41 research outputs found
Optically Induced Nanostructures
Nanostructuring of materials is a task at the heart of many modern disciplines in mechanical engineering, as well as optics, electronics, and the life sciences. This book includes an introduction to the relevant nonlinear optical processes associated with very short laser pulses for the generation of structures far below the classical optical diffraction limit of about 200 nanometers as well as coverage of state-of-the-art technical and biomedical applications. These applications include silicon and glass wafer processing, production of nanowires, laser transfection and cell reprogramming, optical cleaning, surface treatments of implants, nanowires, 3D nanoprinting, STED lithography, friction modification, and integrated optics. The book highlights also the use of modern femtosecond laser microscopes and nanoscopes as novel nanoprocessing tools
Cancer Nanomedicine
This special issue brings together cutting edge research and insightful commentary on the currentl state of the Cancer Nanomedicine field
Inkjet printing: technique and applications for organic electronic devices
Since the discovery of the polyacetylene conductivity in 1977 by Shirakawa,MacDiarmid and Heeger, Organic Electronics has been growing and establishing for a new generation of electronic devices. On one hand, the unique properties of polymeric semiconductors and conductors,
such as flexibility and transparency, allow the fabrication of low-cost devices over large area: the most common are the Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) and the organic
photovoltaic cells. On the other hand, much effort has been made to investigate new technologies and processes for the realization of high-performance organic transistors and
sensors. Among them, Inkjet Printing is a promising technique which exploits all the advantages
of organic materials, such as low-cost and solution processability, and allows the large-scale automated fabrication of large area devices. This thesis describes the work carried outwith a piezoelectric drop-on-demand inkjet printer, theDimatixMaterials Printer 2831. The first chapter gives an overview on Organic and Printed
Electronics state-of-art, also describing the physical principles of conductivity in organic molecules. The second chapter is totally focused on the inkjet printing technique: after a brief description of the printer employed, a detailed description of the printing process, from the ink formulation to the drop deposition and drying phenomena, is presented. Moreover the materials employed are described together with the printing parameters set for achieving the best deposition condition. Chapter 3 is devoted to tactile sensing, which is the main application
of the Organic Field-Effect Transistors (OFETs) in this work within the ROBOSKIN project. After an overview of inorganic tactile sensors and of the fundamentals of strain sensing in OFETs, the fabrication steps are described followed by the detailed electromechanical
characterization of the various strain sensors realized. Finally, the fourth chapter describes other applications of inkjet printing developed in this work: organic diodes and photodiodes within the HYMEC project, patterned electrodes for the detection of cells electrical activity,
both in vivo and in vitro, and a RFID tag antenna
Data security in photonic information systems using quantum based approaches
The last two decades has seen a revolution in how information is stored and transmitted
across the world. In this digital age, it is vital for banking systems, governments and
businesses that this information can be transmitted to authorised receivers quickly and
efficiently. Current classical cryptosystems rely on the computational difficulty of
calculating certain mathematical functions but with the advent of quantum computers,
implementing efficient quantum algorithms, these systems could be rendered insecure
overnight. Quantum mechanics thankfully also provides the solution, in which
information is transmitted on single-photons called qubits and any attempt by an
adversary to gain information on these qubits is limited by the laws of quantum
mechanics.
This thesis looks at three distinct different quantum information experiments. Two of
the systems describe the implementation of distributing quantum keys, in which the
presence of an eavesdropper introduces unavoidable errors by the laws of quantum
mechanics. The first scheme used a quantum dot in a micropillar cavity as a singlephoton
source. A polarisation encoding scheme was used for implementing the BB84,
quantum cryptographic protocol, which operated at a wavelength of 905 nm and a clock
frequency of 40 MHz. A second system implemented phase encoding using asymmetric
unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers, with a weak coherent source, operating at a
wavelength of 850 nm and pulsed at a clock rate of 1 GHz. The system used
depolarised light propagating in the fibre quantum channel. This helps to eliminate the
random evolution of the state of polarisation of photons, as a result of stress induced
changes in the intrinsic birefringence of the fibre. The system operated completely
autonomously, using custom software to compensate for path length fluctuations in the
arms of the interferometer and used a variety of different single-photon detector
technologies. The final quantum information scheme looked at quantum digital
signatures, which allows a sender, Alice, to distribute quantum signatures to two parties,
Bob and Charlie, such that they are able to authenticate that the message originated
from Alice and that the message was not altered in transmission