Surface relief gratings in photoaddressable polymers generated by cw holography

Surface relief gratings (SRGs) are a widely observed phenomenon in holographic experiments with photoaddressable polymers. This article proposes a model which is able to explain the observed effects in cw experiments. It is based on forces in an electrical field which are caused by the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of the refractive index and the permittivity in the illuminated sample. Received: 11 September 2000 / Revised version: 5 December 2000 / Published online: 21 February 2001     

Optical functions of tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3) by spectroscopic ellipsometry

Optical functions of tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq₃) have been studied in the spectral range from 1.55 eV to 5 eV using spectroscopic ellipsometry. The samples have been deposited by thermal evaporation on glass substrates. Optical functions of Alq₃ deposited on unheated substrates and on substrates kept at 100 °C have been determined. The optical functions have been modeled using point-to-point fitting, with the conventional oscillator model and modified oscillator model. It has been found that point-to-point fitting gives the best agreement with the experimental data, and that the modified oscillator model yields better agreement with the experimental data than the conventional oscillator model. Received: 3 September 2001 / Accepted: 22 March 2002 / Published online: 5 July 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +852-2559/8738, E-mail: dalek@eee.hku.hk     

CdTe epilayers for uses in optical waveguides

CdTe epilayers have been grown by vapor phase epitaxy (VPE) on glass, MgO, sapphire, LiNbO₃ and mica substrates. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies show the good structural quality of the epilayers. In these epilayers, a few optical modes were excited with a 1.33-μm laser. The measured propagation losses were in the range between 5 dB/cm and less than 0.5 dB/cm. From dark-mode m-lines, the epilayer thickness was found to be in the 1–3 μm range, in good accord with that obtained by SEM measurements. The refractive index obtained from the fitting is also in good accord with that of bulk CdTe. Received: 7 October 1999 / Accepted: 13 March 2000 / Published online: 5 July 2000     

Electrical and optical characterization of thrombin-induced permeability of cultured endothelial cell monolayers on semiconductor electrode arrays

Impedance spectroscopy and phase-contrast microscopy are combined to monitor the electrical and morphological properties of human umbilical vein endothelial cell monolayers. The cells were cultured on optically transparent indium-tin-oxide (ITO) semiconductor electrode arrays coated with collagen IV, and the effect of the inflammatory mediator thrombin on monolayer permeability was monitored in real time. ITO electrodes provide several advantages for these kinds of experiments, because they are optically transparent, polarizable and highly sensitive due to the absence of insulating oxide layers. A qualitative correlation between the thrombin-induced gap formation and the electrical parameters of the cell layer is established. Received: 8 August 2000 / Accepted: 2 March 2001 / Published online: 20 June 2001     

Optical characterization of thin thermal oxide films on copper by ellipsometry

A complete optical characterization in the visible region of thin copper oxide films has been performed by ellipsometry. Copper oxide films of various thicknesses were grown on thick copper films by low temperature thermal oxidation at 125 °C in air for different time intervals. The thickness and optical constants of the copper oxide films were determined in the visible region by ellipsometric measurements. It was found that a linear time law is valid for the oxide growth in air at 125 °C. The spectral behaviour of the optical constants and the value of the band gap in the oxide films determined by ellipsometry in this study are in agreement with the behaviour of those of Cu₂O, which have been obtained elsewhere through reflectance and transmittance methods. The band gap of copper oxide, determined from the spectral behaviour of the absorption coefficient was about 2 eV, which is the generally accepted value for Cu₂O. It was therefore concluded that the oxide composition of the surface film grown on copper is in the form of Cu₂O (cuprous oxide). It was also shown that the reflectance spectra of the copper oxide–copper structures exhibit behaviour expected from a single layer antireflection coating of Cu₂O on Cu. Received: 19 July 2001 / Accepted: 27 July 2001 / Published online: 17 October 2001     

Reverse saturable absorption in chlorophyll A solutions

The dynamic nonlinear absorption of a chloroform solution of chlorophyll A was investigated using the Z-scan technique with picosecond pulses at 532 nm. The nonlinear absorption exhibits a reverse saturation, indicating a strong intersystem crossing (singlet–triplet) process. The time evolution of the optical nonlinearity, modeled by means of a five-level energy diagram, allows the determination of excited-state cross sections and the lifetime of the intersystem crossing based on its absorption characteristics and efficient formation of triplet states. Chlorophyll A was found to be a good candidate for a sensitizer in photodynamic therapy. Received: 14 February 2002 / Published online: 2 May 2002     

