Superhydrophobic Array Devices for the Enhanced Formation of 3D Cancer Models.

During the metastatic cascade, cancer cells travel through the bloodstream as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to a secondary site. Clustered CTCs have greater shear stress and treatment resistance, yet their biology remains poorly understood. We therefore engineered a tunable superhydrophobic array device (SHArD). The SHArD-C was applied to culture a clinically relevant model of CTC clusters. Using our device, we cultured a model of cancer cell aggregates of various sizes with immortalized cancer cell lines. These exhibited higher E-cadherin expression and are significantly more capable of surviving high fluid shear stress-related forces compared to single cells and model clusters grown using the control method, helping to explain why clustering may provide a metastatic advantage. Additionally, the SHArD-S, when compared with the AggreWell 800 method, provides a more consistent spheroid-forming device culturing reproducible sizes of spheroids for multiple cancer cell lines. Overall, we designed, fabricated, and validated an easily tunable engineered device which grows physiologically relevant three-dimensional (3D) cancer models containing tens to thousands of cells.

Carbonized Polymer for Joule Heating Processing Towards Biosensor Development.

This paper presents the experimental findings towards developing carbonized microelectrodes using a Joule heating process within a temperature window that is compatible with CMOS. Bridge-on-pillars polymer structures have been 3D-printed using two-photon polymerization (2PP). They have been annealed in various processing conditions to increase the fraction of carbon in the precursor material and to achieve appreciable electric conductivity so that they can be used to drive current to enable Joule heating. To evaluate the outcome of the processing sequences, Raman spectroscopy has been performed to assess the degree of carbonization. Such CMOS-compatible carbon electrodes are important for monolithic, low-cost biosensor development.Clinical relevance- This establishes the potential of carbonized polymer electrode for low-cost, CMOS-compatible monolithic biosensor platform for implementation in medical diagnosis and treatment.

Understanding Electrical Conduction and Nanopore Formation During Controlled Breakdown.

Controlled breakdown has recently emerged as a highly appealing technique to fabricate solid-state nanopores for a wide range of biosensing applications. This technique relies on applying an electric field of approximately 0.4-1 V nm-1 across the membrane to induce a current, and eventually, breakdown of the dielectric. Although previous studies have performed controlled breakdown under a range of different conditions, the mechanism of conduction and breakdown has not been fully explored. Here, electrical conduction and nanopore formation in SiNx membranes during controlled breakdown is studied. It is demonstrated that for Si-rich SiNx , oxidation reactions that occur at the membrane-electrolyte interface limit conduction across the dielectric. However, for stoichiometric Si3 N4 the effect of oxidation reactions becomes relatively small and conduction is predominately limited by charge transport across the dielectric. Several important implications resulting from understanding this process are provided which will aid in further developing controlled breakdown in the coming years, particularly for extending this technique to integrate nanopores with on-chip nanostructures.

Evaporation of squeezed water droplets between two parallel hydrophobic/superhydrophobic surfaces.

HYPOTHESIS: A liquid droplet is apt to be deformed within a compact space in various applications. The morphological change of a droplet and vapor accumulation in the confined space between two parallel surfaces with different gaps and surface wettability are expected to significantly affect the evaporation dynamics of the squeezed droplet therein. EXPERIMENTS: Here the evaporation dynamics of a squeezed droplet between two parallel hydrophobic/superhydrophobic surfaces are experimentally explored. By reducing the surface gap from 1000 µm to 400 µm, the evolution of contact angle, contact radius and volume of the evaporating droplet are measured. A diffusion-driven model based on a two-parameter ellipsoidal segment geometry is developed to predict the morphology and volume evolution of a squeezed droplet during evaporation. FINDINGS: Evaporation dynamics of a squeezed water droplet via the constant contact radius (CCR) mode, the constant contact angle (CCA) mode, or the mixed mode are experimentally observed. Confirmed by our ellipsoidal segment model, the evaporation of the squeezed droplet is significantly depressed with the decreasing surface gap, which is primarily attributed to vapor enrichment in a more confined geometry. A linear scaling law between droplet volume and evaporation time is unveiled, which is verified by a simplified cylindrical model.

Programmable Electrofluidics for Ionic Liquid Based Neuromorphic Platform.

