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The photonic spin Hall effect has attracted considerable research interest due to its potential applications in spin-controlled nanophotonic devices. However, realization of the asymmetrical photonic spin Hall effect with a single optical element is still a challenge due to the conjugation of the Pancharatnam–Berry phase, which reduces the flexibility in various applications. Here, we demonstrate an asymmetrical spin-dependent beam splitter based on a single-layer dielectric metasurface exhibiting strong and controllable optical response. The metasurface consists of an array of dielectric nanofins, where both varying rotation angles and feature sizes of the unit cells are utilized to create high-efficiency dielectric metasurfaces, which enables to break the conjugated characteristic of phase gradient. Thanks to the superiority of the phase modulation ability, when the fabricated metasurface is under normal incidence with a wavelength of 1550 nm, the left-handed circular polarization (LCP) light exhibits an anomalous refraction angle of 28.9°, while the right-handed circular polarization (RCP) light transmits directly. The method we proposed can be used for the flexible manipulation of spin photons and has potentials in high efficiency metasurfaces with versatile functionalities, especially with metasurfaces in a compact space.

Three-dimensional (3D) vertical architecture transistors represent an important technological pursuit, which have distinct advantages in device integration density, operation speed, and power consumption. However, the fabrication processes of such 3D devices are complex, especially in the interconnection of electrodes. In this paper, we present a novel method which combines suspended electrodes and focused ion beam (FIB) technology to greatly simplify the electrodes interconnection in 3D devices. Based on this method, we fabricate 3D vertical core-double shell structure transistors with ZnO channel and Al2O3 gate-oxide both grown by atomic layer deposition. Suspended top electrodes of vertical architecture could be directly connected to planar electrodes by FIB deposited Pt nanowires, which avoid cumbersome steps in the traditional 3D structure fabrication technology. Both single pillar and arrays devices show well behaved transfer characteristics with an I on/I off current ratio greater than 106 and a low threshold voltage around 0 V. The ON-current of the 2 × 2 pillars vertical channel transistor was 1.2 μA at the gate voltage of 3 V and drain voltage of 2 V, which can be also improved by increasing the number of pillars. Our method for fabricating vertical architecture transistors can be promising for device applications with high integration density and low power consumption.

The 〈 100 〉 crystal-oriented silicon micropillar array platforms were prepared by microfabrication processes for the purpose of electrolyte additive identification. The silicon micropillar array platform was used for the study of fluorinated vinyl carbonate (FEC), vinyl ethylene carbonate (VEC), ethylene sulfite (ES), and vinyl carbonate (VC) electrolyte additives in the LiPF6 dissolved in a mixture of ethylene carbonate and diethyl carbonate electrolyte system using charge/discharge cycles, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, scanning electron microscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results show that the silicon pillar morphology displays cross-shaped expansion after lithiation/delithiation, the inorganic lithium salt keeps the silicon pillar morphology intact, and the organic lithium salt content promotes a rougher silicon pillar surface. The presence of poly-(VC) components on the surface of FEC and VC electrodes allows the silicon pillar to accommodate greater volume expansion while remaining intact. This work provides a standard, fast, and effective test method for the performance analysis of electrolyte additives and provides guidance for the development of new electrolyte additives.

The realization of active modulation of reflection phase based on metasurfaces is of great significance for flexible control of electromagnetic wavefront, which makes metasurfaces have practical application values in polarization conversion, beam steering, metalens, etc. In this paper, a reflection phase tunable gap-surface plasmon (GSP) metasurface based on phase change materials Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) is designed and experimentally demonstrated. By virtue of the characteristics of large permittivities difference before and after GST phase transition and the existence of stable intermediate states, the continuous modulation of near-infrared reflection phase larger than 200° has been realized. At the same time, through the reasonable design of the structure sizes, the reflection has been maintained at about 0.4 and basically does not change with the GST phase transition, which improved the working efficiency of the metasurface significantly. In addition, the coupled-mode theory (CMT) is introduced to make a full analysis of the modulation mechanism of the reflection phase, which proves that the phase transition of GST can induce the transition of metasurface working state from overcoupling mode to critical coupling mode. The improvement of the metasurface working efficiency has practical values for wavefront modulation.

Solar cells that combine single-crystalline silicon (Si) with graphene (G) have been widely researched in order to develop next-generation photovoltaic devices. However, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of G/Si solar cell without chemical doping is commonly low due to the relatively high resistance of graphene. In this work, through combining graphene with carbon nanotube (CNT) networks, we fabricated three kinds of hybrid nanocarbon film/Si heterojunction solar cells in order to increase the PCE of the graphene based Si solar cell. We investigated the characteristics of different nanocarbon film/Si solar cells and found that their performance depends on the heterojunctions. Specifically, a doping-free G-CNT/Si solar cell demonstrated a high PCE of 7.9%, which is nearly equal to the combined value of two individuals (G/Si and CNT/Si). This high efficiency is attributed to the synergistic effect of graphene and CNTs, and can be further increased to 9.1% after applying a PMMA antireflection coating. This study provides a potential way to further improve the Si based heterojunction solar cells.

