Conducting Domain Walls in Lithium Niobate Single Crystals

Ferroic materials play an increasingly important role in novel (nano)electronic devices. Recently, research on domain walls (DWs) receives a big boost by the discovery of DW conductivity (DWC) in BiFeO₃ and Pb(Zr_xTi_1‐x)O₃ ferroic thin films. Here, it is demonstrated that DWC is not restricted to thin films, but equally applies to millimeter‐thick wide‐bandgap, ferroic single crystals, such as LiNbO₃. In this material transport along DWs can be switched by super‐bandgap illumination and tuned by engineering the tilting angle of DWs with respect to the polar axis. The results are consistently obtained using conductive atomic force microscopy to locally map the DWC and macroscopic contacts, thereby in addition investigating the temperature dependence, DW transport activation energies, and relaxation behavior.     

Putting Queens in Carry Chains,N<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">o</Emphasis>̱</Superscript>27

The N-Queens Puzzle is a fascinating combinatorial problem. Up to now, the number of distinct valid placements of N non-attacking queens on a generalized N × N chessboard cannot be computed by a formula. The computation of these numbers is instead based on an exhaustive search whose complexity grows dramatically with the problem size N. Solutions counts are currently known for all N up to 26. The parallelization of the search for solutions is embarrassingly simple. It is achieved by pre-placing the queens within a certain board region. These pre-placements partition the search space. The chosen extent of the pre-placement allows for a wide range of the partitioning granularity. This ease of partitioning makes the N-Queens Puzzle a great show-off case for tremendously parallel computation approaches and a flexible benchmark for parallel compute resources. This article presents the Q27 Project, an open-source effort targeting the computation of the solution count of the 27-Queens Puzzle. It is the first undertaking pushing the frontier of the N-Queens Puzzle that exploits the complete symmetry group D ₄ of the square. This reduces the overall computational complexity already to an eighth in comparison to a naive exploration of the whole search space. This article details the coronal pre-placement that enables the partitioning of the overall search under this approach. With respect to the physical implementation of the computation, it describes the hardware structure that explores the resulting subproblems efficiently by exploiting bit-level operations and their mapping to FPGA devices as well as the infrastructure that organizes the contributing devices in a distributed computation. The performance of several FPGA platforms is evaluated using the Q27 computation as a benchmark, and some intriguing observations obtained from the available partial solutions are presented. Finally, an estimate on the remaining run time and on the expected magnitude of the final result is dared.     

EXAFS as Powerful Analytical Tool for the Investigation of Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Materials

The potential and application of X‐ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) for structural investigations of organic–inorganic hybrid materials, with a special emphasis on systems consisting of inorganic building blocks (clusters) embedded into polymer backbones, is extensively reviewed. In the first part of the paper, the main features of organic–inorganic hybrid materials, their classification, the synthetic approaches for their preparation, and their applications are concisely presented, whereas the particular issues related to their characterization are discussed in more detail. In the second section of the paper, the principles and the theoretical background of the XAS method, including experimental design, data reduction, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation are described and discussed. Examples of potentialities of the method for the short‐range structural investigation of inorganic nanostructures in hybrids are provided, and the state‐of‐the‐art in the field of hybrid materials is reviewed. In the third part, six different case studies belonging to our past and present experience in this field are presented and discussed, with a particular focus on their XAS investigation.     

40 GHz Vertical Transition with a Dual‐Mode Cavity for a Low‐Temperature Co‐fired Ceramic Transceiver Module

A new vertical transition between a substrate integrated waveguide in a low‐temperature co‐fired ceramic substrate and an air‐filled standard waveguide is proposed in this paper. A rectangular cavity resonator with closely spaced metallic vias is designed to connect the substrate integrated waveguide to the standard air‐filled waveguide. Physical characteristics of an air‐filled WR‐22 to WR‐22 transition are compared with those of the proposed transition. Simulation and experiment demonstrate that the proposed transition shows a ?1.3 dB insertion loss and 6.2 GHz bandwidth with a 10 dB return loss for the back‐to‐back module. A 40 GHz low‐temperature co‐fired ceramic module with the proposed vertical transition is also implemented. The implemented module is very compact, measuring 57 mm × 28 mm × 3.3 mm.     

Chiral Excitonic Organic Photodiodes for Direct Detection of Circular Polarized Light

A facile route to soft matter self‐powered bulk heterojunction photodiode detectors sensitive to the circular polarization state of light is shown based on the intrinsic excitonic circular dichroism of the photoactive layer blend. As light detecting materials, enantiopure semiconducting small molecular squaraine derivates of opposite handedness are employed. Via Mueller matrix ellipsometry, the circular dichroism is proven to be of H‐type excitonic nature and not originating from mesoscopic structural ordering. Within the green spectral range, the photodiodes convert circular polarized light into a handedness‐dependent photocurrent with a maximum dissymmetry factor of ±0.1 corresponding to 5% overall efficiency for the polarization discrimination under short circuit conditions. On the basis of transfer matrix optical simulations, it is rationalized that the optical dissymmetry fully translates into a photocurrent dissymmetry for ease of device design. Thereby, the photodiode's ability to efficiently distinguish between left and right circularly polarized light without the use of external optical elements and voltage bias is demonstrated. This allows a straightforward and sustainable future design of flexible, lightweight, and compact integrated platforms for chiroptical imaging and sensing.     

