Fracture properties of silicon carbide thin films charcterized by bulge test of long membranes

The mechanical properties and fracture behavior of silicon carbide (3C-SiC) thin films grown on silicon substrates were characterized using bulge testing combined with a refined load-deflection model for long rectangular membranes. Plane-strain modulus E-ps, prestress so, and fracture strength s(max) for 3C-SiC thin films with thickness of 0.40 mu m and 1.42 mu m were extracted. The E, values of SiC are strongly dependent on grain orientation. The thicker SIC film presents lower so than the thinner film due to stress relaxation. The s(max) values decrease with increasing film thickness. The statistical analysis of the fracture strength data were achieved by Weibull distribution function and the fracture origins were predicted.

Study of Si/SiO2 hybrid antireflective coatings on SLD prepared by DSEBET - art. no. 69842P

We introduce a double source electron beam evaporation (DSEBET) technique in this paper. The refractive index coatings were fabricated on K9 glass substrate by adjusting the evaporation rates of two independent sources. The coatings, which were described by atomic force microscopy (AFM), show good compactness and homogeneity. The antireflective (AR) coatings were fabricated on Superluminescent Diodes (SLD) by DSEBET. The hybrid AR coatings on the facets of SLD were prepared in evaporation rates of 0.22nm/s and 0.75nm/s for silicon and silicon dioxide, respectively. The results of AFM and spectral performance of coated SLD show that DSEBET has a promising future in preparing the coatings on optoelectronic devices.

Superluminescent diode monolithically integrated with novel Y-branch by bundle integrated waveguide for fiber optic gyroscope - art. no. 68380D

We have developed a novel InP-based, ridge-waveguide photonic integrated circuit (PIC), which consists of a 1.1-um wavelength Y-branch optical waveguide with low loss and improved far field pattern and a 1.3-um wavelength strained InGaAsP-InP multiple quantum-well superluminescent diode, with bundle integrated guide (BIG) as the scheme for monolithic integration. The simulations of BIG and Y-branches show low losses and improved far-field patterns, based on the beam propagation method (BPM). The amplified spontaneous emission of the device is up to 10 mW at 120 mA with no threshold and saturation. Spectral characteristics of about 30 nm width and less than I dB modulation are achieved using the built-in anti-lasing ability of Y-branch. The beam divergence angles in horizontal and vertical directions are optimized to as small as 12 degrees x8 degrees, resulting in good fiber coupling. The compactness, simplicity in fabrication, good superluminescent performance, low transmission loss and estimated low coupling loss prove the BIG and Y-branch method to be a feasible way for integration and make the photonic integrated circuit of Y-branch and superluminescent diode an promising candidate for transmitter and transceiver used in fiber optic gyroscope.

Dispersion characteristics of nanometer-scaled silicon rib waveguides

We investigate the dispersion properties of nanometer-scaled silicon waveguides with channel and rib cross section around the optical fiber communication wavelength and systematically study their relationship with the key structural parameters of the waveguide. The simulation results show that the introduction of an extra degree of freedom in the rib depth enables the rib waveguide more flexible in engineering the group velocity dispersion (GVD) compared with the channel waveguide. Besides, we get the structural parameters of the waveguides that can realize zero-GVD at 1550 nm.

A broadband external cavity tunable InAs/GaAs quantum dot laser by utilizing only the ground state emission

A broadband external cavity tunable laser is realized by using a broad-emitting spectral InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) gain device. A tuning range of 69 nm with a central wavelength of 1056 nm, is achieved at a bias of 1.25 kA/cm(2) only by utilizing the light emission from the ground state of QDs. This large tunable range only covers the QD ground-state emission and is related to the inhomogeneous size distribution of QDs. No excited state contributes to the tuning bandwidth. The application of the QD gain device to the external cavity tunable laser shows its immense potential in broadening the tuning bandwidth. By the external cavity feedback, the threshold current density can be reduced remarkably compared with the free-running QD gain device.

Smoothing LDA Model for Text Categorization

Abstract. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a document level language model. In general, LDA employ the symmetry Dirichlet distribution as prior of the topic-words’ distributions to implement model smoothing. In this paper, we propose a data-driven smoothing strategy in which probability mass is allocated from smoothing-data to latent variables by the intrinsic inference procedure of LDA. In such a way, the arbitrariness of choosing latent variables'priors for the multi-level graphical model is overcome. Following this data-driven strategy,two concrete methods, Laplacian smoothing and Jelinek-Mercer smoothing, are employed to LDA model. Evaluations on different text categorization collections show data-driven smoothing can significantly improve the performance in balanced and unbalanced corpora.

Spectroscopic ellipsometry study of In2O3 thin films

In2O3 films grown by helicon magnetron sputtering with different thicknesses were characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry in the energy range from 1.5 to 5.0 eV. Aside from one amorphous sample prepared at room substrate temperature, polycrystalline In2O3 films with cubic crystal structure were confirmed for other four samples prepared at the substrate temperature of 450 A degrees C. Excellent SE fittings were realized by applying 1 and/or 2 terms F&B amorphous formulations, building double layered film configuration models, and further taking account of void into the surface layer based on Bruggeman effective medium approximation for thinner films. Spectral dependent refractive indices and extinction coefficients were obtained for five samples. The curve shapes were well interpreted according to the applied dispersion formulas. Almost similar optical band gap values from 3.76 to 3.84 eV were obtained for five samples by Tauc plot calculation using extinction coefficients under the assumption of direct allowed optical transition mode.

