Here we report chemical vapor deposition of graphene on gold surface at ambient pressure. We studied effects of the growth temperature, pressure, and cooling process on the grown graphene layers. The Raman spectroscopy of the samples reveals the essential properties of the graphene grown on gold surface. In order to characterize the electrical properties of the grown graphene layers, we have transferred them on insulating substrates and fabricated field effect transistors. Owing to distinctive properties of gold, the ability to grow graphene layers on gold surface could open new applications of graphene in electrochemistry and spectroscopy. © 2011 American Institute of Physics

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Most natural and engineered processes, such as biomolecular reactions, protein folding, and population dynamics, occur far from equilibrium and therefore cannot be treated within the framework of classical equilibrium thermodynamics. Here we experimentally study how some fundamental thermodynamic quantities and relations are affected by the presence of the nonequilibrium fluctuations associated with an active bath. We show in particular that, as the confinement of the particle increases, the stationary probability distribution of a Brownian particle confined within a harmonic potential becomes non-Boltzmann, featuring a transition from a Gaussian distribution to a heavy-tailed distribution. Because of this, nonequilibrium relations (e.g., the Jarzynski equality and Crooks fluctuation theorem) cannot be applied. We show that these relations can be restored by using the effective potential associated with the stationary probability distribution. We corroborate our experimental findings with theoretical arguments.

Living active matter systems such as bacterial colonies, schools of fish and human crowds, display a wealth of emerging collective and dynamic behaviours as a result of far-from-equilibrium interactions. The dynamics of these systems are better understood and controlled considering their interaction with the environment, which for realistic systems is often highly heterogeneous and disordered. Here, we demonstrate that the presence of spatial disorder can alter the long-term dynamics in a colloidal active matter system, making it switch between gathering and dispersal of individuals. At equilibrium, colloidal particles always gather at the bottom of any attractive potential; however, under non-equilibrium driving forces in a bacterial bath, the colloids disperse if disorder is added to the potential. The depth of the local roughness in the environment regulates the transition between gathering and dispersal of individuals in the active matter system, thus inspiring novel routes for controlling emerging behaviours far from equilibrium.

Active matter in a drying droplet alters the growth dynamics of coffee rings and leads to a more uniform distribution. Andac et al . investigate experimentally the drying process of a droplet containing suspended colloids in presence of motile bacteria, and find that the effect is particularly relevant in the case of slowly drying droplets. The experimental results are reproduced in the numerical simulation of a minimalistic model.

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, the use of graphene as a saturable absorber in an energy-scaled femtosecond Cr 4 : forsterite laser. By incorporating a multipass cavity, the repetition rate of the original short resonator was reduced to 4.51 MHz, which resulted in the generation of 100 fs, nearly transform-limited pulses at 1252 nm with a peak power of 53 kW. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest peak power obtained from a room-temperature, femtosecond Cr 4 : forsterite laser mode locked with a graphene saturable absorber. The corresponding pulse energy was 5.3 nJ with only 24 mW of average output power. The saturation fluence and modulation depth of the GSA were measured to be 25 μJ∕cm 2 and 0.74%, respectively. The nonlinear effects in the Cr 4 : forsterite medium that limit further power scaling were also investigated by using different output couplers.

Extremely high field effect mobility together with the high surface coverage makes graphene a promising material for high frequency electronics application. We investigate the intrinsic high frequency performance limit of graphene field effect transistors limited by the charge impurity scattering. The output and transfer characteristics of graphene field effect transistors together with the high frequency performance are characterized as a function of impurity concentration and dielectric constant of the gate insulator. Our results reveal that graphene transistors could provide power gain at radio frequency band. © 2010 American Institute of Physics

We show that bacterial mobility starts playing a major role in determining the growth dynamics of the edge of drying droplets, as the droplet evaporation rate slows down.