Micromechanical optical switching with voltage control using SOImovable integrated optical waveguides

Optical switching is demonstrated using movable integrated optical waveguides fabricated on silicon-on-insulator substrates. The switching effect is produced by the voltage-controlled micromechanical deflection of the movable waveguides. The dynamic response of the deflection is studied. A contrast ratio of 12 dB of switching is obtained using an applied voltage of less than 10 V. At 20 V, the contrast ratio is about 40 dB     

Diketopyrrolopyrrole Organic Thin‐Film Transistors: Impact of Alkyl Substituents and Tolerance of Ethylhexyl Stereoisomers

Bis(thiophen‐2‐yl)‐diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) dyes bearing various alkyl substituents at the amide positions (n‐butyl, n‐pentyl, n‐hexyl, n‐heptyl, n‐octyl, 2‐ethylhexyl) and chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), or cyano (CN) substituents at the thiophene positions have been synthesized and investigated with regard to their molecular and semiconducting properties. Intense absorption, strong fluorescence, and reversible oxidation and reduction processes are common to all of these dyes. Their characterization as organic semiconductors in vacuum‐processed thin‐film transistors reveals p‐channel operation with field‐effect mobilities ranging from 0.01 to 0.7 cm² V^?1 s^?1. The highest mobility is found for the DPP dyes bearing the 2‐ethylhexyl substituents, which is surprising, considering that as a result of the chiral substituents, this material is a mixture of (R,R), (S,S), and (R,S) stereoisomers. The high carrier mobility in the films of the DPPs bearing stereoisomerically inhomogeneous ethylhexyl groups is rationalized here by single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction (XRD) analysis in combination with XRD and atomic force microscopy studies on thin films, which reveal the presence of slightly different 2D layer arrangements for the n‐alkyl and the 2‐ethylhexyl derivatives. For the cyano‐substituted DPPs possessing the lowest LUMO levels, ambipolar transport characteristics are observed.     

A Novel Blocking Technology for Improving the Short-Channel Effects in Polycrystalline Silicon TFT Devices

An original blocking technology is proposed for improving the short-channel characteristics of polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs). In particular, two types of modified devices called poly-Si TFT with block oxide and poly-Si on partial insulator (POPI)-TFT are designed for the first time in this field to enhance device performance. The proposed TFT structures can significantly reduce short-channel effects when compared with a thick source/drain (S/D) poly-Si TFT (i.e., the fully depleted TFT). In addition, an ultrathin (UT) S/D structure (UT-TFT) is designed to verify that the block oxide TFT devices do achieve improved performance without needing the thin active layers and ultrashallow junction depth. Also, the POPI-TFT is found to reduce the thermal instability through its natural body-tied scheme.     

Brookite Formation in TiO2?Ag Nanocomposites and Visible‐Light‐Induced Templated Growth of Ag Nanostructures in TiO2

TiO₂? Ag‐nanocomposites exhibit various desirable properties that make them suitable for a variety of applications, for example in photocatalysis and as bactericidal coatings. In this work, a new method for processing TiO₂? Ag nanocomposites is presented. The nanocomposite films are fabricated from one precursor solution with high silver loading of up to 50%. The resulting films exhibit a microstructure consisting of TiO₂? Ag_xO nanocomposites with a largely XRD‐amorphous TiO₂ matrix containing brookite nanocrystals. This specific microstructure absorbs in the visible range so that photoreduction of Ag ions can be accomplished by using visible light. The thin films can be patterned using simple shadow masks. The illuminated areas show a high density of self‐organized nanoparticles (SNPs) and nanorods (SNRs), which are templated by the TiO₂ porous network. The particle size can be tuned by varying the irradiation time. Most of the SNPs and SNRs form faceted crystals, which are mostly a combination of {111} and {110}. The application of these films as substrates for surface‐enhanced Raman scattering is shown. Enhancement factors as high as 4.6 × 10⁶ could be obtained using rhodamine 6G dye molecules. More applications should involve photocatalytic water purification using visible light.     

Fe-Ni-Mn合金中等温马氏体的生长过程

本文采用透射电子显微镜研究了Fe-21Ni-4Mn合金中等温马氏体的生长过程,着重探讨了生长过程中亚结构的发展和变化.结果表明,在马氏体生长的初期阶段,小的薄片状马氏体的亚结构完全是以(112)_b为孪晶面的孪晶,并且贯穿整个片内,相界面平直向前生长.稍后阶段,片的生长主要集中在一侧,此例相界面弯曲向前生长,出现非孪晶区域,内含大量位错,同时,片的孪晶弯曲.生长到后期,弯曲的相界面变为平直,邻近相同位向的小片相互联接在一起,形成一宏观惯习面为(252)_f的大马氏体片,而构成大片的小马氏体片的惯习面为(121)_f.