Methods for extending working distance using modified photonic crystal for near-field lithography.

Near-field lithography has evident advantages in fabricating super-resolution nano-patterns. However, the working distance (WD) is limited due to the exponential decay characteristic of the evanescent waves. Here, we proposed a novel photolithography method based on a modified photonic crystal (PC), where a defect layer is embedded into the all-dielectric multilayer structure. It is shown that this design can amend the photonic band gap and enhance the desired high-kwaves dramatically, then the WD in air conditions could be extended greatly, which would drastically relax the engineering challenges for introducing the near-field lithography into real-world manufacturing applications. Typically, deep subwavelength patterns with a half-pitch of 32 nm (i.e.,λ/6) could be formed in photoresist layer at an air WD of 100 nm. Moreover, it is revealed that diversified two-dimensional patterns could be produced with a single exposure using linear polarized light. The analyses indicate that this improved dielectric PC is applicable for near-field lithography to produce super-resolution periodic patterns with large WD, strong field intensity, and great uniformity.

First mtgenome sequences from three genera and phylogenetic relationships of the family Apidae based on mtgenome sequences (Hymenoptera: Apoidea).

In this study, we report the complete mitochondrial genomes (mtgenome) of Thyreus decorus, Ceratina okinawana and Amegilla calceifera, which are the first time of mtgenome report also for the genera Thyreus, Ceratina and Amegilla in the family Apidae. They contain 15,237, 15,207, and 17,728 bp, with AT content of 84.97%, 79.30%, and 84.63%, respectively. Each mtgenome includes 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNA (16S and 12S rRNA) and an AT-rich control region (CR). The phylogenetic relationships of 45 species in the family were constructed using Bayesian Inference based on concatenated nucleotide sequences of 13 PCGs. Our study suggests that the subfamily Apinae is a paraphyletic group, with the genus Eucera claded into the subfamily Xylocopinae and the genera Amegilla and Thyreus into the subfamily Nomadinae. In Apinae, the genera Melipona and Bombus are significantly sister group, and the genus Apis is the sister group with Melipona + Bombus.

Superoscillation: from physics to optical applications.

The resolution of conventional optical elements and systems has long been perceived to satisfy the classic Rayleigh criterion. Paramount efforts have been made to develop different types of superresolution techniques to achieve optical resolution down to several nanometres, such as by using evanescent waves, fluorescence labelling, and postprocessing. Superresolution imaging techniques, which are noncontact, far field and label free, are highly desirable but challenging to implement. The concept of superoscillation offers an alternative route to optical superresolution and enables the engineering of focal spots and point-spread functions of arbitrarily small size without theoretical limitations. This paper reviews recent developments in optical superoscillation technologies, design approaches, methods of characterizing superoscillatory optical fields, and applications in noncontact, far-field and label-free superresolution microscopy. This work may promote the wider adoption and application of optical superresolution across different wave types and application domains.

Creation of Sub-diffraction Longitudinally Polarized Spot by Focusing Radially Polarized Light with Binary Phase Lens.

The generation of a sub-diffraction longitudinally polarized spot is of great interest in various applications, such as optical tweezers, super-resolution microscopy, high-resolution Raman spectroscopy, and high-density optical data storage. Many theoretical investigations have been conducted into the tight focusing of a longitudinally polarized spot with high-numerical-aperture aplanatic lenses in combination with optical filters. Optical super-oscillation provides a new approach to focusing light beyond the diffraction limit. Here, we propose a planar binary phase lens and experimentally demonstrate the generation of a longitudinally polarized sub-diffraction focal spot by focusing radially polarized light. The lens has a numerical aperture of 0.93 and a long focal length of 200λ for wavelength λ = 632.8 nm, and the generated focal spot has a full-width-at-half-maximum of about 0.456λ, which is smaller than the diffraction limit, 0.54λ. A 5λ-long longitudinally polarized optical needle with sub-diffraction size is also observed near the designed focal point.

Generation of a sub-diffraction hollow ring by shaping an azimuthally polarized wave.