Laser irradiation cell photothermal therapy assisted by gold nanoparticles

The strong absorption of gold nanoparticles in the visible spectral range allows the localized generation of heat in a volume of only a few tens of nanometer. The efficient conversion of strongly absorbed light by plasmonic gold nanoparticles to heat energy and their easy bioconjugation suggest that the gold nanoparticles can be used as selective photothermal agents in molecular cell targeting. The selective destruction of alkaline phosphatase, the permeabilization of the cell membrane and the selective killing of cells by laser irradiating gold nanoparticles were demonstrated. The potential of using this selective technique in molecularly targeted photothermal therapy and transfection is discussed.

Zero-broadening SBS slow light propagation in an optical fiber using two broadband pump beams

A new method of tailoring stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain spectrum for slow light propagation is proposed by use of two Gaussian-shaped broadband pump beams with different powers and spectral widths. The central frequency interval between the two pump beams are carefully set to be two inherent Brillouin frequency shift, ensuring that the gain spectrum of one pump has the same central frequency with the loss spectrum of the other one. Different gain profiles are obtained and analyzed. Among them a special gain profile is found that ensures a zero-broadening of the signal pulse independent of the Brillouin gain. This is owing to the compensation between the positive gain-dependent broadening and the negative GVD (group velocity dispersion) dependent broadening. The relationship of two pump beams is also found for constructing such a gain profile. It provides us a new idea of managing the broadening of SBS-based slow pulse by artificially constructing and optimizing the profile of gain spectrum. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.

Spectral relationship of photoinduced refractive index and absorption changes in fulgide films

Fulgides are one kind of organic photochromic compound, which are famous for their thermal irreversibility. In this report, from the difference spectra of the absorption A() of one kind of pyrrylfulgide, the spectral refractive index change n() was calculated by the Kramers-Kronig relation (KKR), and a good correlation of theoretically derived values and the experimental values of the n measured by a modified Michelson interferometer was found. Further, it is demonstrated that it was possible to calculate the spectral dependence of diffraction efficiency from the easily accessible absorption changes. This method will be a useful tool for the characterization and optimization of fulgide films. The results show that the diffraction efficiency is high at 488 and 750 nm, where the absorption is very small, so we can realize non-destructive reconstruction.

BAND DISPERSION IN THE RECURSION METHOD

The advantages of the supercell model in employing the recursion method are discussed in comparison with the cluster model. A transformation for changing complex Bloch-sum seed states to real seed states in recursion calculations is presented and band dispersion in the recursion method is extracted with use of the Lanczos algorithm. The method is illustrated by the band structure of GaAs in the empirical tight-binding parametrized model. In the supercell model, the treatment of boundary conditions is discussed for various seed-state choices. The method is useful in applying tight-binding techniques to systems with substantial deviations from periodicity.

AN ANALYSIS OF CHARGE STATES FOR LOCAL VIBRATIONAL-MODES BY OXYGEN DEFECTS IN SEMI-INSULATING GAAS

The high-resolution spectral measurements for new local vibrational modes near 714 cm-1 due to the oxygen defect in semi-insulating GaAs are analyzed on the basis of a model calculation by self-consistent bond orbital approach. Two charge states of oxygen atom with 1 and 2 extra electrons are assigned to be responsible for these local modes. The observed frequencies are explained by the properties of Ga-O-1 and Ga-O-2 bonds and the calculated cohesive energy indicates that the O-2 state is stable. The results are in good agreement with the kinetic analysis.

Chirped fiber Bragg gratings for optical fiber dispersion compensation

The use of alpha-power chirped fiber Bragg gratings for dispersion cancellation in an optical fiber link is discussed. Numerical and theoretical investigation of recompressing the dispersion-broadened pulse by using alpha-power chirped gratings is made, which shows that, the dispersion-broadened Gaussian pulse after 100 km standard fiber (with zero dispersion at lambda = 1.3 mu m) trnasmission at lambda = 1.55 mu m with initial width of T-FWHM = 33ps (full width at half maximum) can be perfectly recompressed with the peak reflectivity of 82% by using a 30 mm long alpha-power chirped fiber grating with proper a value and optimal grating parameters.

TAILORED DFB LASER PROPERTIES BY INDIVIDUALLY CHIRPED GRATINGS USING BENT WAVE-GUIDES

DFB lasers with continuously and arbitrarily chirped gratings of ultrahigh spatial precision are implemented by a method we proposed recently, using bent waveguides on homogeneous grating fields. Choosing individual bending functions we generate special chirping functions and obtain additional degrees of freedom to tailor and improve specific device performances, We present two applications for lasers showing several improved device properties and the effectiveness of our method, First, we implement continuously distributed phase-shifted lasers, revealing a considerably reduced photon pile-up, higher single-longitudinal mode stability, higher output power, lower linewidth, and higher yield than conventional abruptly phase-shifted lasers, Second, a novel tuning principle is applied in chirped multiple-section DFB lasers, showing 5.5-nm wavelength tuning, without any gaps, maintaining high side-mode suppression.

CONTINUOUSLY CHIRPED DFB GRATINGS BY SPECIALLY BENT WAVE-GUIDES FOR TUNABLE LASERS

We have implemented and studied a new type of tunable multiple-section semiconductor distributed feedback (DFB) laser using tailored chirped DFB gratings. Arbitrarily and continuously chirped DFB gratings are defined by bent waveguides on homogeneous grating fields with ultrahigh spatial precision, The mathematical bending functions are optimized in this case to provide enlarged wavelength tuning ranges. We present the results of model calculations, the technological device realization and experimental results of the DFB laser characterization e.g. a tuning range of 5.5 mm without wavelength gaps and high side mode suppression ratio.