Fluorescence Record Diagnostics of 3D Rough-Surface Landscapes With Nano-Scale Inhomogeneities

The paper proposes a new approach that enables the structure analysis and reconstruction of a rough surface where the height of inhomogeneities (from the depression to the upper point) varies within the spread about 20 nm. For the surface diagnostics, carbon nanoparticles are used, which serve as sensitive probes of the local surface height. A single nanoparticle can be positioned at a desirable point of the studied surface with the help of an optical tweezer employing the He-Ne laser radiation. Then the particle is illuminated by the strongly focused exciting beam of 405 nm wavelength, with the waist plane precisely fixed at a certain distance from the surface base plane. The particle’s luminescence response (in the yellow-green spectral range) strongly depends on the distance between the exciting beam waist and the particle, thus indicating the local height of the surface. After scanning the surface area and the consecutive interpolation, the surface “vertical” landscape can be reconstructed with a high accuracy: the numerical simulation shows that the RMS surface roughness is restored with an accuracy of 6.9% while the landscape itself is reconstructed with the mean error 7.7%.

Local Surface Plasmonic Resonance, Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering, Photoluminescence, and Photocatalytic Activity of Hydrothermal Titanate Nanotubes Coated with Ag Nanoparticles

In this work, we successfully fabricated homogeneous hydrothermal titanate nanotubes (TNTs) coated with Ag nanoparticles (NPs) and elucidated the role of Ag NPs on local surface plasmonic resonance, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, and the enhanced photocatalytic activity of TNT/Ag nanocomposite. The results showed that the photodegradation process reached equilibrium in just ~5 min for the TNT/Ag nanocomposite, which was much shorter than that of the TNT sample (~90 min). TEM micrographs showed that Ag NPs were well dispersed on the walls of the nanotubes. XRD patterns and Raman spectra indicated that the TNTs were in the monoclinic structure of H2Ti3O7. Furthermore, Raman active modes of the TNTs were significantly enhanced in the TNT/Ag sample, which was attributed to surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of the TNT/Ag sample was explained by UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and photoluminescence emission spectroscopy, which showed local surface plasmonic resonance-induced visible light absorption enhancement and effective charge separation, respectively.

Similarity Solution of Stagnation-Point Flow and Heat Transfer of a Micropolar Fluid Towards a Horizontal Permeable Exponentially Elongating Sheet with Radiation, Heat Production/ Immersion

The current study aims to explore stagnation spot flow of a micropolar fluid about a plain linear exponentially expanding penetrable surface in the incidence of radiation and in-house heat production/immersion. Through similarity mapping, the mathematical modeling statements are transformed to ODE’s and numerical results are found by shooting techniques. The impact of varying physical constants on momentum, micro-rotation and temperature is demonstrated through graphs. The computed measures including shear, couple stress, mass transfer and the local surface heat flux with distinct measures of factors involved in this proposed problem are presented through a table.

Photocatalytic Properties of Silver Nanospherical Arrays Driven by Surface Plasmons

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a promising technique to study the plasma-driven photocatalytic reactions. Hemispherical alumina nanoarrays with a regular hexagonal arrangement are firstly prepared; then, silver hemispherical nanoarrays are synthesized on the surface of the arrays by silver evaporation. When a laser with a specific wavelength (633 nm) is irradiated on the silver nanoarrays, a large number of regularly arranged local surface plasmon enhancement regions (called “hot spots”) would be generated on its surface. After that, a layer of evenly distributed p-aminothiophenol (PATP) probe molecules was placed on the substrate and the photocatalytic reaction of PATP was driven by the local surface plasmon to form four 4′-di-mercaptoazobenzene (DMAB). Then, under the same experimental conditions, the later product was reversely reacted to form PATP molecule by the action of plasma in the presence of in situ sodium borohydride. SERS can be used to monitor the whole process of the photocatalytic reaction of PATP probe molecules driven by the plasma on the surface of the silver nanoarrays. This research achieves the drawing and erasing of molecular graphics in the micro- and nano-scales, as well as information encryption, reading, and erasing that have strong application value.

Point Cloud Resampling by Simulating Electric Charges on Metallic Surfaces

3D point cloud resampling based on computational geometry is still a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a point cloud resampling algorithm inspired by the physical characteristics of the repulsion forces between point electrons. The points in the point cloud are considered as electrons that reside on a virtual metallic surface. We iteratively update the positions of the points by simulating the electromagnetic forces between them. Intuitively, the input point cloud becomes evenly distributed by the repulsive forces. We further adopt an acceleration and damping terms in our simulation. This system can be viewed as a momentum method in mathematical optimization and thus increases the convergence stability and uniformity performance. The net force of the repulsion forces may contain a normal directional force with respect to the local surface, which can make the point diverge from the surface. To prevent this, we introduce a simple restriction method that limits the repulsion forces between the points to an approximated local plane. This approach mimics the natural phenomenon in which positive electrons cannot escape from the metallic surface. However, this is still an approximation because the surfaces are often curved rather than being strict planes. Therefore, we project the points to the nearest local surface after the movement. In addition, we approximate the net repulsion force using the K-nearest neighbor to accelerate our algorithm. Furthermore, we propose a new measurement criterion that evaluates the uniformity of the resampled point cloud to compare the proposed algorithm with baselines. In experiments, our algorithm demonstrates superior performance in terms of uniformization, convergence, and run-time.