Ebook: From Nanostructures to Nanosensing Applications

Richard Feynman in a famous talk given 45 years ago at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society on the perspectives of Physics anticipated, with extraordinary vision and in terms which can be substantially accepted even today, the enormous scientific and technological potentialities existing in the nanoworld and invited the fellow physicists to investigate the field.

As a matter of fact, Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies after a somehow slow start, have grown increasingly fast for the last 20 years with an exceptional impact upon understanding of Nature, development of Science and related applications.

Several new materials have been built and the possibility of tailoring their properties for particular purposes has opened unexpected perspectives in a multidisciplinary scenario.

Furthermore, economy has also been deeply involved in this effort as a consequence of the fact that a significant amount of money has been invested in new enterprises with the hope of duplicating the “boom” of microelectronics: a wrong hope, according to our guess, since nanotechnologies probably will prove to be really crucial in niche production.

Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies are developing at a very fast pace. It is then important to provide young and even expert scientists with the possibility of reviewing and updating some of the most significant features of nanostructures for a better understanding of their scientific foundations in order to put a firm basis for future developments.

The subject can be discussed from several points of view . We believe that “Nanostructures and Nanosensing Applications” provide a very effective approach as they require a strict interaction between Science and Technology leading to a high degree of cross fertilization.

Some of the most distinguished experts of the field have accepted to teach at the School. Their contribution to nanoscience has been very significant and widely recognized.

On their side, attending students had the unfrequent chance to listen to first-hand reports along with the consequent comments from the audience which made the Course particularly alive.

As usual in Varenna students had the possibility of approaching teachers informally for explanations and discussions. In addition, students were given some home work consisting in preparing short presentations to be given and discussed at extra time in front of the full audience including other students and teachers as well. Therefore all participants contributed to the really remarkable success of this Course.

We do hope that these proceedings will succeed in conveying not only the content but somehow the atmosphere of the lectures masterfully delivered and carefully attended in the historical Hall of Villa Monastero. For the participants they will be a precious memento and perhaps they will also be able to attract bright young scientists to such an important and up-to-date subject of study and research.

A. D'Amico and A. Paoletti

1. Introduction

2. Proposed “spin-charge transducer”

3. NEGF equations: A summary

4. NEGF model: Spin valve with impurities

5. “Hot spin” effect

1. Introduction

2. Qualitative picture of fluctuations in superconductors

3. Ginzburg-Landau theory

4. Fluctuation contribution to heat capacity of the superconducting nanograin

5. Ultrasmall superconducting grains

6. Superconducting drops in system with quenched disorder: the smearing of the superconducting transition

7. Josephson coupled superconducting grains and drops

8. Classical phase transition in granular superconductors

1. Introduction

2. Classical and quantum distribution functions

3. Generalized Wigner function of the coupled electron-phonon system

4. Weak coupling and equilibrium phonons approximations

5. Models for the electron Wigner function

6. Classical limit in the electron-phonon interaction

7. Particle models for the Wigner-Boltzmann equation

8. Physical averages in the stationary Wigner-Boltzmann transport: probabilistic analysis

9. Particle models

1. White noises as fields in a fast clock

2. Dissipation from white-noise Hamiltonians: a hierarchy of transport equations

3. Electron lattices coupled to phonon fields: conductivity and resistivity tensors

1. Introduction

2. Evaluation of the potential due to the gates in the Fermi-level pinning approximation

3. Two-step “frozen charge” approximation

4. Boundary condition based on a density of surface states

5. Solution of the Schröedinger equation in the presence of a megnetic field

1. Introduction

2. Metallic thermistor

3. Chemical sensors based on conductivity change of metal oxide semiconductors

4. The MOSFET operation

5. The ISFET operation

6. The GASFET operation

7. Sensitivities in BAW and SAW sensors

8. Sensitivity and mass resolution of BAW-based sensors

9. SAW-based sensors

10. The Kelvin probe

11. Sensitivity comparison between the two techniques

12. The Kelvin probe as a sensor

13. Conclusion

1. Introduction

2. Physical basis of spin electronics

3. Spin injection and probing by diffusion and tunneling

4. GMR and interlayer exchange coupling

5. Electronic structure and magnetism in perovskites

6. Nanostructuring of oxides

7. Conclusions

1. Introduction

2. Materials and device fabrication

3. Electrical characteristics

4. Summary

1. Introduction

2. The Green's-function-based density-functional tight binding (gDFTB)

3. Application of the gDFTB method to the sensing properties of carbon nanotubes

4. Influence of the molecule vibrations on charge transport: elastic scattering

5. Influence of the molecule vibrations on charge transport: Inelastic scattering

1. Image devices

2. New image devices

3. Photonics, plasmonics

4. 3D integrated imaging system

5. New nanoelectronic devices

6. Limits of computational systems, noise and fault tolerance

The green fluorescent protein (GFP) represents a naturally evolved highly specialized nano-sized optical “device” whose use as genetically encodable fluorescent probes in molecular and cell biology is well established. Molecular engineering of the GFP structure allows for the modification of fluorophore characteristics, and engineered GFP mutants can be designed to solve relevant problems in molecular biology. Furthermore, the realization of an optically bistable GFP variant at the single-molecule level may open the way to the fabrication of a bio-optical high-density storage memory by exploiting bidimensional protein patterning methods based on molecular self-assembly.

1. Introduction

2. Optical and biophysical characteristics of GFP mutants

3. GFP mutants for live cell imaging

4. Single-molecule photophysics and photochromism of GFP mutants

5. E²GFP as photochromic element of 2D biomolecular memories

6. Conclusions and perspectives

1. Introduction

2. A general model for the growth of colloidal nanocrystals

3. Shape-controlled nanocrystals

4. Three-dimensional nanocrystal heterostructures

5. Optical properties of shaped-controlled semiconductor nanocrystals

6. Present and potential applications of nanocrystals

7. Conclusions and perspectives