This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9519, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Authors, and Conference Committee listing.

We demonstrate the possibilities of atomic layer deposition technology to fabricate and improve the quality of nanowaveguide devices of a different kind in TiO₂ platform. In particular, we present an original re-coating method of improving the quality of amorphous TiO₂ strip waveguides, which reduces the propagation losses significantly. Then we demonstrate how atomic layer deposition technology makes it possible to fabricate very precise slot waveguides and to tune the geometrical parameters of nanobeam cavities operating with visible light. The main fabrication methods of the presented structures are electron beam lithography, reactive ion etching and atomic layer deposition.

We report on maskless fabrication of photonic crystal (PhC) circuits based on ultrathin (d ~ 15 nm) nanoperforated GaN membranes exhibiting a triangular lattice arrangement of holes with diameters of 150 nm. In recent years, we have proposed and developed a cost-effective technology for GaN micro- and nanostructuring, the so-called surface charge lithography (SCL), which opened wide possibilities for a controlled fabrication of GaN ultrathin membranes. SCL is a maskless approach based on direct writing of negative charges on the surface of a semiconductor by a focused ion beam (FIB). These charges shield the material against photo-electrochemical (PEC) etching. Ultrathin GaN membranes suspended on specially designed GaN microstructures have been fabricated using a technological route based on SCL with two selected doses of ion beam treatment. Calculation of the dispersion law in nanoperforated membranes in the approximation of scalar waves is indicative of the occurrence of surface and bulk modes, and there is a range of frequencies where only surface modes can exist. Advantages of the occurrence of two types of modes in ultrathin nanoperforated GaN membranes from the point of view of their incorporation in photonic and optoelectronic integrated circuits are discussed. Along with this, we present the results of a comparative analysis of persistent photoconductivity (PPC) and optical quenching (OQ) effects occurring in continuous and nanoperforated ultrathin GaN suspended membranes, and assess the mechanisms behind these phenomena.

Wide band gap oxides, such as ZnO, SnO₂ and ZrO₂, are functional materials with a wide range of applications in several important technological areas such as those including lighting, transparent electronics, sensors, catalysis and biolabeling. Recently, doping and co-doping of oxides with lanthanides have attracted a strong interest for lighting purposes, especially among them nanophosphors for bioassays. Tailoring the crystalline materials physical properties for such applications often requires a well-controlled incorporation of dopants in the material lattice and a comprehensive understanding of their role in the oxides matrices. These undoped or intentionally doped oxides have band gap energies exceeding 3.3 eV at room temperature and are known to exhibit optically active centers that span from the ultraviolet to the near infrared region. Typically, by using photon energy excitation above the materials band gap, high quality undoped materials display narrow emission lines near the band edge due to free and bound-exciton recombination, as well as shallow donor-acceptor recombination pairs. Additionally, broad emission bands are often observed in these wide band gap hosts, hampering some of the desired physical properties for further applications. Recognizing and understanding the role of the dopant-related defects when deliberately introduced in the oxide hosts, as well as their influence on the samples luminescence properties, constitutes a matter of exploitation by the scientific community worldwide. In this work, we investigate the luminescence properties of undoped and lanthanide doped oxide materials grown by laser assisted techniques. Laser assisted flow deposition (LAFD) and pulse laser ablation in liquids (PLAL) were used for the growth of ZnO, SnO₂ and yttria stabilized ZrO₂ (YSZ) micro and nanocrystals with different morphologies, respectively. Regarding the YSZ host, trivalent lanthanide ions were optically activated by in-situ doping and co-doping. The influence of the defect energy states on the optical properties of the different undoped and doped metal oxide hosts is investigated under ultraviolet and infrared excitation by means of photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation.

A simple schematic on parallel optical detection of two-fluorophore barcode for single-molecule nanopore sensing is presented. The chosen two fluorophores, ATTO-532 and DY-521-XL, emitting in well-separated spectrum range can be excited at the same wavelength. A beam splitter was employed to separate signals from the two fluorophores and guide them to the same CCD camera. Based on a conventional microscope, sources of background in the nanopore sensing system, including membranes, compounds in buffer solution, and a detection cell was characterized. By photoluminescence excitation measurements, it turned out that silicon membrane has a negligible photoluminescence under the examined excitation from 440 nm to 560 nm, in comparison with a silicon nitrite membrane. Further, background signals from the detection cell were suppressed. Brownian motion of 450 bps DNA labelled with single ATTO-532 or DY-521-XL was successfully recorded by our optical system.

