Summary
In vivo optogenetics provides unique, powerful capabilities in the dissection of neural circuits implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders. Conventional hardware for such studies, however, physically tethers the experimental animal to an external light source limiting the range of possible experiments. Emerging wireless options offer important capabilities that avoid some of these limitations, but the current size, bulk, weight, and wireless area of coverage is often disadvantageous. Here, we present a simple but powerful setup based on wireless, near-field power transfer and miniaturized, thin flexible optoelectronic implants, for complete optical control in a variety of behavioral paradigms. The devices combine subdermal magnetic coil antennas connected to microscale, injectable LEDs, with the ability to operate at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to blue, green/yellow, and red. An external loop antenna allows robust, straightforward application in a multitude of behavioral apparatuses. The result is a readily mass-producible, user-friendly technology with broad potential for optogenetics applications.
We describe a strategy for creating an air-bridge-structured nanowire junction array platform that capable of reliably discriminating between three gases (hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide) in air. Alternatively driven dual nanowire species of ZnO and CuO with the average diameter of ∼30 nm on a single substrate are used and decorated with metallic nanoparticles to form two-dimensional microarray, which do not need to consider the post fabrications. Each individual nanowires in the array form n-n, p-p, and p-n junctions at the micro/nanoscale on single substrate and the junctions act as electrical conducting path for carriers. The adsorption of gas molecules to the surface changes the potential barrier height formed at the junctions and the carrier transport inside the straight semiconductors, which provide the ability of a given sensor array to differentiate among the junctions. The sensors were tested for their ability to distinguish three gases (H2, CO, and NO2), which they were able to do unequivocally when the data was classified using linear discriminant analysis.
The structural evolution during heteroepitaxial growth of ZnO/sapphire(001) by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering has been studied using real-time synchrotron x-ray scattering. The two-dimensional (2D) ZnO(002) layers grown in the initial stage are highly strained and well aligned to the substrate having a mosaic distribution of 0.01° full width at half maximum (FWHM), in sharp contrast to the reported transition 2D layers grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. With increasing film thickness, the lattice strain is relieved and the poorly aligned (1.25° FWHM) three-dimensional (3D) islands are nucleated on the 2D layers. We attribute the 2D–3D transition to the release of the strain energy stored in the film due to the film/substrate lattice mismatch.
Nanostructured vertical light‐emitting diodes (V‐LEDs) with a very dense forest of vertically aligned ZnO nanowires on the surface of N‐face n‐type GaN are reported with a dramatic improvement in light extraction efficiency (∼3.0×). The structural transformation (i.e., dissociation of the surface nitrogen atoms) at the nanolevel by the UV radiation and Ozone treatments contributes significantly to the initial nucleation for the nanowires growth due to the interdiffusion of Zn into GaN, evident by the scanning photoemission microscopy (SPEM), high‐resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR‐TEM), and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) measurements. This enables the growth of densely aligned ZnO nanowires on N‐face n‐type GaN. This approach shows an extreme enhancement in light extraction efficiency (>2.8×) compared to flat V‐LEDs, in good agreement with the simulation expectations (∼3.01×) obtained from 3D finite‐difference time‐domain (FDTD) tools, explained by the wave‐guiding effect. The further increase (∼30%) in light extraction efficiency is also observed by optimized design of nanogeometry (i.e., MgO layer on ZnO nanorods).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.