Due to the limit in computing power arising from the Von Neumann bottleneck, computational devices are being developed that mimic neuro-biological processing in the brain by correlating the device characteristics with the synaptic weight of neurons. This platform combines ionic liquid gating and electrowetting for programmable placement/connectivity of the ionic liquid. In this platform, both short-term potentiation (STP) and long-term potentiation (LTP) are realized via electrostatic and electrochemical doping of the amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (aIGZO), respectively, and pulsed bias measurements are demonstrated for lower power considerations. While compatible with resistive elements, we demonstrate a platform based on transitive amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (aIGZO) pixel elements. Using a lithium based ionic liquid, we demonstrate both potentiation (decrease in device resistance) and depression (increase in device resistance), and propose a 2D platform array that would enable a much higher pixel count via Active Matrix electrowetting.

High performance top-gated multilayer WSe2 field effect transistors.

In this paper, high performance top-gated WSe2 field effect transistor (FET) devices are demonstrated via a two-step remote plasma assisted ALD process. High-quality, low-leakage aluminum oxide (Al2O3) gate dielectric layers are deposited onto the WSe2 channel using a remote plasma assisted ALD process with an ultrathin (∼1 nm) titanium buffer layer. The first few nanometers (∼2 nm) of the Al2O3 dielectric film is deposited at relatively low temperature (i.e. 50 °C) and remainder of the film is deposited at 150 °C to ensure the conformal coating of Al2O3 on the WSe2 surface. Additionally, an ultra-thin titanium buffer layer is introduced at the WSe2 channel surface prior to ALD process to mitigate oxygen plasma induced doping effects. Excellent device characteristics with current on-off ratio in excess of 106 and a field effect mobility as high as 70.1 cm2 V-1 s-1 are achieved in a few-layer WSe2 FET device with a 30 nm Al2O3 top-gate dielectric. With further investigation and careful optimization, this method can play an important role for the realization of high performance top gated FETs for future optoelectronic device applications.

Metasurface polarization splitter.

Polarization beam splitters, devices that separate the two orthogonal polarizations of light into different propagation directions, are among the most ubiquitous optical elements. However, traditionally polarization splitters rely on bulky optical materials, while emerging optoelectronic and photonic circuits require compact, chip-scale polarization splitters. Here, we show that a rectangular lattice of cylindrical silicon Mie resonators functions as a polarization splitter, efficiently reflecting one polarization while transmitting the other. We show that the polarization splitting arises from the anisotropic permittivity and permeability of the metasurface due to the twofold rotational symmetry of the rectangular unit cell. The high polarization efficiency, low loss and low profile make these metasurface polarization splitters ideally suited for monolithic integration with optoelectronic and photonic circuits.This article is part of the themed issue 'New horizons for nanophotonics'.

Nonlinear Fano-Resonant Dielectric Metasurfaces.

Strong nonlinear light-matter interaction is highly sought-after for a variety of applications including lasing and all-optical light modulation. Recently, resonant plasmonic structures have been considered promising candidates for enhancing nonlinear optical processes due to their ability to greatly enhance the optical near-field; however, their small mode volumes prevent the inherently large nonlinear susceptibility of the metal from being efficiently exploited. Here, we present an alternative approach that utilizes a Fano-resonant silicon metasurface. The metasurface results in strong near-field enhancement within the volume of the silicon resonator while minimizing two photon absorption. We measure a third harmonic generation enhancement factor of 1.5 × 10(5) with respect to an unpatterned silicon film and an absolute conversion efficiency of 1.2 × 10(-6) with a peak pump intensity of 3.2 GW cm(-2). The enhanced nonlinearity, combined with a sharp linear transmittance spectrum, results in transmission modulation with a modulation depth of 36%. The modulation mechanism is studied by pump-probe experiments.

All-dielectric metasurface analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency.

Metasurface analogues of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) have been a focus of the nanophotonics field in recent years, due to their ability to produce high-quality factor (Q-factor) resonances. Such resonances are expected to be useful for applications such as low-loss slow-light devices and highly sensitive optical sensors. However, ohmic losses limit the achievable Q-factors in conventional plasmonic EIT metasurfaces to values <~10, significantly hampering device performance. Here we experimentally demonstrate a classical analogue of EIT using all-dielectric silicon-based metasurfaces. Due to extremely low absorption loss and coherent interaction of neighbouring meta-atoms, a Q-factor of 483 is observed, leading to a refractive index sensor with a figure-of-merit of 103. Furthermore, we show that the dielectric metasurfaces can be engineered to confine the optical field in either the silicon resonator or the environment, allowing one to tailor light-matter interaction at the nanoscale.

Length scale of Leidenfrost ratchet switches droplet directionality.

