Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) attached to current transmission electron microscopes can probe not only element-selective chemical information, but also site-selective information that depends on the position that a specific element occupies in a crystal lattice. The latter information is exploited by utilizing the Bloch waves symmetry in the crystal, which changes with its orientatio...

The orientation of liquid crystal molecules is very sensitive towards contacting surfaces, and this phenomenon is critical during the fabrication of liquid crystal display panels, as well as optical and memory devices. To date, research has focused on designing and modifying solid surfaces. Here we report an approach to control the orientation of liquid crystals from the free (air) surface side...

Transition metals Ti, Zr, and Hf have a hexagonal close-packed structure (α) at ambient conditions, but undergo phase transformations with increasing temperature and pressure. Of particular significance is the high-pressure hexagonal ω phase which is brittle compared to the α phase. There has been a long debate about transformation mechanisms and orientation relations between the two crystal st...

In this paper, possibilities and limits of the application of REE3+ luminescence (especially the Nd3+4F3/2 → 4I9/2 emission) as structural probe are evaluated. Important factors controlling the Nd3+ luminescence signal are discussed, including effects of the crystal-field, crystal orientation, structural state, and temperature. Particular attention was paid to the study of the accessory mineral...

We have studied ultrathin spin-coated high-density polyethylene films by means of single-molecule spectroscopy and microscopy at 1.8 K. The films have been doped with 2.3,8.9-dibenzanthanthrene (DBATT) molecules, which function as local reporters of their immediate environment. The orientation distributions of single DBATT probe molecules in 100-200 nm thin films of high-density polyethylene di...

By thermal evaporation of pure ZnO powders, high-density vertical-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays with diameter ranged in 80–250 nm were successfully synthesized on Si substrates covered with ZnO seed layers. It was revealed that the morphology, orientation, crystal, and optical quality of the ZnO nanorod arrays highly depend on the crystal quality of ZnO seed layers, which was confirmed by the char...

We experimentally demonstrate a fine control over the coupling strength of vibrational light-matter hybrid states by controlling the orientation of a nematic liquid crystal. Through an external voltage, the liquid crystal is seamlessly switched between two orthogonal directions. Using these features, for the first time, we demonstrate electrical switching and increased Rabi splitting through tr...

Alkaline etching of crystalline using KOH (potassium hydroxide), TMAH (tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide), or EDP (ethylenediamene pyrocatecol) is performed for creating various feature definition in MEMS (micro electrical mechanical structures, solar cells, and integrated circuit manufacturing. KOH will be discussed in this section. The alkaline chemistries have the ability to preferentially etch...

In this paper we investigate the coarsening dynamics of liquid crystal textures in a two-dimensional nematic under applied electric fields, using numerical simulations performed using a publicly available liquid crystal algorithm developed by the authors. We consider both positive and negative dielectric anisotropies and two different possibilities for the orientation of the electric field (par...

Optical performance of small pixel structures utilized in liquid crystal microdisplays may be affected by diffraction and multidimensional variations in liquid crystal director orientation. Modeling such structures may require more robust computational methods than existing onedimensional techniques. We present an implementation of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method suitable for analysis ...