at substrate temperatures up to several hundred °C. In this study post deposition near infrared (NIR) continuous wave (CW) laser annealing of room-temperature deposited AZO thin films is investigated. The surface temperature is determined by infrared thermography. The averaged transmittance is increased by T 300-1100 nm ≤ 7.2 % due to a lower absorptance at a constant reflectance. The resistivity is reduced to ρ = 360 μΩcm, because of a higher electron mobility μ. These promising results show the potential of laser annealing for the replacement of furnace annealing in industrial applications