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Magnetic hyperthermia is an adjuvant therapy for cancer where injected magnetic nanoparticles are used to transfer energy from the time-dependent applied magnetic field into the surrounding medium. Its main importance is to be able to increase the temperature of the human body locally. This localization can be further increased by using a combination of static and alternating external magnetic fields. For example, if the static field is inhomogeneous and the alternating field is oscillating then the energy transfer and consequently, the heat generation is non-vanishing only where the gradient field is zero which results in superlocalization. Our goal here is to study theoretically and experimentally whether the perpendicular or parallel combination of static and oscillating fields produce a better superlocalization. A considerable polarisation effect in superlocalization for small frequencies and large field strengths which are of great importance in practice is found., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, final version, published in J. Phys. D

Chemical modification, such as intercalation or doping of novel materials is of great importance for exploratory material science and applications in various fields of physics and chemistry. In the present work, we report the systematic intercalation of chemically exfoliated few-layer graphene with potassium while monitoring the sample resistance using microwave conductivity. We find that the conductivity of the samples increases by about an order of magnitude upon potassium exposure. The increased of number of charge carriers deduced from the ESR intensity also reflects this increment. The doped phases exhibit two asymmetric Dysonian lines in ESR, a usual sign of the presence of mobile charge carriers. The width of the broader component increases with the doping steps, however, the narrow components seem to have a constant line width.

Magnetic nanoparticle based hyperthermia emerged as a potential tool for treating malignant tumours. The efficiency of the method relies on the knowledge of magnetic properties of the samples; in particular, knowledge of the frequency dependent complex magnetic susceptibility is vital to optimize the irradiation conditions and to provide feedback for material science developments. We study the frequency-dependent magnetic susceptibility of an aqueous ferrite suspension for the first time using non-resonant and resonant radiofrequency reflectometry. We identify the optimal measurement conditions using a standard solenoid coil, which is capable of providing the complex magnetic susceptibility up to 150 MHz. The result matches those obtained from a radiofrequency resonator for a few discrete frequencies. The agreement between the two different methods validates our approach. Surprisingly, the dynamic magnetic susceptibility cannot be explained by an exponential magnetic relaxation behavior even when we consider a particle size-dependent distribution of the relaxation parameter., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, plus Supplementary Materials

Microwave reflectance probed photoconductivity (or $\mu$-PCD) measurement represents a contactless and non-invasive method to characterize impurity content in semiconductors. Major drawbacks of the method include a difficult separation of reflectance due to dielectric and conduction effects and that the $\mu$-PCD signal is prohibitively weak for highly conducting samples. Both of these limitations could be tackled with the use of microwave resonators due to the well-known sensitivity of resonator parameters to minute changes in the material properties combined with a null measurement. A general misconception is that time resolution of resonator measurements is limited beyond their bandwidth by the readout electronics response time. While it is true for conventional resonator measurements, such as those employing a frequency sweep, we present a time-resolved resonator parameter readout method which overcomes these limitations and allows measurement of complex material parameters and to enhance $\mu$-PCD signals with the ultimate time resolution limit being the resonator time constant. This is achieved by detecting the transient response of microwave resonators on the timescale of a few 100 ns \emph{during} the $\mu$-PCD decay signal. The method employs a high-stability oscillator working with a fixed frequency which results in a stable and highly accurate measurement., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures+Supplementary Materials

Absorbed power of nanoparticles during magnetic hyperthermia can be well determined from changes in the quality factor ($Q$ factor) of a resonator, in which the radiofrequency (RF) absorbent is placed. We present an order of magnitude improvement in the $Q$ factor measurement accuracy over conventional methods by studying the switch-on and off transient signals of the resonators. A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) console is ideally suited to acquire the transient signals and it also allows to employ the so-called pulse phase-cycling to remove transient artifacts. The improved determination of the absorbed power is demonstrated on various resonators in the 1-30 MHz range including standard solenoids and also a birdcage resonator. This leads to the possibility to detect minute amounts of ferrite nanoparticles which are embedded in the body and also the amount of the absorbed power. We demonstrate this capability on a phantom study, where the exact location of an embedded ferrite is clearly detected., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, + 2 pages of Appendix

Microwave impedance measurements indicate a non-linear absorption anomaly in single wall carbon nanotubes at low temperatures (below $20$ K). We investigate the nature of the anomaly using a time resolved microwave impedance measurement technique. It proves that the anomaly has an extremely slow, a few hundred second long dynamics. This strongly suggests that the anomaly is not caused by an intrinsic electronic effect and that it is rather due to a slow heat exchange between the sample and the environment.

Characterization of electronic properties of novel materials is of great importance for exploratory materials development and also for the discovery of new correlated phases. As several novel compounds are available in powder form only, contactless methods, which also work on air sensitive samples, are higly desired. We present that the microwave cavity perturbation technique is a versatile tool to study conductivity in such systems. The examples include studies on semiconducting-metallic crossover in carbon nanotubes upon alkali doping, study of vortex motion in the K$_3$C$_{60}$ superconductor, and the characterization of various alkali atom doped phases of black phosphorus.

The microwave cavity perturbation method is often used to determine material parameters (electric permittivity and magnetic permeability) at high frequencies and it relies on measurement of the resonator parameters. We present a method to determine the $Q$-factor and resonance frequency of microwave resonators which is conceptually simple but provides a sensitivity for these parameters which overcomes those of existing methods by an order of magnitude. The microwave resonator is placed in a feedback resonator setup, where the output of an amplifier is connected to its own input with the resonator as a band pass filter. After reaching steady-state oscillation, the feedback circuit is disrupted by a fast microwave switch and the transient signal, which emanates from the resonator, is detected using down-conversion. The Fourier transform of the resulting time-dependent signal yields directly the resonance profile of the resonator. Albeit the method is highly accurate, this comes with a conceptual simplicity, ease of implementation and lower circuit cost. We compare existing methods for this type of measurement to explain the sensitivity of the present technique and we also make a prediction for the ultimate sensitivity for the resonator $Q$ and $f_0$ determination., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures+Supplementary Material

Nanomagnetic hyperthermia (NMH) is intensively studied with the prospect of cancer therapy. A major challenge is to determine the dissipated power during in vivo conditions and conventional methods are either invasive or inaccurate. We present a non-calorimetric method which yields the heat absorbed during hyperthermia: it is based on accurately measuring the quality factor change of a resonant radio frequency circuit which is employed for the irradiation. The approach provides the absorbed power in real-time, without the need to monitor the sample temperature as a function of time. As such, it is free from the problems caused by the non-adiabatic heating conditions of the usual calorimetry. We validate the method by comparing the dissipated power with a conventional calorimetric measurement. We present the validation for two types of resonators with very different filling factors: a solenoid and a so-called birdcage coil. The latter is a volume coil, which is generally used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) under in vivo condition. The presented method therefore allows to effectively combine MRI and thermotherapy and is thus readily adaptable to existing imaging hardware., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures+Supplementary Material (2 pages, 3 figures)