Ellipsometry study of thin metallic films under constraint by the size effect

Received: 9 July 1997/Accepted: 17 October 1997     

Excimer laser ablation of gold-loaded inverse polystyrene-block-poly (2-vinylpyridine) micelles

Diblock-copolymers (PS(1700)-b-P2VP(450) or PS(1350)-b-P2VP(400)) forming spherical micelles, can be loaded with a Au-salt and deposited on top of various substrates. Such polymer films have been exposed to a pulsed ArF excimer laser in order to remove the polymer matrix and, in parallel, to chemically reduce the salt into metallic Au nanodots. To analyze this process in detail, it was subdivided into three steps: (a) laser ablation of thick and thin diblock-copolymer films; (b) laser irradiation of Au-salt loaded diblock-copolymer films; and (c) laser irradiation of arrays of metallic Au nanodots. In (a) it was found that a complete removal of the polymer by laser ablation is only possible in air under ambient conditions while identical laser irradiations under vacuum result in a residual layer of approximately 14 nm. Substep (b) revealed a nucleation process of the resulting metallic Au within the micellar core leading to clusters of small Au dots. Furthermore, this substep provided evidence for an asymmetric interplay between the macroscopic temperature of a polymer film during laser treatment and the energy density per laser pulse. In (c) it could be demonstrated that metallic Au nanodots on mica are stable against laser irradiation under conditions leading to a polymer removal. Received: 7 August 2000 / Accepted: 2 November 2000 / Published online: 3 April 2001     

Multiple beam atom interferometer: theory and experiment

Received: 30 May 1997/ 27 August 1997     

Microgeometry and effective permittivity of discontinuous metal films

This work deals with the investigation of dielectric and optical properties of discontinuous metal films over a wide range of filling factors each side of the percolation threshold. A phenomenological two-parameter representation is used for the effective permittivity &εtilde; of such systems. In order to test the proposed approach, we have taken for gold films on a glass substrate the transmittance spectra in the visible and near-IR regions. It is shown that the representation used for the effective permittivity enables us to adequately describe the experimental transmittance spectra. The parameters entering the above representation are determined and the relationship between them and film microgeometry is discussed. Received: 6 November 2000 / Accepted: 30 May 2001 / Published online: 25 July 2001     

Photorefractive waveguides in oxide crystals: fabrication, properties, and applications

3 , LiTaO₃, BaTiO₃, KNbO₃, Sr_xBa_1-xNb₂O₆ (0.25≤x≤0.75, SBN), and Bi₁₂(Si,Ti,Ge)O₂₀ (BSO, BTO, BGO) waveguides are discussed. Furthermore, the suitability of photorefractive waveguides for nonlinear optical components is demonstrated in some examples. Received: 21 April 1998/Revised version: 28 May 1998     

Growth Mechanism and Optimized Parameters to Synthesize Nafion-115 Nanowire Arrays with Anodic Aluminium Oxide Membranes as Templates

Nation-115 nanowire arrays are synthesized with an extrusion method using AAO membranes as templates. It is indicated that the vacuum treating of AAO templates before surface decoration plays an important role in obtaining high filling rate of the Nation-115 nanowires in the AAO templates, vchile the concentration of Nafion-115 DMSO solutions does not affect the flling rate greatly. The optimized parameters to synthesize the Nation-115 nanowire arrays are studied. The filling rate of the Nadion-115 nanowires in the AAO templates synthesized with the optimized parameters is about 95% discussed to qualitatively explain the experimental results The growth mechanism of Nafion-115 nanowires is     

Microscopic theory of optical dephasing in semiconductors

Dephasing, i.e. the decay of the optical interband polarization in a semiconductor results from destructive interference effects between different microscopic contributions. For a system without any disorder it is shown that the many-body Coulomb correlations lead to excitation-induced dephasing which becomes increasingly important at elevated excitation levels. The effect of disorder-induced dephasing is analyzed for low excitation levels, where the combined influence of excitonic, biexcitonic, and disorder scattering contributions lead to a temporal decay of the four-wave-mixing signal. Received: 30 March 2000 / Accepted: 2 September 2000 / Published online: 12 October 2000     

Design, Fabrication and Measurement of Ni/Ti Multilayer Used for Neutron Monochromator

Ni/Ti multilayers, which can be used for neutron monochromators, are designed, fabricated and measured. Firstly, their reflectivities are simulated based on the Nevot-Croce model. Reflectivities of two Ni/Ti multilayer mirrors with periods d = 10.3 nm （M1） and d = 7.8 nm （M2） are calculated. In the calculation, the reflectivity of the Ni/Ti multilayer is taken as a function of the gazing angle with different roughness factors δ =1.0 nm and = 1.5 nm. Secondly, these two multilayers are fabricated by the direct current magnetron sputtering technology. Thirdly their structures are characterized by small-angle x-ray diffraction. The roughness factors are fitted to be 0.68 nm and 1.16nm for M1 and M2, respectively. Finally their reflective performances are measured on the V14 neutron beam line at the Berlin Neutron Scattering Centre （BENSC）, Germany. The experimental data show that the grazing angle of the reflected neutron intensity peak increases, but the reflected neutron intensity decreases, with the decreasing periods of the multilayers.     