The generation of a sub-diffraction optical hollow ring is of great interest in various applications, such as optical microscopy, optical tweezers, and nanolithography. Azimuthally polarized light is a good candidate for creating an optical hollow ring structure. Various of methods have been proposed theoretically for generation of sub-wavelength hollow ring by focusing azimuthally polarized light, but without experimental demonstrations, especially for sub-diffraction focusing. Super-oscillation is a promising approach for shaping sub-diffraction optical focusing. In this paper, a planar sub-diffraction diffractive lens is proposed, which has an ultra-long focal length of 600 λ and small numerical aperture of 0.64. A sub-diffraction hollow ring is experimentally created by shaping an azimuthally polarized wave. The full-width-at-half-maximum of the hollow ring is 0.61 λ, which is smaller than the lens diffraction limit 0.78 λ, and the observed largest sidelobe intensity is only 10% of the peak intensity.

Morphology-controlled MnO2-graphene oxide-diatomaceous earth 3-dimensional (3D) composites for high-performance supercapacitors.

3-Dimensional (3D) composites based on a unique combination of MnO2-nanostructures, graphene oxide nanosheets and porous Diatomaceous Earth (DE) microparticles (GO-DE@MnO2) were synthesized and explored for application in high-performance supercapacitors. To explore the influence of the structural properties of MnO2 nanostructures on supercapacitor performances, several MnO2 structures with nanosheet and nanowire morphologies were synthesized and characterized. The prepared GO-DE@MnO2 composites with MnO2 nanosheets due to their higher conductivity and higher surface area showed a larger specific capacitance of 152.5 F g(-1) and a relatively better cycle stability (83.3% capacitance retention after 2000 cycles at a scan rate of 2 A g(-1)), indicating great potential for application in supercapacitors.

[Infrared spectroscopy based on quantum cascade lasers].

Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are promising infrared coherent sources. Thanks to the quantum theory and band-gap engineering, QCL can access the wavelength in the range from 3 to 100 microm. Since the fingerprint spectrum of most gases are located in the mid-infrared range, mid-infrared quantum cascade laser based gas sensing technique has become the research focus world wide because of its high power, narrow linewidth and fast scanning. Recent progress in the QCL technology leads to a great improvement in laser output power and efficiency, which stimulates a fast development in the infrared laser spectroscopy. The present paper gives a broad review on the QCL based spectroscopy techniques according to their working principles. A discussion on their applications in gas sensing and explosive detecting is also given at the end of the paper.

[Application of relevance vector machines in nitrate detection of wastewater].

On account of the high dimension and band overlapping features of the ultraviolet spectrum of complex wastewater, the relevance vector machine (RVM) algorithm combined with contiguous ultraviolet spectrum technology was applied in nitrate modeling to realize the rapid and accurate prediction of nitrate-nitrogen. At first the algorithm principle of RVM was introduced, and then based on the ultraviolet spectra of collected pharmacy effluent samples, ultraviolet absorption data between 230 and 245 nm were selected for modeling. Multivariate linear regression, partial least squares, classical support vector machines (SVM) and RVM methods were applied in nitrate modeling respectively and model performances were compared. Experimental result indicates that RVM method has advantages of higher prediction accuracy, sparser model than other compared methods and faster operation speed than SVM method. The relative full-range error is less than 4.5% F. S. Finally, it can be concluded that the LS-SVM method is effective in rapid and accurate detection of nitrate in practical wastewater with complicated composition.

[Research progress in water quality monitoring technology based on ultraviolet spectrum analysis].

The water quality monitoring technology based on ultraviolet spectrum analysis has the characteristics of small volume, low cost, and no secondary pollution, and it doesn't need any reagent and sample pretreatment. On account of these characteristics, the direct ultra-violet technology has remarkable superiority over traditional technologies when applied in online monitoring of drinking water, surface water and industrial wastewater, and it has become an important development tendency of modern water monitoring technologies. The principle, characteristics, present situation and development trend of modern water quality monitoring technology based on ultra-violet spectrum analysis were introduced, and the key technical problems were further discussed in this paper.

