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Distortion effects in alternating phase shift masks on wafer level imaging have been investigated using a combined simulation of the photomask patterning process and projection optical lithography. Unlike the previous simulation of the optical proximity effect, which were based on ideal mask designs, the simulation presented in this paper is based on distorted mask features. The mask feature distortion comes from simulation of laser scanning lithography. Proximity effects in laser direct writing has been taken into account for the generation of mask features. The simulations have demonstrated that phase shift masks also suffer from the optical proximity effect. The effect is worsened if mask distortion is taken into account. Compared with no phase shifting masks, phase shifting in mask features can slightly offset the proximity effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] We provide a circular fabrication method with simplicity, economy and high efficiency. [•] The inversion algorithm of the parameters of diffractive object is built from a required diffractive pattern. [•] A concrete opaque spot is designed for the required structure. [•] An annulus array with feature size of 680nm is fabricated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Botanical medicines are increasingly combined with chemotherapeutics as anticancer drug cocktails. This study aimed to assess the chemotherapeutic potential of an extract of Taxus cuspidata (TC) needles and twigs produced by artificial cuttage and its co-effects as a cocktail with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). Methods: Components of TC extract were identified by HPLC fingerprinting. Cytotoxicity analysis was performed by MTT assay or ATP assay. Apoptosis studies were analyzed by H & E, PI, TUNEL staining, as well as Annexin V/PI assay. Cell cycle analysis was performed by flow cytometry. 5-FU concentrations in rat plasma were determined by HPLC and the pharmacokinetic parameters were estimated using 3p87 software. Synergistic efficacy was subjected to median effect analysis with the mutually nonexclusive model using Calcusyn1 software. The significance of differences between values was estimated by using a one-way ANOVA. Results: TC extract reached inhibition rates of 70-90% in different human cancer cell lines (HL-60, BGC-823, KB, Bel-7402, and HeLa) but only 5-7% in normal mouse T/B lymphocytes, demonstrating the broad-spectrum anticancer activity and low toxicity to normal cells of TC extract in vitro. TC extract inhibited cancer cell growth by inducing apoptosis and G\(_2\)/M cell cycle arrest. Most interestingly, TC extract and 5-FU, combined as a cocktail, synergistically inhibited the growth of cancer cells in vitro, with Combination Index values (CI) ranging from 0.90 to 0.26 at different effect levels from IC50 to IC90 in MCF-7 cells, CI ranging from 0.93 to 0.13 for IC40 to IC90 in PC-3M-1E8 cells, and CI < 1 in A549 cells. In addition, the cocktail had lower cytotoxicity in normal human cell (HEL) than 5-FU used alone. Furthermore, TC extract did not affect the pharmacokinetics of 5-FU in rats. Conclusions: The combinational use of the TC extract with 5-FU displays strong cytotoxic synergy in cancer cells and low cytotoxicity in normal cells. These findings suggest that this cocktail may have a potential role in cancer treatment.

The rapidly‐developed nanophotonics enable the realization of highly‐precise, ultra‐compact full Stokes polarimeters. However, realizing large‐area well‐designed structures with complex chiral morphology and subwavelength size is still a challenge to the current micro/nano‐engineering technology. Here, one high‐performance, ultra‐compact, and one‐shot full‐Stokes polarimeters in the ultraviolent waveband for the first time based on the long‐range disorder chiral shells fabricated by the micro‐sphere lithography are experimentally demonstrated. This chiral–shell monolayer owns strong and distinct optical chirality and anisotropy between the shells in adjacent micro‐domains and thus leads to different photo‐electric responses to the incident polarized lights for the photodetectors placed underneath. Through employing the residual convolutional neural network to extract the Stokes parameter Ŝ$\hat{S}$, a small detection averaged mean square error (MSE) of <0.5% from 316 nm to 410 nm is realized, and the minimum MSEs at 361 nm can reach recorded values of ≈0.02% (S1${{S}_1}$), 0.017% (S2${{S}_2}$), and 0.014% (S3${{S}_3}$). The influence of exposure time and pixel number, and the system stability are systematically investigated. This work brings new inspiration for the disorder structures based on Bottom‐Up methods, high‐performance polarimeters, and polarization imaging devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a simple and effective method to manipulate photonic spin accumulation with an applied magnetic field. When a linearly polarized Gaussian light beam is reflected from the prism-air interface at the Brewster angle, the magnitude and direction of the photonic spin accumulation can be flexibly modulated by adjusting the applied magnetic field. Importantly, the maximum displacement of photonic spin accumulation can reach about 39.14 μ m , which provides the opportunity to directly observe photonic spin accumulation without weak measurements. These findings may hold potential applications for manipulating and detecting the electron spin current, leading to the development of a new spintronic device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial chiral nanostructures have attracted many attentions for their unusual properties, such as giant chiroptical effect, the ability to achieve negative index and repellent Casimir force. However, their complicated geometrical morphologies usually require high-cost, inefficient fabrication technologies, especially for the chiral