Metamaterials, which are composed of metallic and dielectric subwavelength structures arranged in periodic array, are artifi cial materials with the permittivity or permeability less than that of vacuum or with negative values unattainable in nature. [1][2][3] Due to their unique electromagnetic properties, metamaterials have been widely used in many applications, such as sensors, superlenses, miniature antennas, and invisible cloaks. [4][5][6][7] Recently, metamaterial-based perfect absorbers have been attracted considerable attentions and various types of terahertz metamaterial absorbers have been reported. For example, Landy et al. presented a polarization-insensitive metamaterial absorber composed of metallic split ring resonators and cutting wires with singe-band absorption. [ 8 ] X.-J. He et al. proposed a dual-band metamaterial absorber made of two stacked metallic cross resonators and a lower metallic ground plane, separated by an isolation material spacer. [ 9 ] Cheng-Wen Cheng presented wide-angle polarization independent infrared dual band absorbers based on metallic multisized disk arrays. [ 10 ] Yanxia Cui proposed a sawtooth anisotropic metamaterial slab absorber for Transverse Magnetic (TM) polarized light with absorptivity higher than 95% covering a waveband ranging from 3 to 5.5 μ m. [ 11 ] However, current metamaterial absorbers suffer from many disadvantages such as narrow operating waveband, sensitivity to the polarization state of the incident light, narrow accepted angles and a fi xed azimuthal angle, which greatly limit their potential applications to spectroscopic detection and phase imaging. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Hence, a light absorbing device that is broadband, wide-angle and insensitive to the incident light polarization state is urgently needed for its applications in areas mentioned above. In this letter, we propose a two-dimensional (2D) pyramidal shape metamaterial-based absorber. In comparison with previous designs, this pyramid metamaterial absorber has a very high absorptivity performance that is polarization-insensitive, wide-angle and omni-directional at full infrared waveband.The proposed two-dimensional pyramid absorber is composed of alternating metallic and dielectric thin fi lms as shown in the insets of Figure 1 a. The metal thin fi lm is made of gold with thickness t m = 10 nm; dielectric thin fi lm is made of germanium with thickness t d = 190 nm. The total number of metal/dielectric pairs ( N) is 15. These multiple thin fi lm layers are carved into a pyramid structure for each unite cell. The periods of the unit cell in both x and y directions are 1600 nm. A gold fi lm with a thickness ( t = 100 nm) is added under the pyramid metamaterial absorber to block any incident light transmission. The optimized pyramid absorber structure was obtained through fi nite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations (Lumerical Inc.). [ 24 ] The material properties of gold and germanium were chosen from the software database-Gold Palik and Ger...

A brief summary of representative fluorescent chemosensors based on conjugated polymers with N-heterocyclic moieties, followed by a discussion on the limitations and challenges of current systems, as well as possible future research directions.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) has attracted great attention in the last decade and recently it has been successfully applied to nanolithography due to its ability of beyond diffraction limit. This article reviews the recent development in plasmonic nanolithography, which is considered as one of the most remarkable technology for next-generation nanolithography. Nanolithography experiments were highlighted on the basis of SPPs effect. Three types of plasmonic nanolithography methods: contact nanolithography, planar lens imaging nanolithography, and direct writing nanolithography were reviewed in detail, and their advantages and shortages are analyzed and compared, respectively. Finally, the development trend of plasmonic nanolithography is suggested.

Recently, investigation on two-dimensional (2D) organic polymers has made great progress, and conjugated 2D polymers already play a dynamic role in both academic and practical applications. However, a convenient, noninterfacial approach to obtain single-layer 2D polymers in solution, especially in aqueous media, remains challenging. Herein, we present a facile, highly efficient, and versatile "1D to 2D" strategy for preparation of free-standing single-monomer-thick conjugated 2D polymers in water without any aid. The 2D structure was achieved by taking advantage of the side-by-side self-assembly of a rigid amphiphilic 1D polymer and following topochemical photopolymerization in water. The spontaneous formation of single-layer polymer sheets was driven by synergetic association of the hydrophobic interactions, π-π stacking interactions, and electrostatic repulsion. Both the supramolecular sheets and the covalent sheets were confirmed by spectroscopic analyses and electron microscope techniques. Moreover, in comparison of the supramolecular 2D polymer, the covalent 2D polymer sheets exhibited not only higher mechanical strength but also higher conductivity, which can be ascribed to the conjugated network within the covalent 2D polymer sheets.

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Mechanochromic polymers (MCPs), which response to mechanical stimuli by optical signal changing, are regarded to apply in smart materials such as force sensors. Although rapid progress in the MCPs have...

This paper reports a biomimetic design of microchannels in the planar reactors with the aim to optimize the photocatalytic efficiency of water purification. Inspired from biology, a bifurcated microchannel has been designed based on the Murray's law to connect to the reaction chamber for photocatalytic reaction. The microchannels are designed to have a constant depth of 50 lm but variable aspect ratios ranging from 0.015 to 0.125. To prove its effectiveness for photocatalytic water purification, the biomimetic planar reactors have been tested and compared with the non-biomimetic ones, showing an improvement of the degradation efficiency by 68%. By employing the finite element method, the flow process of the designed microchannel reactors has been simulated and analyzed. It is found that the biomimetic design owns a larger flow velocity fluctuation than that of the nonbiomimetic one, which in turn results in a faster photocatalytic reaction speed. Such a biomimetic design paves the way for the design of more efficient planar reactors and may also find applications in other microfluidic systems that involve the use of microchannels. V C 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.