[Detection of sorbic acid in food by homemade micro-spectrometer analytical system].

A homemade micro-spectrometer analytical system was developed for the quantitative determination of the sorbic acid in the food based on the photometric principle. And with the standard addition method it was applied to eliminate the interference coming from the food substrate. The detecting result illustrated a good relativity in the range of 0-10.0 mg x L(-1) with the linear correlation coefficient of 0.9989, and the sample recovery was 99.2%-99.5% with RSD of 0.58%. The micro-spectrometer analysis system has shown potential prospective application in the fields of rapid and high performance detection for food additives.

[Design of concave grating for ultraviolet-spectrum].

Ultraviolet-spectrum technology is a kind of low signal and multianalysis technology. For taking full advantage of spectral information and reducing the volume of spectrometer, we used high efficiency spectroscopy structure based on concave grating. Based on concave grating theory and optic design software ZEMAX, a flat field concave grating for ultraviolet spectrophotometer was designed from primary structure, which relied on global optimization of the software. The contradiction between wide spectrum bound and limited spectrum extension was resolved, aberrations were reduced successfully, spectrum information was utilized fully, and the optic structure of spectrometer was highly efficient. For better preference of this spectrophotometer, after get the structure parameter, combine grating fabrication condition with practice working condition, grating diffractive theory, holographic optics theory and software PCG rate was used for diffraction efficiency design and improve. A paradigm of flat field concave grating is given, it works between 190 nm to 410 nm, the diameter of the concave grating is 20 mm, and F/# is 0.21. The design result was analyzed and evaluated. It was showed that if the slit source, whose width is 50 microm, is used to reconstruction, the theoretic resolution capacity is better than 3 nm.

[Near infrared spectroscopy system structure with MOEMS scanning mirror array].

A method which uses MOEMS mirror array optical structure to reduce the high cost of infrared spectrometer is given in the present paper. This method resolved the problem that MOEMS mirror array can not be used in simple infrared spectrometer because the problem of imaging irregularity in infrared spectroscopy and a new structure for spectral imaging was designed. According to the requirements of imaging spot, this method used optical design software ZEMAX and standard-specific aberrations of the optimization algorithm, designed and optimized the optical structure. It works from 900 to 1 400 nm. The results of design analysis showed that with the light source slit width of 50 microm, the spectrophotometric system is superior to the theoretical resolution of 6 nm, and the size of the available spot is 0.042 mm x 0.08 mm. Verification examples show that the design meets the requirements of the imaging regularity, and can be used for MOEMS mirror reflectance scan. And it was also verified that the use of a new MOEMS mirror array spectrometer model is feasible. Finally, analyze the relationship between the location of the detector and the maximum deflection angle of micro-mirror was analyzed.

[Application of fractal theory to spectral signal recognition].

The fractal theory is a discipline that studies a kind of irregular and chaotic object with similarity of its part and whole. The fractal dimension is a basic index mark of irregularity and self-similarity in the fractal theory. The present paper takes the spectral signal according with Lambert-beer' law as the object, introduces the basic theory of fractal geometry in brief, puts forward the method of fractal dimension as the feature of spectral signal recognition, makes use of reconstructing phase space to gain the fractal dimension of spectral signal, compares different values of the fractal dimension to recognize different spectral signal, and gives an example for explanation.

[Experimental testing of micro biochemical analytical system].

A micro biochemical analytical system based on a micro fiber spectrometer is introduced. Experiment was carried out to calibrate and test the analysis system. In the experiment, the absorption spectra of Fe2+ -ferroin solution bodies with different concentrations were obtained. The working curve shows a fine linearity of the analysis system. The authors also compared the experimental results obtained from 722-spectrometer and those from our analysis system. It was shown that their system can meet the requirement of practical use. This system also has many advantages, such as real-time whole spectrum analyzing and small volume, and is an ideal instrument for biochemical analysis.