On the repetitive operation of a self-switched transversely excited atmosphere CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> laser

The repetition rate capability of self-switched transversely excited atmosphere (TEA) CO₂ laser was studied for different gas flow configurations. For an optimized gas flow configuration, repetitive operation was achieved at a much smaller gas replenishment factor between two successive pulses when compared with repetitive systems energized by conventional pulsers.     

High-resolution frequency estimation technique for recovering phase distribution in interferometers

An integral approach to phase measurement is presented. First, the use of a high-resolution technique for the pixelwise detection of phase steps is proposed. Next, the robustness of the algorithm that is developed is improved by incorporation of a denoising procedure during spectral estimation. The pixelwise knowledge of phase steps is then applied to the Vandermonde system of equations for retrieval of phase values at each pixel point. Conceptually, our proposal involves the design of an annihilating filter that has zeros at the frequencies associated with the polynomial that describes the fringe intensity. The parametric estimation of this annihilating filter yields the desired spectral information embedded in the signal, which in our case represents the phase steps. The proposed method offers the advantage of extracting the interference phase of nonsinusoidal waveforms in the presence of miscalibration error of the piezoelectric transducer. In addition, in contrast to previously reported methods, this method does not require the application of selective phase steps between data frames for nonsinusoidal waveforms.     

Bridgework ahead! Innovation ecosystems vis-à-vis responsible innovation

Public funding agencies largely support academic research as an effort to stimulate future product commercialization and foster broader societal benefits. Yet, translating research nurtured in academic settings into such outcomes is complex and demands functional interactions between government, academic, and industry, i.e., “triple helix,” organizations within an innovation ecosystem. This article argues that in the spirit of responsible innovation, research funding should build bridges that extend beyond the triple helix stakeholders to connect to peripheral organizations. To support that argument, evidence from agent network analysis gathered from two case studies reveals strong and weak connections, as well as gaps within innovation ecosystems in Switzerland and metropolitan Phoenix, USA. This article offers insights on how innovation ecosystems are aligned or misaligned with responsible innovation.     

Effect of temperature on the synthesis of silver nanoparticles with polyethylene glycol: new insights into the reduction mechanism

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) molecules act as a reducing and stabilizing agent in the formation of silver nanoparticles. PEG undergoes thermal oxidative degradation at temperatures over 70 °C in the presence of oxygen. Here, we studied how the temperature and an oxidizing atmosphere could affect the synthesis of silver nanoparticles with PEG. We tested different AgNO₃ concentrations for nanoparticles syntheses using PEG of low molecular weight, at 60 and 100 °C. At the higher temperature, the reducing action of PEG increased and the effect of PEG/Ag⁺ ratio on nanoparticles aggregation changed. These results suggest that different synthesis mechanisms operate at 60 and 100 °C. Thus, at 60 °C the reduction of silver ions can occur through the oxidation of the hydroxyl groups of PEG, as has been previously reported. We propose that the thermal oxidative degradation of PEG at 100 °C increases the number of both, functional groups and molecules that can reduce silver ions and stabilize silver nanoparticles. This degradation process could explain the enhancement of PEG reducing action observed by other authors when they increase the reaction temperature or use a PEG of higher molecular weight     

Synthesis of novel fluorescently labeled water-soluble fullerenes and their application to its cellar uptake and distribution properties

Fullerene is a well-known carbon nanomaterial, which can be potentially used for drug manufacture or delivery. Despite several successful examples of utilizing fullerene derivatives as drug candidate materials, their low water solubility under physiological conditions negatively affects the cell penetration efficiency after treatment. In this work, we successfully synthesized two fullerene derivatives with covalently attached fluorescein and boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) fluorophore moieties, which exhibited cellular uptake and intracellular localization. While both fluorophores decreased their fluorescence intensity in the vicinity of fullerene, the cellar uptake of the fluorescein-modified fullerene was detected via fluorescence microscopy observations. Moreover, decreases in the fluorescence intensities of the intact fluorescein and BODIPY species were observed when both fluorophores and fullerene coexisted in aqueous media.     

A horn ridge waveguide DFB laser with reduced spatial hole burning for high-speed modulation

In this paper, we propose a DFB laser with a horn ridge waveguide (HRW) to suppress the longitudinal spatial hole burning (LSHB) effect in the lasers cavity, thus to reduce the rolloff at low frequency. The simulation result shows that HRW DFB lasers could significantly suppress the LSHB effect and its modulation bandwidth is increased by 14% comparing with the conventional straight ridge waveguide (RW) DFB lasers when the normalized coupling coefficient (κL) is 3.0. The calculated eye diagrams of HRW DFB lasers under direct 25 Gbps modulation have clearer opening than that of the conventional RW DFB lasers. These superior properties are due to the suppression of the LSHB effect by the HRW structure.     

Genetic algorithm-based design method for multilevel anisotropic diffraction gratings

We developed a method for the design of multilevel anisotropic diffraction gratings based on a genetic algorithm. The method is used to design the multilevel anisotropic diffraction gratings based on input data that represent the output from the required grating. The validity of the proposed method was evaluated by designing a multilevel anisotropic diffraction grating using the outputs from an orthogonal circular polarization grating. The design results corresponded to the orthogonal circular polarization grating structures that were used to provide outputs to act as the input data for the process. Comparison with existing design methods shows that the proposed method can reduce the number of human processes that are required to design multilevel anisotropic diffraction gratings. Additionally, the method will be able to design complex structures without any requirement for subsequent examination by a human designer. The method can contribute to the development of optical elements by designing multilevel anisotropic diffraction gratings.     

Spectral emissivity of type E235B low carbon structural steel with different roughnesses

A self-built experimental apparatus was employed to study the spectral emissivity of type E235B low carbon structural steel in the wavelength range 2–15 μm at different temperatures by energy comparison method. The surface roughness and topography of the steel E235B were determined by a roughness tester and a scanning electron microscopy, respectively. And then, the spectral emissivity of steel E235B with six different roughnesses was measured before and after oxidation. The measurement results showed that the spectral emissivity increased with the increasing temperature and surface roughness before oxidation. The effect of roughness on the spectral emissivity is different at different wavelength and temperature ranges. However, the oscillatory behavior of the spectral emissivity was observed after oxidation. To explore the possible reasons for emissivity variation, the changes of surface roughness and optical roughness were investigated after oxidation. It is found that both the surface roughness and optical roughness increased after oxidation. Although the optical roughness can be used as one of the parameters to evaluate the effect of surface roughness on the spectral emissivity, it is insufficient to describe the effect of surface morphology on the spectral emissivity.