Electrospray deposition in vacuum

We have used the established technique of electrospray in developing a portable vacuum electrospray system which can deposit, in vacuo, dissolved molecules onto a sample which may then be analysed by UHV techniques. As an initial test of the system we have analysed silicon samples with an electrosprayed layer of poly(ethylene) oxide (PEO) using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The polymer forms different structures depending on the voltage applied to the emitter, and solution composition. The system is part of our ongoing effort to deposit other materials such as nanoparticles, and large dye molecules for developing molecular dye sensitised solar cells.

[1]  A. Gomez,et al.  Charge and fission of droplets in electrostatic sprays , 1994 .

[2]  N. Oxtoby,et al.  Controlling molecular deposition and layer structure with supramolecular surface assemblies , 2003, Nature.

[3]  S. Gaskell.  Electrospray: Principles and Practice , 1997 .

[4]  John B. Asbury,et al.  Dynamics of Electron Injection in Nanocrystalline Titanium Dioxide Films Sensitized with (Ru(4,4'-dicarboxy-2,2'-bipyridine)2(NCS)2) by Infrared Transient Absorption , 1998 .

[5]  S. S. Kim,et al.  Electrospray characteristics of highly viscous liquids , 2002 .

[6]  P. A. Brühwiler,et al.  Excited-state charge transfer dynamics in systems of aromatic adsorbates on TiO2 studied with resonant core techniques , 2003 .

[7]  Emily F. Smith,et al.  X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of fluorescein adsorbed on model solar-cell surfaces , 2004 .

[8]  N. Oxtoby,et al.  Growth induced reordering of fullerene clusters trapped in a two-dimensional supramolecular network. , 2005, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[9]  J. Forrest,et al.  Effect of sample preparation on the glass‐transition of thin polystyrene films , 2004 .

[10]  Alfonso M. Gañán-Calvo,et al.  Cone-Jet Analytical Extension of Taylor's Electrostatic Solution and the Asymptotic Universal Scaling Laws in Electrospraying , 1997 .

[11]  Yutaka Yamagata,et al.  Surface morphology and biological activity of protein thin films produced by electrospray deposition. , 2004, Journal of colloid and interface science.

[12]  S. S. Kim,et al.  Electrohydrodynamic spraying characteristics of glycerol solutions in vacuum , 2003 .

[13]  G. Sorensen,et al.  Electrostatic spraying:  a novel technique for preparation of polymer coatings on electrodes. , 1996, Analytical chemistry.

[14]  T. Morozova,et al.  Atomic force microscopy of structures produced by electrospraying polymer solutions , 1998 .

[15]  Naoki Asakawa,et al.  Highly robust stainless steel tips as microelectrospray emitters. , 2002, Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM.

[16]  T. Leisner,et al.  Coulomb fission: Rayleigh jets from levitated microdroplets , 2003, Nature.

[17]  N. Oxtoby,et al.  Square, hexagonal, and row phases of PTCDA and PTCDI on Ag-Si(111)square root(3) x square root(3)R30 degrees. , 2005, Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

[18]  P. A. Brühwiler,et al.  Structural study of adsorption of isonicotinic acid and related molecules on rutile TiO2(110) I: XAS and STM , 2003 .

[19]  A. A. Deev,et al.  Direct detection of isotopically labeled metabolites bound to a protein microarray using a charge-coupled device. , 2002, Journal of biochemical and biophysical methods.

[20]  M. Mann,et al.  Electrospray ionization for mass spectrometry of large biomolecules. , 1989, Science.

[21]  Y. Yamagata,et al.  Poly(ethylene oxide) thin films produced by electrospray deposition: morphology control and additive effects of alcohols on nanostructure. , 2004, Journal of colloid and interface science.

[22]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[23]  R. Cole,et al.  Some tenets pertaining to electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. , 2000, Journal of mass spectrometry : JMS.

[24]  M. Brust,et al.  Nanostructured cellular networks. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[25]  Luc Patthey,et al.  Experimental evidence for sub-3-fs charge transfer from an aromatic adsorbate to a semiconductor , 2002, Nature.

[26]  Yi Luo,et al.  Molecular ordering in isonicotinic acid on rutile TiO2(110) investigated with valence band photoemission. , 2004, The Journal of chemical physics.

[27]  V. Morozov,et al.  Electrospray deposition as a method for mass fabrication of mono- and multicomponent microarrays of biological and biologically active substances. , 1999, Analytical chemistry.

[28]  M. Vestal,et al.  Methods of ion generation. , 2001, Chemical reviews.