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Indium selenide compounds are promising materials for energy conversion, spintronic applications, and chemical sensing. However, it is difficult to grow stoichiometric indium selenide crystals due to the high equilibrium selenium vapor pressure and the complicated phase equilibrium system of indium selenide compounds. In this paper, we apply a novel and convenient crystal growth method, in which the saturated solution is grown by the application of a selenium vapor. In this method, selenium vapor at a pressure higher than the saturated vapor pressure is applied to molten indium, such that the selenium continuously dissolves into the indium solution until the solubility at the growth temperature is reached; then a slow cooling process results in crystallization. The selenium dose is matched to its solubility so that indium selenide compounds can be selectively grown just by controlling the temperature without the need to consider the chemical ratio in the solution. The pressure of the vapor is controlled during the whole growth process so that any deviation from a stoichiometric composition in the crystal can be controlled. Both InSe and In2Se3 were successfully grown using this method, and we have investigated the growth mechanism and found the growth window for each compound. This study presents a novel and convenient approach to fabricating transitional metal chalcogenides without deficiencies in the chalcogen element.

The mechanism of lithium storage in graphenic carbon remains a fundamental question to be addressed. Here the authors employ suitable bilayer graphene foam to investigate various physiochemical phenomena of lithium intercalation and propose a storage model.

We used X-ray diffraction, and Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies to examine the structure and optical properties of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) crystals grown by friction at the interface between two materials. MoS2 is produced chemically from molybdenum dithiocarbamates (MoDTC) in synthetic oil under sliding friction conditions. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns indicate that the structure of the MoS2 is layered with the c-axis perpendicular to the surface. The MoS2 layer was formed on stainless steel and germanium by friction at the interface between these materials and high carbon chromium bearing steel. The number of layers is estimated to be N (N > 6) from the distance between the Raman frequencies of the E12g and A1g modes. For MoS2 grown on stainless steel, exciton peak is observed in the PL spectrum at room temperature. These results show that this friction induced crystal growth method is viable for synthesizing atomic layers of MoS2 at solid surfaces.

The terahertz (THz) frequency range corresponds to molecular vibrations or relaxation modes such as those for the hydrogen bond. Most biomolecules are activated only in aqueous solutions, thus, to understand the function and structure of biomolecules, it is necessary to investigate the characteristics of electromagnetic waves in hydrated samples. THz radiation causes little damage to the human body, thus it is expected that it can be applied for noninvasive examinations. However, spectrometry of the transmitted light is difficult, since the absorption of THz radiation in water is extremely high. In this study, we used sub-THz radiation (frequencies near to 0.1 THz), where the absorption is lower than for THz radiation, to measure the reflectance of a glucose water solution. We found that the reflectance decreases in proportion with the glucose concentration. These results suggest that sub-THz radiation can be used in the noninvasive measurement of blood glucose levels.

At present, one of the main inspection methods of electric wires is visual inspection. The development of a novel non-destructive inspection technology is required because of various problems, such as water invasion by the removal of insulators. Since terahertz (THz) waves have high transparency to nonpolar substances such as coatings of conductive wire, electric conductive wires are extremely suitable for THz non-destructive inspection. In this research, in order to investigate the quantitative possibility of detecting the defects on aluminum electric wire, THz wave reflection imaging measurement was performed for artificially disconnected wires. It is shown that quantitative detection is possible for the disconnect status of the aluminum electric wire by using THz waves.

In this article we review the fundamental properties and applications of sidewall GaAs tunnel junctions. Heavily impurity-doped GaAs epitaxial layers were prepared using molecular layer epitaxy (MLE), in which intermittent injections of precursors in ultrahigh vacuum were applied, and sidewall tunnel junctions were fabricated using a combination of device mesa wet etching of the GaAs MLE layer and low-temperature area-selective regrowth. The fabricated tunnel junctions on the GaAs sidewall with normal mesa orientation showed a record peak current density of 35 000 A cm-2. They can potentially be used as terahertz devices such as a tunnel injection transit time effect diode or an ideal static induction transistor.