Writing Conductive Lines with Hot Tips: The interface within devices between conductors, semiconductors, and insulators is usually created by stacking patterned layers of different materials. For flexible electronics, it can be advantageous to avoid this architectural constraint. Graphene oxide, formed by chemical exfoliation of graphite, can be reduced to a more conductive form using chemical reductants. Wei et al. (p. 1373 ) now show that layers of graphene oxide can also be reduced using a hot atomic force microscope tip to create materials comparable to those of organic conductors. This process can create patterned regions (down to 12 nanometers in width) that differ in conductivity by up to four orders of magnitude.

Using a combined experimental and theoretical approach, we address C $1s$ core-level shifts in amorphous carbon. Experimental results are obtained by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electron-energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) on thin-film samples of different atomic density, obtained by a pulsed-laser deposition growth process. The XPS spectra are deconvoluted into two contributions, which are attributed to ${\mathrm{sp}}^2$- and ${\mathrm{sp}}^3$-hybridized atoms, respectively, separated by 0.9 eV, independent of atomic density. The ${\mathrm{sp}}^3$ hybridization content extracted from XPS is consistent with the atomic density derived from the plasmon energy in the EELS spectrum. In our theoretical study, we generate several periodic model structures of amorphous carbon of different densities applying two schemes of increasing accuracy in sequence. We first use a molecular-dynamics approach, based on an environmental-dependent tight-binding Hamiltonian to quench the systems from the liquid phase. The final model structures are then obtained by further atomic relaxation using a first-principles pseudopotential plane-wave approach within density-functional theory. Within the latter framework, we also calculate carbon $1s$ core-level shifts for our disordered model structures. We find that the shifts associated to threefold- and fourfold- coordinated carbon atoms give rise to two distinct peaks separated by about 1.0 eV, independent of density, in close agreement with experimental observations. This provides strong support for decomposing the XPS spectra into two peaks resulting from ${\mathrm{sp}}^2$- and ${\mathrm{sp}}^3$-hybridized atoms. Core-hole relaxations effects account for about 30% of the calculated shifts.

The friction force on a nanometer-sized tip sliding on a surface is related to the thermally activated hopping of the contact atoms on an effective atomic interaction potential. A general analytical expression relates the height of this potential and the hopping attempt frequency to measurements of the velocity dependence of the friction force performed with an atomic force microscope. While the height of the potential is roughly proportional to the normal load, the attempt frequency falls in the range of mechanical eigenfrequencies of the probing tip in contact with the surface.

Direct and simultaneous measurements of the normal and lateral forces encountered by a nanosize spherical silicon tip approaching a solid surface in purified water are reported. For tip-surface distances, $0\pm 0.03\mathrm{nm}<d<2\mathrm{nm}$, experiments and grand canonical molecular-dynamics simulations find oscillatory solvation forces for hydrophilic surfaces, mica and glass, and less pronounced oscillations for a hydrophobic surface, graphite. The simulations reveal layering of the confined water density and the development of hexagonal order in layers proximal to a quartz surface. For subnanometer hydrophilic confinement, the lateral force measurements show orders of magnitude increase of the viscosity with respect to bulk water, agreeing with a simulated sharp decrease in the diffusion constant. No viscosity increase is observed for hydrophobic surfaces.