In this month I investigated formation of silver nanoparticles using metal island film technique. Four layers having thicknesses of 7, 10, 15 and 20 nm were sputtered at a rate of 2 A / s on polished Si wafers. . The deposited layer thickness was read on a quartz microbalance. The resulting silver layer was then subjected to annealing on the stage heating at 250 ° C under argon for 0.5 hours. The formated islands were analyzed using SEM and AFM. Average size obtained from 7 and 10 nm layers was 60 and 105 nm. For thicker layers islands lost thier oval shape and became irregular. Surface coverage was 46, 30, 29 and 33.8 %, respectively for increasing initial layer thickness.
The obtained structere can be applied to the Si cell as a plasmonic back reflector.

The last corrections introduced into Doctoral Disseration before sending for review. TMS meeting in Orlando/USA - discussion of alloying element influence on thermodynamic, structural and thermophysical properties of liquid Al-Li base alloys.

I visited colleagues at Gent University. They
are able to collect 3D orientation maps
of very large volumes thanks to serial sectioning via mechanical polishing.
Since they have nice experimental data and I have my tools for data analysis,
We are now working together on a paper.

In February adsorption and kinetics of VEGF protein release from various PEMs was determined based on ELISA results. Moreover, the same method was applied to VEGF and interleukin IL6 release by endothelial cells evaluation on the analogous films. The short abstract on EuroMat 2015 conference arose from the abyss of chaos…

The optimal simulated structure was approached in the experiments. Deposition from concentrated 140 nm NPs suspension enabled of 11 % surface coverage. For this sample the measured reflection was about 25 % in the vissible range while simulation predicted antireflection like effect with even 0 % reflection for 490 nm. This dispcreapncy was the driving force for the actual microstructural features investigation. Surprisingly, the diffused component of total reflection showing position of plasmonic peaks corelated well with simulated predictions. The investigated ascepct covered: influence of NPs size distributions, random arrangement and presence of agglomerates. Cumulated results indicated really increded reflection and hence partially explained observed discrepancy.