Arrays of tilted pillars with characteristic heights spanning from hundreds of nanometers to tens of micrometers were created using wafer level processing and used as Leidenfrost ratchets to control droplet directionality. Dynamic Leidenfrost droplets on the ratchets with nanoscale features were found to move in the direction of the pillar tilt while the opposite directionality was observed on the microscale ratchets. This remarkable switch in the droplet directionality can be explained by varying contributions from the two distinct mechanisms controlling droplet motion on Leidenfrost ratchets with nanoscale and microscale features. In particular, asymmetric wettability of dynamic Leidenfrost droplets upon initial impact appears to be the dominant mechanism determining their directionality on tilted nanoscale pillar arrays. By contrast, asymmetric wetting does not provide a strong enough driving force compared to the forces induced by asymmetric vapour flow on arrays of much taller tilted microscale pillars. Furthermore, asymmetric wetting plays a role only in the dynamic Leidenfrost regime, for instance when droplets repeatedly jump after their initial impact. The point of crossover between the two mechanisms coincides with the pillar heights comparable to the values of the thinnest vapor layers still capable of cushioning Leidenfrost droplets upon their initial impact. The proposed model of the length scale dependent interplay between the two mechanisms points to the previously unexplored ability to bias movement of dynamic Leidenfrost droplets and even switch their directionality.

Dielectric meta-reflectarray for broadband linear polarization conversion and optical vortex generation.

Plasmonic metasurfaces have recently attracted much attention due to their ability to abruptly change the phase of light, allowing subwavelength optical elements for polarization and wavefront control. However, most previously demonstrated metasurface designs suffer from low coupling efficiency and are based on metallic resonators, leading to ohmic loss. Here, we present an alternative approach to plasmonic metasurfaces by replacing the metallic resonators with high-refractive-index silicon cut-wires in combination with a silver ground plane. We experimentally demonstrate that this meta-reflectarray can be used to realize linear polarization conversion with more than 98% conversion efficiency over a 200 nm bandwidth in the short-wavelength infrared band. We also demonstrate optical vortex beam generation using a meta-reflectarray with an azimuthally varied phase profile. The vortex beam generation is shown to have high efficiency over a wavelength range from 1500 to 1600 nm. The use of dielectric resonators in place of their plasmonic counterparts could pave the way for ultraefficient metasurface-based devices at high frequencies.

Asymmetric wettability of nanostructures directs leidenfrost droplets.

Leidenfrost phenomena on nano- and microstructured surfaces are of great importance for increasing control over heat transfer in high power density systems utilizing boiling phenomena. They also provide an elegant means to direct droplet motion in a variety of recently emerging fluidic systems. Here, we report the fabrication and characterization of tilted nanopillar arrays (TNPAs) that exhibit directional Leidenfrost water droplets under dynamic conditions, namely on impact with Weber numbers ≥40 at T ≥ 325 °C. The directionality for these droplets is opposite to the direction previously exhibited by macro- and microscale Leidenfrost ratchets where movement against the tilt of the ratchet was observed. The batch fabrication of the TNPAs was achieved by glancing-angle anisotropic reactive ion etching of a thermally dewet platinum mask, with mean pillar diameters of 100 nm and heights of 200-500 nm. In contrast to previously implemented macro- and microscopic Leidenfrost ratchets, our TNPAs induce no preferential directional movement of Leidenfrost droplets under conditions approaching steady-state film boiling, suggesting that the observed droplet directionality is not a result of the widely accepted mechanism of asymmetric vapor flow. Using high-speed imaging, phase diagrams were constructed for the boiling behavior upon impact for droplets falling onto TNPAs, straight nanopillar arrays, and smooth silicon surfaces. The asymmetric impact and directional trajectory of droplets was exclusive to the TNPAs for impacts corresponding to the transition boiling regime, linking asymmetric surface wettability to preferential directionality of dynamic Leidenfrost droplets on nanostructured surfaces.

Near-field microwave scanning probe imaging of conductivity inhomogeneities in CVD graphene.

We have performed near-field scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. Due to the use of probe-sample capacitive coupling and a relatively high ac frequency of a few GHz, this scanning probe method allows mapping of local conductivity without a dedicated counter electrode, with a spatial resolution of about 50 nm. Here, the coupling was enabled by atomic layer deposition of alumina on top of graphene, which in turn enabled imaging both large-area films, as well as micron-sized islands, with a dynamic range covering a low sheet resistance of a metal film and a high resistance of highly disordered graphene. The structures of graphene grown on Ni films and Cu foils are explored, and the effects of growth conditions are elucidated. We present a simple general scheme for interpretation of the contrast in the SMM images of our graphene samples and other two-dimensional conductors, which is supported by extensive numerical finite-element modeling. We further demonstrate that combination of the SMM and numerical modeling allows quantitative information about the sheet resistance of graphene to be obtained, paving the pathway for characterization of graphene conductivity with a sub-100 nm special resolution.