nanostructures working in the visible band. In this paper, we discuss a simple, low-cost and high-efficient fabrication method for the fabrication of high performance 3D shell like chiral nanostructure (SLCS). Through single material deposition on the self-assembled microsphere array monolayer, the 3D SLCS can be successfully formed. The spectral analysis of SLCS in microdomains show that the maximum circular dichroism (CD) signal can reach to about 9°, although the CD signal in bulk samples is very weak. The in-depth shadow effect analysis reveals that both of the left-hand and right-hand SLCS are formed in one sample, which generate CD signal of opposite signs, and weaken the chiroptical effect of bulk samples. Finite difference time domain method has been used to simulate the electromagnetic properties of SLCS located on micro-sphere array. Four typical SLCS with φ = 0°, 15°, 30° and 45° has been analyzed and the simulated results meet well with the experiment. The SLCS with giant chiroptical effect will find potential applications in integrated photonics, enantiomer sensor and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plasmonic chiral nanostructures have attracted a great deal of attention in chirality‐based biosensing, enantioselective separation, and recently photonic orbital angular momentum‐based quantum information processing. However, the intrinsic Ohmic losses of metals and significant radiative scattering of plasmonically resonant nanostructures result in small quality factors and hence weak optical chirality (such as circular dichroism, CD). Here, it is reported that propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs)—an achiral electromagnetic surface wave—can significantly enhance the Q‐factors of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) related CD in plasmonic lattices with chiral unit cells. It is demonstrated experimentally and theoretically that mode interaction between the highly dispersive achiral SPPs and the nondispersive chiral LSPR results in the formation of hybrid chiral SPPs, enabling efficient tuning of the resultant transmission CD dispersion and signal intensity. A maximum CD signal of 0.8 is experimentally observed with a Q‐factor of 45 in the visible spectral region, showing good agreement with theoretical calculations. This study provides an effective yet facile approach for engineering both the strength and dispersion of optical chirality, paving the way for realizing large‐scale, low‐cost, and high‐performing chiral plasmonic and dielectric metasurfaces for a variety of sensing, imaging, and information manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A novel hybrid long-range surface plasmon waveguide structure comprising a narrow metal stripe, two relative low-index dielectric regions and dielectric ridges is proposed and analyzed. With the dielectric ridges and the two relative low-index dielectric regions symmetrically distributed on both sides of the narrow metal stripe, a symmetric hybrid long range mode with low electromagnetic transmission loss and subwavelength scale confinement is achieved. By optimizing the parameters, the propagation length of the proposed waveguide is increased to over two times to that of the conventional symmetric dielectric loaded surface plasmon waveguide, but the mode size only increases about 20%. For this benefit, the hybrid long-range surface plasmons waveguide is a good candidate for realizing high density photonic integration circuits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aperture-coded or multilevel phase grating can obtain higher diffraction efficiency for laser beam shaping than general binary phase grating (BPG). In this paper, a multiple phase grating (MPG) for coherent addition of 5×5 laser beams is designed. The grating can be fabricated by the gray-tone photolithography technology, which employs the computer controlled spatial-light-modulator (SLM) as a mask. This fabrication method is simple, cheap and some aberrations in photolithography process can be reduced in one-step exposure. We have simulated the exposure dose of the gray-tone photolithography for fabricating the multilevel phase grating, and the effects of fabrication error were analysed. The simulation results showed that the coupling efficiency of MPG for laser beams was 78.74%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We theoretically introduce the statistical uncertainty of photon number and phase error to discuss the precision of parameters to be measured based on weak measurements. When the photon counting scheme is used, we discuss the relative accuracy of the system in the presence of phase error by using the orthogonal and nonorthogonal pre- and post-selected states, respectively. When using the measurement scheme of pointer shift, we discuss the measurement accuracy in the presence of phase error, pointer resolution, and statistical uncertainty. These results give a guide way to get the smallest relative precision and deepen our understanding about weak measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A maskless nano-lithography method by using polystyrene spheres (PSs) self-assembled on silver slab (NSSL) was proposed by Li et al. [Opt. Express 16(19), 14397 (2008)]. In order to understand the mechanism of the lithography technology in depth and improve the experiment results, we studied the energy distribution and the frequency spectrum of incident lights passing through the PS and Ag film. To optimize parameters, the effects of several important factors on the resolution were analyzed. The curves of the optimal Ag film thickness and the highest lithography resolution versus the PS diameter were presented by calculations. Based on the results of the calculations, experiments under the optimization condition were performed and nano holes with dimension of 75 nm and a period of 600 nm were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]