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We report plasmon resonant excitation of hot electrons in a metal based photocatalyst in the oxygen evolution half reaction in aqueous solution. Here, the photocatalyst consists of a 100-nm thick Au film deposited on a corrugated silicon substrate. In this configuration, hot electrons photoexcited in the metal are injected into the solution, ultimately reversing the water oxidation reaction (O2 + 4H+ + 4e− ⇋ 2H2O) and producing a photocurrent. In order to amplify this process, the gold electrode is patterned into a plasmon resonant grating structure with a pitch of 500 nm. The photocurrent (i.e., charge transfer rate) is measured as a function of incident angle using 633 nm wavelength light. We observe peaks in the photocurrent at incident angles of ±9° from normal when the light is polarized parallel to the incident plane (p-polarization) and perpendicular to the lines on the grating. Based on these peaks, we estimate an overall plasmonic gain (or amplification) factor of 2.1× in the charge transfer rate. At these same angles, we also observe sharp dips in the photoreflectance, corresponding to the condition when there is wavevector matching between the incident light and the plasmon mode in the grating. No angle dependence is observed in the photocurrent or photoreflectance when the incident light is polarized perpendicular to the incident plane (s-polarization) and parallel to the lines on the grating. Finite difference time domain simulations also predict sharp dips in the photoreflectance at ±9°, and the electric field intensity profiles show clear excitation of a plasmon-resonant mode when illuminated at those angles with p-polarized light.

We report in-plane thermoelectric measurements of Bi2Te3 nanoplates, a typical topological insulator with Dirac-like metallic surface states, grown by chemical vapor deposition. The as-grown flakes exposed to ambient conditions exhibit relatively small thermopowers around −34 μV/K due to unintentional surface doping (e.g., gas adsorption and surface oxidation). After removal of the unintentional surface doping and surface passivation by deposition of 30 nm of Al2O3 using atomic layer deposition (ALD), the Seebeck coefficient of these flakes increases by a factor of 5× to −169 μV/K. Here, we believe that the ALD-based surface passivation can prevent the degradation of the thermoelectric properties caused by gas adsorption and surface oxidation processes, thus, reducing the unintentional doping in the Bi2Te3 and increasing the Seebeck coefficient. The high surface-to-volume ratio of these thin (∼10 nm thick) nanoplates make them especially sensitive to surface doping, which is a common problem among nanomaterials in general. An increase in the sample resistance is also observed after the ALD process, which is consistent with the decrease in doping.

We report photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy of air-suspended and substrate-supported molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) taken before and after exposure to proton radiation. For 2-, 3-, and 4-layer MoS2, the radiation causes a substantial (>10×) suppression of the indirect bandgap emission, likely due to a radiation-induced decoupling of the layers. For all samples measured (including the monolayer), we see the emergence of a defect-induced shoulder peak at around 1.7 eV, which is redshifted from the main direct bandgap emission at 1.85 eV. Here, defects induced by the radiation trap the excitons and cause them to be redshifted from the main direct band emission. After annealing, the defect-induced sideband disappears, but the indirect band emission remains suppressed, indicating a permanent transition into a direct bandgap material. While suspended 2-, 3-, and 4-layer MoS2 show no change in the intensity of the direct band emission after radiation exposure, substrate-supported MoS2 exhibits an approximately 2-...

The dominant diffusing species in the formation of amorphous interlayer between Gd and Si thin films have been determined by a Mo cluster marker experiment. Multilayered metal thin films were deposited on (001) Si in an ultrahigh vacuum electron beam evaporator. The positions of the Mo cluster markers relative to the Si substrate, before and after heat treatment, were determined by transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray as well as autocorrelation function analysis. The displacement of the Mo cluster markers in the amorphous interlayer during the Gd–Si interdiffusion indicates that Si atoms constitute the dominant diffusing species during the growth of the amorphous interlayer.

The effect of Cu doped into Pt spacer layers on magneto-optical properties for sputtered Pt/Co multilayers has been investigated. The polar Kerr rotation θk oscillates with the content of Cu in Pt spacer layers, and an obvious enhancement of θk at the first and second peaks on its oscillation curve can be seen. The numerical calculation indicates that the components of conductivity tensor in PtCu layers make a simultaneous oscillation with the polar Kerr rotation. These behaviors may result from the spin polarization in PtCu layers.

In Appl. Phys. Lett. 67, 1990 (1995), we proposed a particularly simple four‐domain (4‐D) twisted nematic(TN) liquid crystal display(LCD) device, which is composed of two left‐handed and two right‐handed TN subpixels. The two members of each pair of same handedness subpixels are rotated 180° with respect to each other, resulting in four domains that spatially average one another optically to provide a wide angle of viewing with no gray scale inversion. The optical performance of the 4‐D TN LCD was confirmed by studies of a test cell fabricated by a two‐step SiOx oblique evaporation technique. In this article, we report the realization of our four‐domain TN display by a reverse rubbing technique that should be suitable for mass production in the display industry. The optical simulation of our 4‐D TN cell was performed and the effect of disclinations at subpixel boundaries on display contrast investigated. A simple model was developed to evaluate the stability of our 4‐D structure.

We report photoluminescence (PL) imaging and spectroscopy of air-suspended carbon nanotubes (CNTs) before and after exposure to a brief (20 s) UV/ozone treatment. These spectra show enhanced PL intensities in 10 out of 11 nanotubes that were measured, by as much as 5-fold. This enhancement in the luminescence efficiency is caused by oxygen defects which trap excitons. We also observe an average 3-fold increase in the D-band Raman intensity further indicating the creation of defects. Previous demonstrations of oxygen doping have been carried out on surfactant-coated carbon nanotubes dissolved in solution, thus requiring substantial longer ozone/UV exposure times (∼15 h). Here, the ozone treatment is more efficient because of the surface exposure of the air-suspended CNTs. In addition to enhanced PL intensities, we observe narrowing of the emission linewidth by 3–10 nm. This ability to control and engineer defects in CNTs is important for realizing several optoelectronic applications such as light-emitting ...

Radially and azimuthally oriented liquid crystal (LC) alignment patterns, which are hard to achieve by conventional LC alignment techniques, have been realized by exposure of polyimide surfaces to linearly polarized ultraviolet radiation. These surfaces can be used to realize some special LC configurations which are useful for LC basic research and applications.

A structure for an electro‐optically controlled liquid crystal diffraction grating is proposed, which can dramatically simplify the fabrication process of liquid crystal optical gratings. The structure consists of two alternating stripes. Each stripe is a hybrid liquid crystal cell with adjacent stripes oriented perpendicularly. This kind of electro‐optically controlled diffraction grating in principle gives 100% diffraction efficiency and no polarization direction dependence. The detailed fabrication process is presented.

A particularly simple four‐domain (4‐D) twisted nematic (TN) liquid crystal display (LCD) device is proposed, which is composed of two left‐handed TN and two right‐handed TN subpixels. One of each pair of same handedness subpixels is rotated 180° with respect to the other, resulting in four domains that spatially average one another optically to provide a wide angle of viewing with no gray scale inversion. The detailed fabrication process is presented for a two step SiOx oblique evaporation technique used to realize this 4‐D TN LCD. A reverse rubbed polyamide fabrication process has also been successfully used and will be presented in the full length article. Here we present the complete viewing angle and contrast ratio data for a simple and successful 4‐D TN LCD cell.