The binding of nanoparticles zeolite with a number of cationic porphyrins are studied. Previously, it was established that the main mechanism of binding the zeolite nanoparticles with cationic porphyrins is an ionic bond. Since binding of porphyrins as ligands to nanoparticles at the initial stage of interaction is determined by the Brownian motion of porphyrins, it is obvious that the interaction of porphyrins with nanoparticles may depend on the temperature. In the present paper by methods of absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy was studied the complexation of porphyrins with zeolite nanoparticles at different temperature conditions. It was established that there is a clear temperature dependence of the complexation of cationic metalloporphyrins with zeolite naonoparticles, and for correct determination of the percentage of binding must be strict thermostating of the experimental conditions.

Prospective composite bioceramic titania coatings were obtained on intraosseous implants fabricated from cp-titanium and medical titanium alloy VT16 (Ti-2.5Al-5Mo-5V). Consistency changes of morphological characteristics, mechanical properties and biocompatibility of experimental titanium implant coatings obtained by oxidation during induction heat treatment are defined. Technological recommendations for obtaining bioceramic coatings with extremely high strength on titanium items surface are given.

Recently, we have demonstrated Ni silicide/poly-Si diodes as a budget alternative to SOI-diode temperature sensors in uncooled microbolometer FPAs. This paper introduces a solution still more suitable for industry: We have developed PtSi/poly-Si Schottky diodes for microbolometers. Ease of integration of the PtSi/poly-Si diode formation process into the CMOS technology, in analogy with the internal photoemission PtSi/Si IR FPAs, is the merit of the PtSi/poly-Si sensors. Now we demonstrate PtSi/poly-Si diode microbolometers and propose them as a promising solution for focal plane arrays.

In the context of the extensive use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in consumer products, industrial applications and nanomedicine, there is an important need of new methods for an exhaustive characterization of their physicochemical properties. Among them, surface hydrophobicity is considered as a key factor to be controlled, in particular for nanomedicine applications^1,2. The proposed study demonstrates the proof-of-concept of an inexpensive characterization process, enabling the sorting of ENMs according to their hydrophobicity and surface charge, together with the classical characterization of size and shape. The detection platform is based on the use of a surface modified through plasma polymer and layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte deposition in order to generate areas of tuned surface properties to bind ENMs selectively by hydrophobic forces and electrostatic interactions. The key advantages of such a device is the decrease of time and assay costs thanks to the all-in-one characterization process and the multiplexing that could replace the use of different methods and expensive equipment to give equivalent results. In this way, the full characterization of NP could be expanded in all the areas covering NP-related applications.

In this work, we demonstrate the results of studies on the synthesis, the structure and properties of carbon inverted opal (C-IOP) nanostructures, the surface of which is modified by oxide and sulfide of nickel. It is shown that the modification of the matrix C-IOP by nickel compounds led to a decreasing the specific surface area more than three times and was 250 m²/g. The specific capacitance of the capacitor with the C-IOP/NiO/Ni₇S₆ composite as electrode has increased more than 4 times, from 130 F/g to 600 F/g, as compared with the sample C-IOP without the modification by nickel compounds. The significant contribution of the faradaic reactions in specific capacitance of the capacitor electrodes of the composites is marked.

An important motivation of the actual biosensor research is to develop a multiplexed sensing platform of high sensitivity fabricated with large-scale and low-cost technologies for applications such as diagnosis and monitoring of diseases, drug discovery and environmental control. Biosensors based on localized plasmon resonance (LSPR) have demonstrated to be a novel and effective platform for quantitative detection of biological and chemical analytes. Here, we describe a novel label-free nanobiosensor consisting of an array of closely spaced, vertical, elastomeric nanopillars capped with plasmonic gold nanodisks in a SU-8 channel. The principle is based on the refractive index sensing using the LSPR of gold nanodisks. The fabrication of the nanobiosensor is based on replica molding technique and gold nanodisks are incorporated on the polymer structures by e-beam evaporation. In this work, we provide the strategies for controlling the silicon nanostructure replication using thermal polymers and photopolymers with different Young's modulus, in order to minimize the common distortions in the process and to obtain a reliable replica of the Si master. The master mold of the biosensor consists of a hexagonal array of silicon nanopillars, whose diameter is ~200 nm, and whose height can range from 250 nm to 1.300 μm, separated 400 nm from the center to center, integrated in a SU-8 microfluidic channel.

Structures with one-dimensional quantum objects in intermediate band are promising for their application in solar cells and photodetectors. We present analysis of dark current-voltage characteristics, photo-voltage decay and photo-voltage spectra for this structures in comparison with reference GaAs based structures. It has been shown that InGaAs quantum wires make a significant influence on J-V dependences and photo-voltage spectra. InGaAs QWRS are additional recombination centers and transitions between them dominated over by Shockley-Read-Hall recombination at low bias. The InGaAs/GaAs sample shows a significantly higher photo-voltage in the spectral range of 1.25-1.37 eV, as compared to a reference GaAs p-n junction, due to intermediate band transitions in the quantum wires.

