IET Micro & Nano Letters

The nanosilica/polymethylmethacrylate (SiO2/PMMA) and polymethylmethacrylate/nanosilica (PMMA/SiO2) core-shell structure composite microspheres were fabricated by dispersion polymerisation under similar reaction conditions. These two kinds of microspheres are different to each other by their opposite core-shell structure. The composite mircospheres were characterised by infra... View full abstract»

Presented is a DC-contact radio-frequency (RF) microelectromechanical system symmetric toggle switch for broadband power applications. Based on the lever principle, the proposed switching structure can be toggled upwards with extra restoring force using push electrodes. This push mechanism greatly improves the isolation and efficiently avoids the down-state stiction of the contacts which leads to ... View full abstract»

A precursor-pyrolysing route to fabricate hierarchical LiMn2O4 porous nanostructures is presented. The product was characterised by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, a transmission electron microscope, a high-resolution transmission electron microscope and a micromeritics analyser. The results show that the resulting material is a honeycomb-like dual-por... View full abstract»

Piezoelectric microcantilevers (MCs) are a new generation of atomic force microscopy (AFM) beams. They are capable of imaging at a high speed and consuming low energy. These MCs are also built commercially, with non-uniform geometry; and they can be utilised in different environments (gases and liquid). The objective of this Letter is to investigate the vibration behaviour of these types of MCs in... View full abstract»

A convenient ethylene glycol (EG)-mediated one-pot solvothermal route was designed for direct synthesis of nanostructured nickel oxide-carbon composite material on nickel foam. EG was employed as solvent, complex agent and carbon source. Furthermore, cyclic voltammetry and constant current charge-discharge measurements confirmed that the composite material electrode displayed good electrochemical ... View full abstract»

Nanocrystalline TiO2 was prepared through hydrothermal synthesis using tetrabutyl titanate as starting material. With a constant reaction time of 12 h, the reaction temperature was changed from 120 to 160°C and the pH value of the reaction medium was ranged from 1 to 9. Every specimen of the as-prepared TiO2 powder was characterised by X-ray diffraction, a scanning ele... View full abstract»

A comparative study is performed on Hypericum perforatum (H. perforatum) and doxorubicin (Dox) anticancer agents. Double emulsion and sonication techniques were used to enhance drug loading efficiency in poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs). To distinguish the efficiency of the double emulsion method, drug entrapment efficiency was measured. In vitro release studi... View full abstract»

Large-scale uniform hierarchical broccoli-like zinc oxide (ZnO) superstructures assembled by nanorods were successfully synthesised via a facile solution method under mild conditions by using sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) as crystal growth modifiers. The morphology of the final products was simply tuned by adding different amounts of ammonia in the presence of NaCMC. In addition, the cata... View full abstract»

Pure Magneli phase Ti4O7 nanoparticles with diameters of 200-500 nm were successfully synthesised under hydrogen atmospheres. In this reported work, the influences of reduction of temperature and time on the reduced phases were investigated, and it is shown that pure Ti4O7 can be obtained by heating at 850°C for 5 h. The as-prepared materials are ... View full abstract»

CaMAl12-xO19:xMn4+ (M is one or more of K+, Na+, Li+) materials were prepared by a combustion method in air atmosphere. The Mn concentration, the influence of one or more alkali-chloride on luminescence properties, crystal phases and surface morphology of the samples were investigated. The fluorescence intensity of CaAl1... View full abstract»

Quantum dot cellular automata (QCA) have become a strong alternative for nanoscale computing. After a decade of exhaustive research on binary QCA, the newly introduced ternary QCA (tQCA) for implementing ternary logic needs further research to actually fabricate the tQCA cell. In this Letter, a quantum mechanical approach is presented for calculating the diverse parameters required for the fabrica... View full abstract»

High monodisperse nickel nanoparticles of 13 nm were successfully synthesised based on reduction of common nickel salts. Further annealing process prompted the formation of magnetic superlattices. The morphological features characterised by field emission scanning electron microscopy showed that the Ni nanoparticles self-assembled periodically and formed close-packed arrays. The results of magneti... View full abstract»

The diverse morphology of ZnO nanostructure demonstrates attractive applications and allows an insight into the interesting mechanism for synthesis of other nanomaterials. However, synthesis of an ultrathin ZnO nanotube is still challenging by conventional solution methods at low temperature. Here, inspired by the nanoscale Kirkendall effect on the nanoporous formation, sub-50 nm nanotubular ZnO w... View full abstract»