http://www.inl-journal.com The latest research articles published by International Nano Letters 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z Nanosensing properties of hydrogenated edge armchair graphene nanoribbons (HAGNR) are investigated. Using non-equilibrium Green's function method in the tight-binding approach, the effects of hydrogen and oxygen adsorption on current–voltage (I-V) characteristics and also the electrical conductivity of these systems are calculated. We found that the I-V curves of these systems change by the adsorption of hydrogen or oxygen molecules. Also, we found that conductivity of these systems at low adsorption concentrations increases, while at high adsorption, concentrations decrease. This could be explained in terms of semiconducting or metallic properties of the adsorbed system which was obtained from electronic properties of our clean HAGNR system. On the other hand, the local density of states of some sites has a metallic behavior, and that of other sites has a semiconducting behavior.Note that our results are investigated at a fixed temperature T = 300 K, i.e., room temperature. By calibrating conductivity in terms of adsorbed gas molecules, one can make a gas nanosensor http://www.inl-journal.com/content/2/1/3 Rostam Moradian Sahar Nazeri International Nano Letters 2012, null:3 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2228-5326-2-3 /content/figures/2228-5326-2-3-toc.gif International Nano Letters 2228-5326 ${item.volume} 3 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z XML In this paper, we try to optimize the substrate-radiation/substrate-cladding (cover) radiation modes in terms of their performance parameters. It is well known that the guided modes can only be normalized. However, the radiation modes can also be normalized using the delta/Dirac function. We try to optimize the waveguide design parameters for the known cases to achieve performance as good as guided modes. The formal electromagnetic theory is applied to study the radiation modes. The normalization condition on radiation mode has been carefully used during analysis. The results are found to be satisfactory. It has been concluded that we can modify the performance of radiation modes according to our requirements. The performance is compared with the guided mode. The paper discusses guidelines to optimize the radiation modes for various constraints. http://www.inl-journal.com/content/2/1/2 Sanjeev Raghuwanshi Virendra Kumar Rsdha Pandey International Nano Letters 2012, null:2 2012-04-05T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2228-5326-2-2 /content/figures/2228-5326-2-2-toc.gif International Nano Letters 2228-5326 ${item.volume} 2 2012-04-05T00:00:00Z XML Al-doped and un-doped ZnO thin films deposited on quartz substrates by the nebulized spray pyrolysis method were studied to investigate the wettability of the surface. The main objective of the present study was to investigate the wettability of ZnO thin film by changing the concentration of Al doping. Microstructure and water contact angles of the films were measured by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and using a contact angle goniometer. SEM studies revealed that the grain size within the film increases with the doping concentration. The contact angles were studied to see the effect of aluminum doping on the hydrophilicity of the film. ZnO films were found to be hydrophobic in nature. A good correlation was observed between the SEM micrographs and contact angle results. The nature of the film was found to change from being hydrophobic to hydrophilic after the treatment in low-pressure DC glow discharge plasma, which, however, was reversible with the storage time. http://www.inl-journal.com/content/2/1/1 Deepak Subedi Dinesh Madhup Ashish Sharma Ujjwal Joshi Andrzej Huczko International Nano Letters 2012, null:1 2012-04-05T00:00:00Z doi:10.1186/2228-5326-2-1 /content/figures/2228-5326-2-1-toc.gif International Nano Letters 2228-5326 ${item.volume} 1 2012-04-05T00:00:00Z XML