This paper reports the growths of InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on the patterned sapphire substrates (PSSs) with enlarging the diameter of hexagonal hole can reduce the related quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE) within multiple-quantum wells (MQWs), resulting in that the PL relative intensity is enhanced by up to 95% as compared to the conventional one.

We investigated the absorption and luminescence spectra and the low-frequency spectra of dielectric losses of the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) suspensions with quantum dots (QDs) CdSe/ZnS with a core diameter of 3.5 nm and 5.0 nm. The changing of luminescence intensity and dielectric losses in the region below 10³ Hz were observed as result variation of a concentration and a QDs size in the spectra of NLC/QDs suspensions in comparison with the pure NLC. Luminescence quenching of the NLC and the increase of dielectric loss in the spectra were found with the increasing CdSe/ZnS concentration in interval between 0.07 - 0.3 wt. %.

Currently, due to the development of nanotechnology and metamaterials, it has become important to obtain regular nanoporous structures with different parameters, such as porous anodic alumina films that are used for synthesis of various nanocomposites.

In this work we consider the motion of the interfaces between electrolyte and alumina layers, and between alumina and aluminum layers. We also took into account the dynamics of moving boundaries and the change of small perturbations of these boundaries. Each area under Laplace’s equation is solved for the potential of the electric field. The growth of porous alumina is described with the theory of small perturbations. Small perturbations of the interface are considered, which lead to small changes in potential and current in the boundaries.

As a result of the developed model we obtained the minimum distance between centers of aluminum oxide pores in the beginning of anodizing process and the wavelength of porous structure irregularities.

The present work is devoted to the theoretical study of the colloid nanoparticle interaction. A simple analytical model for the multi-particle interaction between the amphoteric oxide nanoparticles with low surface potential has been developed. The model utilizes the framework of the DLVO (Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, Overbeak) theory and accounts for the surface charge regulation during the multi-particle interaction. The results of this study demonstrate a good qualitative agreement with the experimental data and reveal the presence of the orientation effects during nanoparticle aggregation, which may cause the formation of aggregates with different morphologies.

Graphene has been considered for a variety of applications including novel nanoelectronic device concepts. However, the deposition of ultra-thin high-k dielectrics on top of graphene has still been challenging due to graphene's lack of dangling bonds. The formation of large islands and leaky films has been observed resulting from a much delayed growth initiation. In order to address this issue, we tested a pre-treatment with NF₃ instead of XeF₂ on CVD graphene as well as epitaxial graphene monolayers prior to the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) of Al₂O₃. All experiments were conducted in vacuo; i. e. the pristine graphene samples were exposed to NF₃ in the same reactor immediately before applying 30 (TMA-H₂O) ALD cycles and the samples were transferred between the ALD reactor and a surface analysis unit under high vacuum conditions. The ALD growth initiation was observed by in-situ real-time Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (irtSE) with a sampling rate above 1 Hz. The total amount of Al₂O₃ material deposited by the applied 30 ALD cycles was cross-checked by in-vacuo X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The Al₂O₃ morphology was determined by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The presence of graphene and its defect status was examined by in-vacuo XPS and Raman Spectroscopy before and after the coating procedure, respectively.

Using scanning electron microscopy the crystalline structure of porous oxide coatings produced by air-thermal oxidation of orthopedic implants of alloy 12Cr18Ni9Ti at the temperatures of 350 and 400 °C and duration of 1.5 hours was studied. In vivo tests revealed that the resulting coatings promote successful engraftment of thermally modified implants in the body with highly efficient interaction between morphologically heterogeneous coatings and surrounding bone tissue.

Multiwall carbon nanotubes/epoxy and graphite nanoplatelets/epoxy composite materials (2-5 wt %) as well as the composite materials with barium hexaferrite as secondary filler (27 wt %) were prepared. Alignment of barium hexaferrite nanoparticles was performed by magnetic field action during polymerization process. Morphology, the electrical conductivity and shielding efficiency of the composite materials in the frequency range of 36-55.5 GHz were investigated. Optical and electron microscopy, standard 2- and 4-probe methods of electrical conductivity measurement and network analyzer were used for that purpose. The arguments about secondary filler addition and its alignment on electrodynamic properties of the obtained composite materials are given.

The electronic states and direct interband light absorption are studied in the cylindrical quantum dot with Morse confining potential made of GaAs in the presence of parallel electrical and magnetic fields. Within the framework of perturbation theory and variation method expressions are obtained for the particle energy spectrum. The effect of the external fields on direct interband light absorption of cylindrical quantum dot is investigated. Selection rules are obtained at presence of parallel electrical and magnetic fields. The dependence of the absorption threshold on geometrical parameters of quantum dots and intensities of external fields is obtained.