Abstract: Lanthanum carbonate is a new phosphate binder that is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and eliminated largely by the liver. After oral treatment, we and others had noticed 23 fold higher lanthanum levels in the livers of rats with chronic renal failure compared to rats with normal renal function. Here we studied the kinetics and tissue distribution, absorption, and subcellular localization of lanthanum in the liver using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectrometry, and X-ray fluoresence. We found that in the liver lanthanum was located in lysosomes and in the biliary canal but not in any other cellular organelles. This suggests that lanthanum is transported and eliminated by the liver via a transcellular, endosomal-lysosomal-biliary canicular transport route. Feeding rats with chronic renal failure orally with lanthanum resulted in a doubling of the liver levels compared to rats with normal renal function, but the serum levels were similar in both animal groups. These levels plateaued after 6 weeks at a concentration below 3 g/g in both groups. When lanthanum was administered intravenously, thereby bypassing the gastrointestinal tract-portal vein pathway, no difference in liver levels was found between rats with and without renal failure. This suggests that there is an increased gastrointestinal permeability or absorption of oral lanthanum in uremia. Lanthanum levels in the brain and heart fluctuated near its detection limit with long-term treatment (20 weeks) having no effect on organ weight, liver enzyme activities, or liver histology. We suggest that the kinetics of lanthanum in the liver are consistent with a transcellular transport pathway, with higher levels in the liver of uremic rats due to higher intestinal absorption.

Abstract: Variations in local bond length and coordination in boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) films have been studied through changes in the fine structure of boron and carbon K-edges in electron energy-loss spectra, acquired in a scanning transmission electron microscope. The presence of high concentrations of B in pristine diamond regions and enrichment of B at defects in single NCD grains is demonstrated. Local bond length variations are evidenced through an energy shift of the carbon 1s → σ* edge at B-rich defective regions within single diamond grains, indicating an expansion of the diamond bond length at sites with local high B content.

Abstract: A transmission electron microscopy study of epitaxial C-60 and C-70 films grown on a GeS (001) surface is presented. The relationship between the orientation of the substrate and the films and structural defects in the films, such as grain boundaries, unknown in bulk C-60 and C-70 crystals, are studied. Small misalignments of the overlayers with respect to the orientation of the substrate, so-called epitaxial rotations, exist mainly in C-70 films, but also sporadically in the C-60 overlayers. A simple symmetry model, previously used to predict the rotation of hexagonal overlayers on hexagonal substrates, is numerically tested and applied to the present situation. Some qualitative conclusions concerning the substrate-film interaction are deduced. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.

Abstract: High-resolution electron microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy have been used to compare the microstructure of NdBa2Cu3O7-delta and Nd1+xBa2-xCu3O7-delta thin films. Both films contain comparable amounts of Nd2CuO4 inclusions. Antiphase boundaries are induced by unit cell high steps at the substrate or by a different interface stacking. In Nd1+xBa2-xCu3O7-delta the antiphase boundaries tend to annihilate by the insertion of extra Nd layers. Stacking faults, which can be characterized as local Nd2Ba2Cu4O9 inclusions, also absorb the excess Nd. A correlation is made between the excess Nd and the absence of growth spirals at the surface of the Nd-rich films. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Abstract: The impact of the scaling of the channel length on the performances of metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors, based on two-dimensional (2D) channel materials, is theoretically investigated, using density functional theory combined with the non-equilibrium Green's function method. It is found that the scaling of the channel length below 10nm leads to strong device performance degradations. Our simulations reveal that this degradation is essentially due to the tunneling current flowing between the source and the drain in these aggressively scaled devices. It is shown that this electron tunneling process is modulated by the effective mass of the 2D channel material, and sets the limit of the scaling in future transistor designs. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.

Abstract: The beta '' precipitates in a peak-aged Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloy were measured with an average composition of 28.6Al-38.7Mg-26.5Si-5.17Cu (at.%) using atom probe tomography. High-angle annular dark-field observations revealed that Cu incompletely substitutes for the Mg-1 and Si-3 columns, preferentially for one column in each pair of Si-3. Cu-free Si columns form a parallelogram-shaped network that constitutes the basis of subsequent precipitates in the system, with a = 0.37 nm, b = 0.38 nm, gamma = 113 degrees and c = 0.405 nm. (C) 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Results are discussed of a transmission electron microscopy study of high-dose oxygen implanted silicon. In addition to the general high temperature (> 1200-degrees-C) annealing treatments also annealings at 'low' temperatures (1000-1100-degrees-C) were performed in order to slow down the precipitate and defect reactions. The observed dissolution of the oxide precipitates during prolonged high temperature annealing is explained by critical radius considerations. Threading dislocations are the remaining lattice defects in the silicon overlayer and cannot be removed by further annealing. Low temperature annealing results in the formation and subsequent unfaulting of extrinsic stacking fault loops below the buried oxide layer.

