253 research outputs found
Nanolithography for metallic quasi crystals for nanobio applications
No full textThere is currently an urgent need to develop micro and nanotechnique for the fabrications of quasi periodic crystals in a plane for the study and applications of novel optical properties when light propagating in or through such a photonic structures with fold symmetries (10 fold symmetry in this work). It has been clear that quasi periodical crystals in dielectrics with various fold symmetries also exhibits complete photonic band gap (PBG) property as periodical photonic crystals do. However, the novel physical properties related to the interactions of electromagnetic waves with metallic holes arrays in quasi periodical order (metallic quasi crystals) is being discovered both theoretically and experimentally, which demands technical development for the construction of theoretically designed structures. [1] In this work, we report a nanofabrication technique recently developed for the replication of quasi crystal in 100 nm Al on a slab (quartz wafer in this work) by electron beam lithography using chemically amplified resist, UVN-30. A wealth of novel photonic behaviours of lights vertically incident through the q-crystal were observed
Mimicking the colourful wing scale structure of the Papilio blumei butterfly
No full textThe brightest and most vivid colours in nature arise from the interaction of light with surfaces that exhibit periodic structure on the micro- and nanoscale. In the wings of butterflies, for example, a combination of multilayer interference, optical gratings, photonic crystals and other optical structures gives rise to complex colour mixing. Although the physics of structural colours is well understood, it remains a challenge to create artificial replicas of natural photonic structures1, 2, 3. Here we use a combination of layer deposition techniques, including colloidal self-assembly, sputtering and atomic layer deposition, to fabricate photonic structures that mimic the colour mixing effect found on the wings of the Indonesian butterfly Papilio blumei. We also show that a conceptual variation to the natural structure leads to enhanced optical properties. Our approach offers improved efficiency, versatility and scalability compared with previous approaches4, 5, 6.<br/
Super-resolution without evanescent waves
No full textThe past decade has seen numerous efforts to achieve imaging resolution beyond that of the Abbe-Rayleigh diffraction limit. The main direction of research aiming to break this limit seeks to exploit the evanescent components containing fine detail of the electromagnetic field distribution at the immediate proximity of the object. Here, we propose a solution that removes the need for evanescent fields. The object being imaged or stimulated with subwavelength accuracy does not need to be in the immediate proximity of the superlens or field concentrator: an optical mask can be designed that creates constructive interference of waves known as superoscillation, leading to a subwavelength focus of prescribed size and shape in a field of view beyond the evanescent fields, when illuminated by a monochromatic wave. Moreover, we demonstrate that such a mask may be used not only as a focusing device but also as a super-resolution imaging device
Optical Contrast of Atomically Thin Films
No full textHere we provide a comprehensive description of the optical contrast of atomically-thin films, based on rigorous analytical solutions. The effects of thin film, substrate and light illumination conditions are fully revealed. The role of substrate is found to be completely represented by a single complex reflectivity, regardless of the structural details. High contrast is realized on low-reflection substrates; however, the phase of the complex reflectivity is critically important. Every thin film has specific reflectivity-phase conditions to achieve optimal contrast, which are uniquely defined by the optical properties of the thin film. Extraordinarily high optical contrast can be achieved on any thin film of any thickness, if the reflectivity of substrates matches the optimal phase conditions. We provide a universal phase map which can be used to determine the optimal phases of any given film. For example, the optimal phase of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) films is found to be -90°, which paves the way towards designing high-contrast substrates to visualize this highly transparent 2D material. We also provide detailed discussions on the effects of a range of other factors, including polarizations, incident angles, and the numerical aperture of objectives
Optical super-resolution through super-oscillations
Full text linkWe demonstrate that a quasi-periodic array of nanoholes in a metal screen can focus light into subwavelength spots in the far-field without contributions from evanescent fields. The subwavelength spots were observed with a conventional optical microscope and mapped to the far-field. We relate the formation of subwavelength light localizations in the far-field to the phenomenon of super-oscillations. This effect offers a new way to achieve subwavelength imaging, which differs from approaches based on the recovery of evanescent fields
Evaluating the performance of PC-ANN for the estimation of rice nitrogen concentration from canopy hyperspectral reflectance
Full text linkIn this study, a wide range of leaf nitrogen concentration levels was established in field-grown rice with the application of three fertilizer levels. Hyperspectral reflectance data of the rice canopy through rice whole growth stages were acquired over the 350 nm to 2500 nm range. Comparisons of prediction power of two statistical methods (linear regression technique (LR) and artificial neural network (ANN)), for rice N estimation (nitrogen concentration, mg nitrogen g(-1) leaf dry weight) were performed using two different input variables (nitrogen sensitive hyperspectral reflectance and principal component scores). The results indicted very good agreement between the observed and the predicted N with all model methods, which was especially true for the PC-ANN model (artificial neural network based on principal component scores), with an RMSE 0.347 and REP 13.14%. Compared to the LR algorithm, the ANN increased accuracy by lowering the RMSE by 17.6% and 25.8% for models based on spectral reflectance and PCs, respectively
Tip-enhanced optical spectroscopy and microscopy
No full textEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Discrete nonnegative spectral clustering
No full textSpectral clustering has been playing a vital role in various research areas. Most traditional spectral clustering algorithms comprise two independent stages (e.g., first learning continuous labels and then rounding the learned labels into discrete ones), which may cause unpredictable deviation of resultant cluster labels from genuine ones, thereby leading to severe information loss and performance degradation. In this work, we study how to achieve discrete clustering as well as reliably generalize to unseen data. We propose a novel spectral clustering scheme which deeply explores cluster label properties, including discreteness, nonnegativity, and discrimination, as well as learns robust out-of-sample prediction functions. Specifically, we explicitly enforce a discrete transformation on the intermediate continuous labels, which leads to a tractable optimization problem with a discrete solution. Besides, we preserve the natural nonnegative characteristic of the clustering labels to enhance the interpretability of the results. Moreover, to further compensate the unreliability of the learned clustering labels, we integrate an adaptive robust module with ℓ 2,p loss to learn prediction function for grouping unseen data. We also show that the out-of-sample component can inject discriminative knowledge into the learning of cluster labels under certain conditions. Extensive experiments conducted on various data sets have demonstrated the superiority of our proposal as compared to several existing clustering approaches
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