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The incorporation of graphene-related materials as nanofiller can produce multifunctional foams with enhanced specific properties and density reduction. Herein we report on the preparation of microcellular thermoplastic polyurethane/graphene foams by batch foaming. Solution blending was first adopted to disperse graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) in the elastomeric matrix. Then, a foaming process based on the use of supercritical CO2 was adopted to produce the microcellular TPU/GNP composite foams with graphene content up to 1 wt%. The EMI shielding behaviour of the TPU/GNP foams has been assessed in the THz range, and has revealed their potential in comparison with other graphene-filled foams presented in the literature, that exhibit similar specific shielding effectiveness but at much higher content of graphene-related materials (10-30 wt%).

Different spectroscopic techniques have been applied to fluorine doped ZnO powders prepared through hydrothermal synthesis, to discern the effective capability of F atoms to improve ZnO conductivity. From XRD analysis, no lattice distortion was observed up to F doping at 5 at. % concentration. Photoluminescence measurements and electron paramagnetic resonance data show that F atoms tend to occupy oxygen vacancies, inducing the onset of luminescence centers. The resulting doping effect consists into the increment of localized charge, as also proved via THz spectroscopy, where the Drude-Smith model has been applied to extract quantitative information on the electrodynamic parameters of ZnO:F samples. Results show that F doping does not produce any substantial change of plasma frequency but only the enhancement of scattering rate due to an increase of grain boundary density. Our measurements are in agreement with theoretical calculations asserting that the energy required to excite donor levels is on the order of 0.7 eV, and therefore, the doping mechanism is ineffective at room temperature.

We report on the realization of high Q metasurfaces operating in the THz frequency range by femtosecond laser ablation applied to a nanometric metallic layer over a silicon substrate. Two different fabrication methods are used to develop periodic patterns whose basic elements are in form of an array of through-holes or metallic islands. The response of the resulting structures is characterized using a time-domain spectrometer in the frequency range 0.3–1.5 THz. The experimental findings are compared with the predictions of full wave electromagnetic simulations. The fairly good agreement between simulation predictions and experimental findings evidences that the proposed approach can offer a facile way to the elaboration of THz metasurfaces.

High-resolution focused ion beam lithography has been used to fabricate YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) wires with nanometric lateral dimensions. In the present work, we investigate Flux-flow instabilities in nanowires of different widths, showing sudden voltage switching jumps from the superconducting to the normal state. We present an extensive study on the temperature and field dependence of the switching characteristics which reveal that voltage jumps become less abrupt as the temperature increases, and disappear at the vortex-liquid state. On the contrary, the current distribution at the critical point becomes narrower at high temperatures. Sharp voltage switchings very close to the critical current density can be obtained by reducing the width of the nanowires, making them very appealing for practical applications., We acknowledge financial support fromthe SpanishMinistry of Economy and Competitiveness through the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0496), CONSOLIDER Excellence Network (MAT2015-68994-REDC), COACHSUPENERGY project (MAT2014-51778-C2-1-R, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund). We also are grateful for support from the European Union for ULTRASUPERTAPE project (ERC-2014-ADG-669504), NANOCOHYBRI project (Cost Action CA 16218), and from the Catalan Government with SGR-2017 and Xarmae. We acknowledge the use of ICTS-CNM facilities and ICMAB scientific and technical services.

Self-assembled nanoscale channels may naturally arise in the growth process of grain boundaries (GBs) in high critical temperature superconductor (HTS) systems, and deeply influence the transport properties of the GB Josephson junctions (JJs). By isolating nano-channels in YBCO biepitaxial JJs and studying their properties, we sort out specific fingerprints of the mesoscopic nature of the contacts. The size of the channels combined to the characteristic properties of HTS favors a special regime of the proximity effect, where normal state coherence prevails on the superconducting coherence in the barrier region. Resistance oscillations from the current–voltage characteristic encode mesoscopic information on the junction and more specifically on the minigap induced in the barrier. Thouless energy emerges as a characteristic energy of these types of Josephson junctions. Possible implications on the understanding of coherent transport of quasiparticles in HTS and of the dissipation mechanisms are discussed, along with elements to take into account when designing HTS nanostructures.

Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductors (HTSs), most efforts of researchers have been focused on the fabrication of superconducting devices capable of immobilizing vortices, hence of operating at enhanced temperatures and magnetic fields. Recent findings that geometric restrictions may induce self-arresting hypervortices recovering the dissipation-free state at high fields and temperatures made superconducting strips a mainstream of superconductivity studies. Here we report on the geometrical melting of the vortex lattice in a wide YBCO submicron bridge preceded by magnetoresistance (MR) oscillations fingerprinting the underlying regular vortex structure. Combined magnetoresistance measurements and numerical simulations unambiguously relate the resistance oscillations to the penetration of vortex rows with intermediate geometrical pinning and uncover the details of geometrical melting. Our findings offer a reliable and reproducible pathway for controlling vortices in geometrically restricted nanodevices and introduce a novel technique of geometrical spectroscopy, inferring detailed information of the structure of the vortex system through a combined use of MR curves and large-scale simulations.