Improved electrical and optical properties of MEH-PPV light emitting diodes using Ba buffer layer and porphyrin

It has been found that insertion of a thin Ba buffer layer between the Al electrode and the MEH-PPV layer results in a significantly higher current density in ITO/MEH-PPV/Al polymer light-emitting diodes due to a reduction of the potential barrier at the cathode-polymer interface. The photoluminescence is found to increase with the addition of porphyrin-containing platinum as the central atom, showing that some of the triplet excitons decay radiatively as a result of mixing porphyrin.     

Study on size-dependent optical property of 4,4′-dibromobiphenyl nanocrystals

4,4^′-dibromobiphenyl nanocrystals with different sizes in the range from 20 nm to 300 nm were prepared by the reprecipitation method. It was found that their absorption peaks experienced a red shift while the size of the nanocrystals increased. Through analyzing these spectra of the nanocrystals with different sizes, it is suggested that this size-dependent optical property is contributed by two factors, the size effect and the J-aggregate formation. Received: 28 August 2000 / Accepted: 2 March 2001 / Published online: 23 May 2001     

Optical absorption in compact and extended dendrimers

Dendrimers are highly branched molecules, which are expected to be useful, for example, as efficient artificial light harvesting systems, in nano-technological or in medical applications. There are two different classes of dendrimers: compact dendrimers with constant distance between neighboring branching points throughout the macromolecule and extended dendrimers, where this distance increases from the system periphery to the center. We investigate the linear optical absorption spectra of these dendrimer types using the Frenkel exciton concept. The electron-phonon interaction is taken into account by introducing a heat bath that interacts with the exciton in a stochastic manner. We discuss compact dendrimers with equal excitation energies at all molecules, dendrimers with a functionalized core as well as with a whole branch functionalized. Furthermore the line shape of a compact dendrimer is discussed when neighboring molecules at the periphery interact and when all molecules have randomly distributed excitation energies due to disorder. Finally, we discuss two models for extended dendrimers.     

Charge carrier injection and transport in polymer blend films

The steady current-voltage characteristics of single layer organic devices based on MEH-PPV and N,N′-diphenyl-N,N′-bis(4′-[N,N-bis(naphth-1-yl)-amino]-biphenyl-4-yl)-benzidine (TPTE) blend with different TPTE concentrations was investigated. The thickness dependence of the current-voltage relationship clearly demonstrates that the current at low voltage and at high voltage are all space charge limited. The current density-electric field characteristic proves the blend polymer LEDs to operate in the tunneling-controlled model. The effective hole mobility is directly determined by space charge limited current at high voltage and increases with increasing TPTE content in the blend. The EL efficiency shows concentration dependence, which is attributed to the change of the transport of holes in the blend film.     

Organic optoelectronic device fabrication using standard UV photolithography

The fabrication of organic optoelectronic devices requires patterning techniques that are compatible with organic semiconductor materials. Photolithography represents, by far, the dominant patterning approach for inorganic electronics and optoelectronics. High speed, parallel patterning capability, high resolution, and the availability of standard equipment make this technology also very attractive for applications in the field of organic semiconductor technology. In the present paper we present a successful implementation of photolithography to fabricate organic diodes. This process provides the basis for a future high‐resolution monolithic integration of organic optoelectronic and photonic devices into one photonic circuit. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Design of Grazing-Incidence Broad-Band Multilayers for Hard X-Ray Reflectors

A new method of designing x-ray supermirrors with broad angular or energy response for use as coatings in x-ray optics is presented. The design is based on an analytical method with oversimplified analytical and semi-empirical formulae, and an extensive numerical method is used in the optimization design. A better initial multilayer is obtained with the former method and optimized with the latter method. In the optimization, a good design is achieved with much less computing time. In addition, the saturation effect due to the interfacial roughness in multilayer also emerges in the design of x-ray supermirrors with definite performances. The reflectivity of C/W x-ray supermirrors as a function of photon energy at the fixed grazing incident angle 0.5°is presented.