Sustainable building: Building green

In addition to having one of the top environmental law programs in the United States, the University of Denver College of Law now has a building that demonstrates the institution ‘practices what it preaches’ when it comes to concern for the environment. Built on the front range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the 181,000 square foot, $63 million facility which opened in August will be the first certified “green” law school in the country. Don C. Smith, U.S. Correspondent explains the attributes that distinguish the building from conventional ones.     

New materials for diode laser pumping of solid-state lasers

The authors review recent progress in the development of new materials for III-V semiconductor diode lasers useful for pumping solid-state lasers. All of the diode lasers discussed are grown on GaAs substrates. Particular emphasis is placed on the performance and reliability of high-CW-power strained-layer InGaAs-AlGaAs diode lasers emitting in the wavelength range between 0.87 and 1.1 μm, improved resistance to degradation of 0.78 to 0.87 μm diode lasers afforded by the strained-layer AlInGaAs-AlGaAs and lattice-matched GaInAsP-GaInP materials systems, and improved performance of visible diode lasers utilizing the materials system GaInP-AlGaInP     

Conducting polymers at low temperatures and high magnetic fields

Advances in the synthesis of organic conducting polymer systems has increased the electrical conductivity of these systems by several orders of magnitude in the last decade. Several practical applications are envisioned for such systems, but a thorough understanding of the conduction mechanisms and identification of the charge carriers is lacking, making design and implementation for bulk synthesis difficult. In order to clarify our understanding of the electrical properties of these systems, the resistivity and magnetoresistivity of various polymers doped near the metal - insulator transition, such as polyaniline protonated by camphor sulfonic acid (PANi-CSA) and polypyrrole doped with PF₆ (PPy-PF₆), have been studied down to 25 mK in magnetic fields up to 16 T.     

Numerical Modeling of Silicon Photodiodes for High-Accuracy Applications Part I. Simulation Programs

The suitability of the semiconductor-device modeling program PC-1D for high-accuracy simulation of silicon photodiodes is discussed. A set of user interface programs optimized to support high-accuracy batch-mode operation of PC-1D for modeling the internal quantum efficiency of photodiodes is also described. The optimization includes correction for the dark current under reverse- and forward-bias conditions before calculating the quantum efficiency, and easy access to the highest numerical accuracy available from PC-1D, neither of which is conveniently available with PC-1D’s standard user interface.     

Percolation in injection molded polymer blends

Elastic moduli of injection molded blends of polycarbonate with poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) have been obtained at temperatures between the glass transition temperatures of the two components. When compared with compression molded blends as a function of composition, the moduli were found to differ by as much as a factor of three at intermediate compositions. The variations are ascribed to differences in connectivity between minor component particles. The morphologies of these materials have been modeled using percolation concepts to quantify continuity of the individual phases. The effects of phase continuity resulting from composition as well as dispersed phase shape differences were evaluated. It was found that shape per se has only a minor effect on percolation. However, shape as reflected in the size of dispersed particles relative to the extent of the domain in which they reside is primary for developing a model for continuity of the phases. An empirical relation for percolation in finite domains was devised from Monte Carlo simulations. Modulus values calculated from these continuity considerations agree well with the observed data.     

The static and dynamic characteristics of single and multiplephase-shifted DFB laser structures

The influence of longitudinal mode spatial hole burning (LMSHB) on the performance of distributed feedback (DFB) laser structures is examined in detail. A comprehensive model has been used to interpret the experimental results and to construct a theoretical framework that was utilized to develop more advanced device designs. An increasing side mode intensity with output power, movement of the lasing mode relative to the stopband, and curvature of the light-current characteristic at low power can all be manifestations of the influence of LMSHB on the static device performance. The dynamic behavior can also be affected, with extended wavelength chirp and amplitude patterning effects on the timescale of the effective carrier recombination time being particularly important     

Spectral characteristics of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with external optical feedback

The measurement of the effects of external optical feedback on the spectra of VCSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers) is reported. It is surprising that VCSELs have a sensitivity to optical feedback comparable to that of conventional edge-emitting lasers such as DFBs despite their significantly different structures. This is because the extremely short cavity length of VCSELs negates the effects of their highly reflective output mirrors. As in edge-emitting lasers, VCSELs exhibit well-defined regimes of feedback effects in their spectra. Since optical isolators cannot be easily applied to VCSELs due to their array structure, these lasers may be most useful in applications which are not sensitive to the spectral qualities of the light source.<>