Abstract: The main purpose of this research is to manage simultaneous measurement of velocity and concentration in large cross-sections by recording and processing images of cloud structures to provide more detailed information for e.g. validation of CFD simulations. Dispersion from an isolated stack in an Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) was chosen as the test case and investigated both experimentally and numerically in a wind tunnel. Large Scale-Particle Image Velocimetry (LS-PIV), which records cloud structures instead of individual particles, was used to obtain the velocity field in a vertical plane. The concentration field was determined by two methods: Aspiration Probe (AP) measurements and Light Scattering Technique (LST). In the latter approach, the same set of images used in the LS-PIV was employed. The test case was also simulated using the CFD solver FLUENT 6.3. Comparison between AP measurements and CFD revealed that there is good agreement when using a turbulent Schmidt number of 0.4. For the LST measurements, a non-linear relation between concentration and light intensity was observed and a hyperbolic-based function is proposed as correction function. After applying this correction function, a close agreement between CFD and LST measurements is obtained. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: In this study, the uptake and elimination of ZnO and CuO nanoparticles in Daphnia magna was tested. Daphnids were exposed during 10 days to sublethal concentrations of ZnO and CuO nanoparticles and corresponding metal salts (ZnCl2 and CuCl2.2H2O), after which they were transferred to unexposed medium for another 10 days. At different times during the exposure and none-exposure, the total and internal zinc or copper concentration of the daphnids was determined and the nanoparticles were localized in the organism using electron microscopy. The exposure concentrations were characterized by measuring the dissolved, nanoparticle and aggregated fraction in the medium. The results showed that the ZnO nanoparticles quickly dissolved after addition to the medium. Contrarily, only a small fraction (corresponding to the dissolved metal salt) of the CuO nanoparticles dissolved, while most of these nanoparticles formed large aggregates. Despite an initial increase in zinc and copper concentration during the first 48 hour to 5 day exposure, the body concentration reached a plateau level that was comparable for the ZnO nanoparticles and ZnCl2, but much higher for the CuO nanoparticles (with visible aggregates accumulating in the gut) than CuCl2.2H2O. During the remaining exposure and subsequent none-exposure phase, the zinc and copper concentration decreased fast to concentrations comparable with the unexposed daphnids. The results indicate that D. magna can regulate its internal zinc and copper concentration after exposure to ZnO and CuO nanoparticles, similar as after exposure to metal salts. The combined dissolution, accumulation and toxicity results confirm that the toxicity of ZnO and CuO nanoparticles is caused by the dissolved fraction. Keywords nano; zinc; copper; dissolution; aggregation; electron microscopy

Abstract: In this contribution, we report a fundamental study of the factors that set the contact resistivity between metals and highly doped n-type 2D and 3D semiconductors. We investigate the case of n-type doped Si contacted with amorphous TiSi combining first principles calculations with Non-Equilibrium Green functions transport simulations. The evolution of the intrinsic contact resistivity with the doping concentration is found to saturate at similar to 2 x 10(-10) Omega.cm(2) for the case of TiSi and imposes an intrinsic limit to the ultimate contact resistance achievable for n-doped Silamorphous-TiSi (aTiSi). The limit arises from the intrinsic properties of the semiconductors and of the metals such as their electron effective masses and Fermi energies. We illustrate that, in this regime, contacting heavy electron effective mass metals with semiconductor helps reducing the interface intrinsic contact resistivity. This observation seems to hold true regardless of the 3D character of the semiconductor, as illustrated for the case of three 2D semiconducting materials, namely MoS2, ZrS2 and HfS2. (C) The Author(s) 2018. Published by ECS.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new quantum mechanical model for the calculation of leakage currents. The model incorporates both variational calculus and the transfer matrix method to compute the subband energies and the life times of the inversion layer states. The use of variational calculus simplifies the subband energy calculation due to the analytical firm of the wave functions, which offers an attractive perspective towards the calculation of the electron mobility in the channel. The model can be extended to high-k dielectrics with several layers. Good agreement between experimental data and simulation results is obtained for metal gate capacitors.