High-Resolution Electron Diffraction of Hydrated Protein Crystals at Room Temperature

Structural characterization is crucial to understanding protein function. Compared with X-ray diffraction methods, electron crystallography can be performed on nanometer-sized crystals and can provide additional information from the resulting Coulomb potential map. Whereas electron crystallography has successfully resolved three-dimensional structures of vitrified protein crystals, its widespread use as a structural biology tool has been limited. One main reason is the fragility of such crystals. Protein crystals can be easily damaged by mechanical stress, change in temperature, or buffer conditions as well as by electron irradiation. This work demonstrates a methodology to preserve these nanocrystals in their natural environment at room temperature for electron diffraction experiments as an alternative to existing cryogenic techniques. Lysozyme crystals in their crystallization solution are hermetically sealed via graphene-coated grids, and their radiation damage is minimized by employing a low-dose data collection strategy in combination with a hybrid-pixel direct electron detector. Diffraction patterns with reflections of up to 3 Å are obtained and successfully indexed using a template-matching algorithm. These results demonstrate the feasibility of in situ protein electron diffraction. The method described will also be applicable to structural studies of hydrated nanocrystals important in many research and technological developments.

Fermi-Level Modulation of Chemical Vapor Deposition-Grown Monolayer Graphene via Nanoparticles to Macromolecular Dopants

It is critical to modulate the Fermi level of graphene for the development of high-performance electronic and optoelectronic devices. Here, we have demonstrated the modulation of the Fermi level of chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown monolayer graphene (MLG) via doping with nanoparticles to macromolecules such as titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs), nitric acid (HNO3), octadecyltrimethoxysilane (OTS) self-assembled monolayer (SAM), and poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS). The electronic properties of pristine and doped graphene samples were investigated by Raman spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements. The right shifting of G and 2D peaks and reduction in 2D to G peak intensity ratio (I 2D/I G) assured that the dopants induced a p-type doping effect. Upon doping, the shifting of the Dirac point towards positive voltage validates the increment of the hole concentration in graphene and thus downward shift of the Fermi level. More importantly, the combination of HNO3/TiO2 NP doping on graphene yields a substantially larger change in the Fermi level of MLG. Our study may be useful for the development of graphene-based high-performance flexible electronic devices.

Scalable graphene production: perspectives and challenges of plasma applications

Graphene, a newly discovered and extensively investigated material, has many unique and extraordinary properties which promise major technological advances in fields ranging from electronics to mechanical engineering and food production. Unfortunately, complex techniques and high production costs hinder commonplace applications. Scaling of existing graphene production techniques to the industrial level without compromising its properties is a current challenge. This article focuses on the perspectives and challenges of scalability, equipment, and technological perspectives of the plasma-based techniques which offer many unique possibilities for the synthesis of graphene and graphene-containing products. The plasma-based processes are amenable for scaling and could also be useful to enhance the controllability of the conventional chemical vapour deposition method and some other techniques, and to ensure a good quality of the produced graphene. We examine the unique features of the plasma-enhanced graphene production approaches, including the techniques based on inductively-coupled and arc discharges, in the context of their potential scaling to mass production following the generic scaling approaches applicable to the existing processes and systems. This work analyses a large amount of the recent literature on graphene production by various techniques and summarizes the results in a tabular form to provide a simple and convenient comparison of several available techniques. Our analysis reveals a significant potential of scalability for plasma-based technologies, based on the scaling-related process characteristics. Among other processes, a greater yield of 1 g × h(-1) m(-2) was reached for the arc discharge technology, whereas the other plasma-based techniques show process yields comparable to the neutral-gas based methods. Selected plasma-based techniques show lower energy consumption than in thermal CVD processes, and the ability to produce graphene flakes of various sizes reaching hundreds of square millimetres, and the thickness varying from a monolayer to 10-20 layers. Additional factors such as electrical voltage and current, not available in thermal CVD processes could potentially lead to better scalability, flexibility and control of the plasma-based processes. Advantages and disadvantages of various systems are also considered.