Recent development and applications of an optical method for measurements of thermophysical properties

The experimental determination of thermophysical properties has been greatly improved by the introduction of laser technology. The laser beam is used for sensing and also for heating (or exciting) the specimen. The advantage of using a laser beam is most strongly felt in the measurement of the thermal conductivity or the thermal diffusivity, which are some of the most difficult properties to measure. Interesting features of new techniques for investigating various aspects of thermal conductivity in fluids and solids are reviewed. An optical method, the so-called forced Rayleigh scattering method, or the laser-induced optical-grating method, has been developed and used extensively by the present author's group. The method is a high-speed remote-sensing method which can also quantitatively detect anisotropy, namely, direction dependence of heat conduction in the material. It was used for determination of the thermal diffusivity and its anisotropic behavior for high-temperature materials such as molten salts, liquid crystals, extended polymer samples, and flowing polymer melts under shear. Interesting applications of the method were demonstrated also for thermal diffusivity mapping and microscale measurement.Invited paper presented at the Twelfth symposium on Thermophysical Properties, June 19–24, 1994, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.     

Characterization of laser hardened steels by laser induced ultrasonic surface waves

Ultrasonic surface waves are suitable for the characterization of surface hardened materials. This is shown on laser hardened turbine blades. The martensitic microstructure within the surface layer of surface hardened steels has a lower surface wave propagation velocity than the annealed or normalized substrate material. Because the propagation velocity depends on the ratio of layer thickness to wavelengthd/, its measurement allows the determination of the hardening depth. If the surface wave frequency is high enough, the surface wave propagates mainly within the hardened layer. A correlation of the surface wave velocity to the surface hardness has been found. Because the variation of the surface velocity in hardened steels is small, a high measurement accuracy is necessary to obtain the interesting hardening parameters with sufficient certainty. Therefore, a measuring arrangement has been developed where laser pulses, guided by optical fibers to the surface hardened structure, generate simultaneously surface wave pulses at two different positions. The two ultrasonic pulses are received by a piezoelectric transducer. The surface wave velocity is obtained from the time delay between these pulses which is determined by the cross-correlation method. To evaluate simultaneously surface waves with different penetration depths from the same signal acquisition, digital filtering has been used in connection with the cross-correlation.     

Ultraviolet photodetectors and readout based on a-IGZO semiconductor technology

In this work, real-time ultraviolet photodetectors are realized through metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) structures. Amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) is used as semiconductor material and gold as metal electrodes. The readout of an individual sensor is implemented by a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) consisting of an all-enhancement a-IGZO thin-film transistor (TFT) operational amplifier and a switched capacitor (SC) as feedback resistance. The photosensor and the transimpedance amplifier are both manufactured on glass substrates. The measured photosensor possesses a high responsivity R , a low response time t _{R E S} , and a good noise equivalent power value NEP .     

聚集诱导发光分子在双光束超分辨光存储中的潜在应用

聚集诱导发光分子因其高效的发光性质而被广泛应用于生物成像、光波导和电致发光等领域,但在光信息存储领域还鲜有研究。与其他光存储材料相比,聚集诱导发光分子的局域密度变化会引发荧光强度的变化,这在光存储领域是一个显著优点。该文针对聚集诱导发光分子的特性,讨论了该类分子在超分辨光存储领域的可能应用方式,以及需要解决的关键问题。     

基于超像素和光流引导的正射影像拼接方法

影像拼接是生成大规模数字正射影像的关键技术之一,但现有的影像拼接方法在进行多个影像拼接时存在拼接线穿过明显地物导致的鬼影现象。光流是观察者和场景间相对运动引起的影像边缘等的相对运动,其中,大光流对应影像间的变化区域,可用于检测正射影像间的明显地面区域。提出一种基于光流引导的新型影像拼接方法,通过超像素的密集光流提取影像中明显的地物信息,以避免接缝穿过明显的地面物体。采用由粗到细的接缝线优化策略,并在超像素级别上利用Dijkstra算法进行最佳拼接区域检测,从而提高接缝线检测的效率。在此基础上,结合归一化互相关成本函数在像素级别上进行拼接线的像素级优化,获得最优的接缝线。实验结果表明,该方法从主观视觉上能够生成高质量的接缝线,在保证拼接效率的情况下,SSIM质量评价指标较Dijkstra方法、图割方法以及商业软件OrthoVista得到明显提高。     

Targeted Nanoparticle Thermometry: A Method to Measure Local Temperature at the Nanoscale Point Where Water Vapor Nucleation Occurs

An optical nanothermometer technique based on laser trapping, moving and targeted attaching an erbium oxide nanoparticle cluster is developed to measure the local temperature. The authors apply this new nanoscale temperature measuring technique (limited by the size of the nanoparticles) to measure the temperature of vapor nucleation in water. Vapor nucleation is observed after superheating water above the boiling point for degassed and nondegassed water. The average nucleation temperature for water without gas is 560 K but this temperature is lowered by 100 K when gas is introduced into the water. The authors are able to measure the temperature inside the bubble during bubble formation and find that the temperature inside the bubble spikes to over 1000 K because the heat source (optically‐heated nanorods) is no longer connected to liquid water and heat dissipation is greatly reduced.     

Reliability Estimation of Blu‐Ray Recordable Media with Effect of Initial Recording Performance

The lifetime and the reliability of Blu‐Ray Recordable media were estimated with an acceleration test varying the temperature and the relative humidity. Some brand of the media showed relatively long lifetime over 80 years, but another brand was immeasurable because the media was broken during the acceleration procedure. A strong dependence of the lifetime of the media on the brand was observed. Effect of the initial recording performance in terms of the random symbol error rate and the jitter on the reliability was analyzed. The random symbol error rate showed a strong correlation with the reliability of the Blu‐Ray Recordable media. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Single-mode fluorotellurite glass fiber

By multi-stage rod-in-tube fiber drawing process, a single-mode fluorotellurite glass fiber was fabricated and reported for the first time. Benefiting from chemical–physical dehydration process to remove water and OH⁻ groups, the propagation loss was decreased to 1.9 dB/m at 1550 nm and the infrared window is extended from 2.8 μm to 4.2 μm, i.e. a new kind of mid-infrared glass fiber. The fiber is with a small core of 3.52 μm in diameter to meet single-mode condition, and the effective nonlinear parameter γ was estimated to be 236.7 W⁻¹ km⁻¹ at 1550 nm by using continuous-wave self-phase modulation method. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.