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TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)

Silicon nanomembrane technologies (NPN, pnc-Si, and others) have been used commercially as electron microscopy (EM) substrates, and as filters with nanometer-resolution size cut-offs. Combined with EM, these materials provide a platform for catching or suspending nanoscale-size structures for analys...

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Autores principales: Madejski, Gregory, Lucas, Kilean, Pascut, Flavius C., Webb, Kevin F., McGrath, James L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6027491/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29865242
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes8020026
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author Madejski, Gregory
Lucas, Kilean
Pascut, Flavius C.
Webb, Kevin F.
McGrath, James L.
author_facet Madejski, Gregory
Lucas, Kilean
Pascut, Flavius C.
Webb, Kevin F.
McGrath, James L.
author_sort Madejski, Gregory
collection PubMed
description Silicon nanomembrane technologies (NPN, pnc-Si, and others) have been used commercially as electron microscopy (EM) substrates, and as filters with nanometer-resolution size cut-offs. Combined with EM, these materials provide a platform for catching or suspending nanoscale-size structures for analysis. Usefully, the nanomembrane itself can be manufactured to achieve a variety of nanopore topographies. The size, shapes, and surfaces of nanopores will influence transport, fouling, sieving, and electrical behavior. Electron tomography (ET) techniques used to recreate nanoscale-sized structures would provide an excellent way to capture this variation. Therefore, we modified a sample holder to accept our standardized 5.4 mm × 5.4 mm silicon nanomembrane chips and imaged NPN nanomembranes (50–100 nm thick, 10–100 nm nanopore diameters) using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). After imaging and ET reconstruction using a series of freely available tools (ImageJ, TomoJ, SEG3D2, Meshlab), we used COMSOL Multiphysics™ to simulate fluid flow inside a reconstructed nanopore. The results show flow profiles with significantly more complexity than a simple cylindrical model would predict, with regions of stagnation inside the nanopores. We expect that such tomographic reconstructions of ultrathin nanopores will be valuable in elucidating the physics that underlie the many applications of silicon nanomembranes.
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spelling pubmed-60274912018-07-13 TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN) Madejski, Gregory Lucas, Kilean Pascut, Flavius C. Webb, Kevin F. McGrath, James L. Membranes (Basel) Article Silicon nanomembrane technologies (NPN, pnc-Si, and others) have been used commercially as electron microscopy (EM) substrates, and as filters with nanometer-resolution size cut-offs. Combined with EM, these materials provide a platform for catching or suspending nanoscale-size structures for analysis. Usefully, the nanomembrane itself can be manufactured to achieve a variety of nanopore topographies. The size, shapes, and surfaces of nanopores will influence transport, fouling, sieving, and electrical behavior. Electron tomography (ET) techniques used to recreate nanoscale-sized structures would provide an excellent way to capture this variation. Therefore, we modified a sample holder to accept our standardized 5.4 mm × 5.4 mm silicon nanomembrane chips and imaged NPN nanomembranes (50–100 nm thick, 10–100 nm nanopore diameters) using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). After imaging and ET reconstruction using a series of freely available tools (ImageJ, TomoJ, SEG3D2, Meshlab), we used COMSOL Multiphysics™ to simulate fluid flow inside a reconstructed nanopore. The results show flow profiles with significantly more complexity than a simple cylindrical model would predict, with regions of stagnation inside the nanopores. We expect that such tomographic reconstructions of ultrathin nanopores will be valuable in elucidating the physics that underlie the many applications of silicon nanomembranes. MDPI 2018-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6027491/ /pubmed/29865242 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes8020026 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Madejski, Gregory
Lucas, Kilean
Pascut, Flavius C.
Webb, Kevin F.
McGrath, James L.
TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title_full TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title_fullStr TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title_full_unstemmed TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title_short TEM Tomography of Pores with Application to Computational Nanoscale Flows in Nanoporous Silicon Nitride (NPN)
title_sort tem tomography of pores with application to computational nanoscale flows in nanoporous silicon nitride (npn)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6027491/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29865242
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes8020026
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