Over the past few years, the scientific community, both in academia and industry, witnessed a continuous and persistent effort in order to close the unexplored portion of the electromagnetic spectrum called THz gap, ranging from 100 GHz to 10 THz. Thanks to its properties, the THz technology finds application in diverse dual-use areas, spanning from chemical to pharmaceutical, biology and environmental sciences, and everyday applications within a broad range of industries including security, cultural heritage, manufacturing, and aerospace sectors. After a brief description of the common architecture of THz system, we focus here on Time Domain Spectroscopy (TDS-THz) THz system, we provide here some examples of dual-use THz applications, such as spectroscopic measurements of unknown objects or contactless and non-destructive analysis of different materials by spatial imaging operations.

We present the experimental characterization of mantle cloaks designed so as to minimize the electromagnetic scattering of moderately-sized dielectric and conducting cylinders at S-band microwave frequencies. Our experimental setup is based on a parallel-plate waveguide system, which emulates a two-dimensional plane-wave scattering scenario and allows the collection of near-field maps as well as more quantitative assessments in terms of global scattering observables (e.g., total scattering width). Our results, in fairly good agreement with full-wave numerical simulations, provide a further illustration of the mantle- cloak mechanism, including its frequency-sensitivity and confirm its effectiveness both in restoring the near-field impinging wavefront around the scatterer and in significantly reducing the overall scattering.

Graphene-like (GL) layers and eumelanin-based graphene-like (EUGL) hybrids have been investigated through THz time domain spectroscopy. The interest in these materials lies on their peculiar chemical-physical properties: the former are conductive water stable materials, whereas the latter are biocompatible materials with good conductive and adhesive properties. Both exhibit promising optoelectronic and bioelectronic applications. We measured mixtures of GL layers or EUGL hybrids with KBr, shaped in pellets with uniform thickness, in order to circumvent problems related to sample inhomogeneity and roughness. A mean field theory was applied to extract direct information on permittivity and conductivity. Data have been carefully fitted through the Drude-Smith theory, confirming the conductive nature of the hybrid materials. The results show that EUGL hybrid-based devices can be promising for the next generation of printable bio-circuits.

The paper deals with the problem of early detecting cracks in composite materials for avionic applications. In particular, the authors present a THz imaging system that exploits compressive sampling (CS) to detect submillimeter cracks with a reduced measurement burden. Traditional methods for THz imaging usually involve raster scan of the issue of interest by means of highly collimated radiations and the corresponding image is achieved by measuring the received THz power in different positions (pixels) of the desired image. As it can be expected, the higher the required resolution, the longer the measurement time. On the contrary, two different approaches for THz imaging (namely, continuous wave and time domain spectroscopy) combined with a proper CS solution are used to assure as good results as those granted by traditional raster scan; a proper set of masks (each of which characterized by a specific random pattern) are defined to the purpose. A number of tests conducted on simulated data highlighted the promising performance of the proposed method thus suggesting its implementation in an actual measurement setup.

We investigate new classes of artificial materials exhibiting unconventional properties in order to build novel devices operating in the Terahertz regime. The design, fabrication and electromagnetic characterization of tunable metamaterials with unit cells based on Split Ring Resonators are presented. By incorporation of a nematic liquid crystal in the structure, we observe a frequency shift in the resonant response over 10% in bandwidth and more than 10 dB change in the signal absorption. We discuss how such a hybrid structure can be exploited for the development of a THz spatial light modulator.

We have developed a fabrication process that allows us to realize pure YBCO nanowires displaying robust superconductivity at widths w as low as 160 nm. We can modify the process in order to maintain a Au protective layer. This allows us to scale our nanowires even further to widths as low as 50 nm. We have studied how the presence of vortices and the occurrence of phase slips affect the transport properties of nanowires in the width range xi < w < lambda, being xi the coherence length and lambda the magnetic penetration depth. Magnetoresistance curves present features which are related to the effect of screening currents. Vortex entry barrier is found to scale with the width. Our findings confirm that for widths xi < w < lambda nanowires are better protected against phase slips and vortex flow. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We have extended the off-axis biepitaxial technique to produce YBCO grain boundary junctions on low loss substrates. Excellent transport properties have been reproducibly found, with remarkable values of the quality factor I(c)R(n) (with I(c) the critical current and R(n) the normal state resistance) above 10 mV, far higher than the values commonly reported in the literature for high temperature superconductor (HTS) based Josephson junctions. The outcomes are consistent with a picture of a more uniform grain boundary region along the current path. This work supports a possible implementation of grain boundary junctions for various applications including terahertz sensors and HTS quantum circuits in the presence of microwaves.

The properties of single submicron high-temperature superconductor (HTS) rings are investigated. The Little-Parks effect is observed and is accompanied by an anomalous behavior of the magnetic dependence of the resistance, which we ascribe to nonuniform vorticity (superfluid angular momentum) within the ring arms. This effect is linked to the peculiar HTS relationship between the values of the coherence length and the London penetration depth.

We investigate the use of Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy as a tool for the measurement of the index dispersion of multi walled carbon nanotubes in polypropylene based composites. Samples containing 0.5% by volume concentration of not functionalized and functionalized carbon nanotubes are prepared by melt compounding technology. Results indicate that the THz response of the investigated nanocomposites is strongly dependent on the kind of nanotube functionalization, which in turn impacts on the level of dispersion inside the polymer matrix. We show that specific dielectric parameters such as the refractive index and the absorption coefficient measured by THz spectroscopy can be both correlated to the index of dispersion as estimated using a traditional and well established approach based on the analysis of optical microscopy images performed on purpose-prepared nanocomposite slices.

The exponential factor in Equation (1) of the paper published in Materials [1] reports a misprintand the correct expression of the transmission function is [...]., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.