Atomically sharp tungsten tips made from single crystal tungsten wire are superior to those made from cold-drawn polycrystalline wire but are rarely used due to their high price. We have devised a method of obtaining highly crystalline tungsten wire by recrystallizing cold-drawn wire. The effect of various heat treatments on the wire microstructure was observed using scanning electron microscop...

Single layers of ZnxCd1-xSe with three different compositions (x = 0.39, 0.59, 0.8) and thickness of 400 nm have been prepared by thermal vacuum evaporation, through alloying of ultra thin ZnSe and CdSe films. The microstructure and surface morphology of ZnxCd1-xSe has been investigated by Atomic Force Microscopy. Chiral and achiral bi-stable smectic C liquid crystal textures were obtained usin...

We introduce a framework for modeling elastic properties of shape memory alloy polycrystals by coupling orientational degrees of freedom with elastic strains. Our method allows us to span the length scales from single crystal to that appropriate to obtain polycrystal properties. The single crystal free energy coefficients can be determined from microscopic calculations (such as electronic struc...

Phenomena such as shear thinning and thickening, occurring when complex materials are exposed to external forces, are generally believed to be closely connected to changes in the microstructure. Here, we establish a direct and quantitative relation between shear thinning in a colloidal crystal and the surface area of the locally melted region by dragging a probe particle through the crystal usi...

In this paper, we report our recent work on preparing two-dimensional patterned microstructure arrays using three-dimensional colloidal crystals as templates, namely, colloidal crystal-assisted lithography. Two alternative processes are described and involved in colloidal crystal-assisted lithography. One is based upon imprinting the polymer films with three-dimensional silica colloidal crystal...