Heterostructures from mechanically-assembled stacks of two-dimensional materials allow for versatile electronic device applications. Here, we demonstrate the intrinsic charge transport behaviors in graphene-black phosphorus heterojunction devices under different charge carrier densities and temperature regimes. At high carrier densities or in the ON state, tunneling through the Schottky barrier at the interface between graphene and black phosphorus dominates at low temperatures. With temperature increasing, the Schottky barrier at the interface is vanishing, and the channel current starts to decrease with increasing temperature, behaving like a metal. While at low carrier densities or in the OFF state, thermal emission over the Schottky barrier at the interface dominates the carriers transport process. A barrier height of ~ 67.3 meV can be extracted from the thermal emission-diffusion theory.

To understand and develop new nanostructure materials with specific mechanical properties, a good knowledge of the elastic strain response is mandatory. Here we investigate the linear elasticity response in the modified phase-field-crystal (MPFC) model. The results show that two different propagation modes control the elastic interaction length and time, which determine whether the density waves can propagate or not. By quantitatively calculating the strain field, we find that the strain distribution is indeed extremely uniform in case of elasticity. Further, we present a detailed theoretical analysis for the orientation dependence and temperature dependence of shear modulus. The simulation results show that the shear modulus reveals strong anisotropy and the one-mode analysis provides a good guideline for determining elastic shear constants until the system temperature falls below a certain value.

The mechanical properties of materials greatly depend on the microstructure morphology. The quantitative characterization of material microstructures is essential for the performance prediction and hence the material design. At present, the quantitative characterization methods mainly rely on the microstructure characterization of shape, size, distribution, and volume fraction, which related to the mechanical properties. These traditional methods have been applied for several decades and the subjectivity of human factors induces unavoidable errors. In this paper, we try to bypass the traditional operations and identify the relationship between the microstructures and the material properties by the texture of image itself directly. The statistical approach is based on gray level Co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), allowing an objective and repeatable study on material microstructures. We first present how to identify GLCM with the optimal parameters, and then apply the method on three systems with different microstructures. The results show that GLCM can reveal the interface information and microstructures complexity with less human impact. Naturally, there is a good correlation between GLCM and the mechanical properties.

Some color centers in diamond can serve as quantum bits which can be manipulated with microwave pulses and read out with laser, even at room temperature. However, the photon collection efficiency of bulk diamond is greatly reduced by refraction at the diamond/air interface. To address this issue, we fabricated arrays of diamond nanostructures, differing in both diameter and top end shape, with HSQ and Cr as the etching mask materials, aiming toward large scale fabrication of single-photon sources with enhanced collection efficiency made of nitrogen vacancy (NV) embedded diamond. With a mixture of O2 and CHF3 gas plasma, diamond pillars with diameters down to 45 nm were obtained. The top end shape evolution has been represented with a simple model. The tests of size dependent single-photon properties confirmed an improved single-photon collection efficiency enhancement, larger than tenfold, and a mild decrease of decoherence time with decreasing pillar diameter was observed as expected. These results provide useful information for future applications of nanostructured diamond as a single-photon source.

The adsorption behaviors of glycine on diamond (001) are systematically investigated by first-principles calculations. We have considered all possible adsorption configurations without a surface dangling bond and give a quantitative analysis for the relationship between the deviation of carbon bond angle and adsorption energy. We found that a smaller distortion of carbon covalent bond angle results in a more stable adsorption structure, and the most stable adsorption has a benzene-ring-like structure with the highest adsorption energy of 5.11 eV per molecule and the minimum distortion of carbon covalent bond angle.

Large-area monolayer graphene samples grown on polycrystalline copper foil by thermal chemical vapor deposition with differing CH4 flux and growth time are investigated by Raman spectra, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and scanning tunneling microscopy. The defects, number of layers, and quality of graphene are shown to be controllable through tuning the reaction conditions: ideally to 2–3 sccm CH4 for 30 minutes.

The preparation and electrical properties of diamond nanocones are reviewed, including a maskless etching process and mechanism of large-area diamond conical nanostructure arrays using a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) system with negatively biased substrates, and the field electron emission, gas sensing, and quantum transport properties of a diamond nanocone array or an individual diamond nanocone. Optimal cone aspect ratio and array density are investigated, along with the relationships between the cone morphologies and experimental parameters, such as the CH4/H2 ratio of the etching gas, the bias current, and the gas pressure. The reviewed experiments demonstrate the possibility of using nanostructured diamond cones as a display device element, a point electron emission source, a gas sensor or a quantum device.