The use of pulsed dc-sputtering sources for reactive magnetron sputtering with oxygen offers a possibility to suppress the negative effects of target poisoning (such as arcing). This results in a wide process range for the selection of a desired operating point. The control of target poisoning plays a major role in maintaining constant coating properties and affects the stoichiometry of the reactive coating, as well as the coating rate and the economic impact of the coating process. In a hysteresis, the target poisoning during the reactive sputtering of titanium under oxygen addition proceeds nonlinearly. Without the use of a suitable target poisoning control technique, the sputtering process can abruptly change to an unstable state. As a result, variations of stoichiometry can occur during the deposition process. A proven method for maintaining a stable reactive sputtering process is the control of oxygen flow with the input variable target voltage. By determining the typical oxygen hysteresis at constant target power and constant argon flow, an operating point for the control loop is derived. The desired target voltage then serves as the input variable for the control loop of the target poisoning. The controlling technique for target poisoning is a basic requirement for the production of the photolytic active anatase phase of titanium dioxide (TiO2) using reactive magnetron sputtering. The photocatalytic equipment of surfaces with a titanium dioxide coating in the anatase phase can be realized with the reactive pulsed dc magnetron sputter ion plating process (DC-MSIP). The pulsed DC-MSIP process facilitates coating a variety of surfaces at temperatures below 200 °C in an environmentally friendly manner.

Possible structural variation of a bio-based dimethacrylate derived from oleic acid and ethylene glycol is discussed as well as sources to obtain the starting material for manufacturing of this monomer. Furthermore, aspects influencing the transfer of a newly developed product or further scientific result to application are included into the discussion as well focusing to manufacturing processes and development of a new product for the market.

Since the rapid development of nanomedicine in oncotherapy, multiple nanomaterials are adopted to regulate the immune system in cancer individuals. Tumor immunotherapy enhances the immune function of patients to achieve the purpose of killing tumor cells by utilizing the organism immune mechanism. As emerging inorganic carbon nanoparticles, carbon dots (CDs) have been found as photosensitizers, vaccines, immunoadjuvants, and so on for cancer treatment due to their unique structure and property, such as effective platforms for drug delivery, immunomodulation, and phototherapy. In this review, we mainly discuss the recent application of CDs in tumor immunotherapy and the prospects of CDs in the field of immune medicine. By assessing the achievements and challenges of CDs in tumor immunotherapy, our review would provide mechanistic insights into the evolution of future nanomedicine.

Nowadays, the copper nitride (Cu 3N) is of great interest as a new solar absorber material, flexible and lightweight thin film solar cells. This material is a metastable semiconductor, non-toxic, composed of earth-abundant elements, and its band gap energy can be easily tunable in the range 1.4 to 1.8 eV. For this reason, it has been proposed for many applications in the solar energy conversion field. The main aim of this work is to evaluate the properties of the Cu 3N thin films fabricated by reactive radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering at different RF power values to determine its potential as light absorber. The Cu 3N films were fabricated at room temperature (RT) from a Cu metallic target at the RF power ranged from 25 to 200 W on different substrates (silicon and glass). The pure nitrogen flux was set to 20 sccm, and the working pressures were set to 3.5 Pa and 5 Pa. The XRD results showed a transition from (100) to (111) preferred orientations when RF power increased; the AFM images revealed a granular morphology, while FTIR and Raman spectra exhibited the characteristics peaks related to Cu-N bonds, which became narrower when the RF power increased. Finally, to stablish the suitability of these films as absorber, the band gap energy was calculated from transmission spectra.

There is a hysteria over plasmonic sensors based on Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguides and researchers around the globe are extensively studying these devices over the past two decades for diverse sensing applications for instance temperature, refractive index, pressure, and biochemical applications among others. The sensors based on MIM waveguides (WGs) are compact and offer unmatchable sensitivity as assessed with dielectric waveguide-based sensors along with an extraordinary figure of merits ( FOM). However, the major concern is that most of these sensors are only numerically simulated/analyzed and there is no experimental demonstration accessible to date. Therefore, in this mini-review, these highly alluring sensor designs are critically analyzed to identify if they are practically feasible or just a fantasy among the scientific community.