A flexible, transparent, chemical gas sensor is assembled from a transparent conducting film of carbon nanotube (CNT) networks that are coated with hierarchically nanostructured polyaniline (PANI) nanorods. The nanocomposite film is synthesized by in-situ, chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline in a functional multiwalled CNT (FMWCNT) suspension and is simultaneously deposited onto a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. An as-prepared flexible transparent chemical gas sensor exhibits excellent transparency of 85.0% at 550 nm using the PANI/FMWCNT nanocomposite film prepared over a reaction time of 8 h. The sensor also shows good flexibility, without any obvious decrease in performance after 500 bending/extending cycles, demonstrating high-performance, portable gas sensing at room temperature. This superior performance could be attributed to the improved electron transport and collection due to the CNTs, resulting in reliable and efficient sensing, as well as the high surface-to-volume ratio of the hierarchically nanostructured composites. The excellent transparency, improved sensing performance, and superior flexibility of the device, may enable the integration of this simple, low-cost, gas sensor into handheld flexible transparent electronic circuitry and optoelectronic devices.

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Integrated optical power splitters are one of the fundamental building blocks in photonic integrated circuits. Conventional multimode interferometer-based power splitters are widely used as they have reasonable footprints and are easy to fabricate. However, it is challenging to realize arbitrary split ratios, especially for multi-outputs. In this Letter, an ultra-compact power splitter with a QR code-like nanostructure is designed by a nonlinear fast search method. The highly functional structure is composed of a number of freely designed square pixels with the size of 120×120  nm which could be either dielectric or air. The light waves are scattered by a number of etched squares with optimized locations, and the scattered waves superimpose at the outputs with the desired power ratio. We demonstrate 1×2 splitters with 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 split ratios, and a 1×3 splitter with the ratio of 1:2:1. The footprint for all the devices is only 3.6×3.6  μm. Well-controlled split ratios are measured for all the cases. The measured transmission efficiencies of all the splitters are close to 80% over 30 nm wavelength range.

Because of the flexoelectric effect, dielectric materials usually polarize in response to a strain gradient. Soft materials are good candidates for developing large strain gradient because of their good deformability. However, they always suffer from lower flexoelectric coefficients compared to ceramics. In this work, a flexoelectric-like effect is introduced to enhance the effective flexoelectricity of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) bar. The flexoelectric-like effect is realized by depositing a layer of net charges on the middle plane of the bar to form an electret. Experiments show that the enhancement of the flexoelectricity depends on the density of inserted net charges. It is found that a charged layer with surface potential of -5723V results in 100 times increase of the material's flexoelectric coefficient. We also show that the enhancement is proportional to the thickness of electrets. This work provides a new way of enhancing flexoelectricity in soft materials and further prompt the application of soft materials in electromechanical transducers. Flexoelectricity is a widely observed property of dielectric materials (including crystals [1, 2], polymers [3], biomembranes [4], bones [5], liquid crystals [6], semiconductors [7], et al), which couples the strain gradient and the electric polarization. When a dielectric material is deformed non-uniformly, regardless of its initial crystalline symmetry, the strain

As a wide band-gap and direct transition semiconductor material, ZnO has good scintillation performance and strong radiation resistance, but it also has a serious self-absorption phenomenon that affects its light output. After being doped with Ga, it can be used for the scintillator of ultra-fast scintillating detectors to detect X-ray, gamma, neutron, and charged particles with extremely fast response and high light output. Firstly, the basic properties, defects, and scintillation mechanism of ZnO crystals are introduced. Thereafter, magnetron sputtering, one of the most attractive production methods for producing ZnO:Ga film, is introduced including the principle of magnetron sputtering and its technical parameters’ influence on the performance of ZnO:Ga. Finally, ZnO:Ga film’s application research status is presented as a scintillation material in the field of radiation detection, and it is concluded that some problems need to be urgently solved for its wider application.

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