Organic-inorganic hybrid films were prepared through layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition of poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and ZrO(2) nanoparticles coated with poly(acrylic acid) (PAA), allowing facile control of surface roughness and hydrophobicity. Superhydrophobic behavior was observed after deposition of silica nanoparticles and a simple fluorination of the surface. The structure of films was controlled by the number of deposition cycles using PAA-coated 100 nm ZrO(2) nanoparticles, the particle size, and the prelayer with PAH and PAA. The change in the apparent water contact angle of (PAH/PAA-coated ZrO(2)n surfaces without fluorination of the surface agrees with Cassie and Baxter's model for nonwetted surfaces even though the outermost surface itself is hydrophilic. Superhydrophobic surfaces were then successfully developed by the deposition of hydrophilic silica nanoparticles on a 10 bilayer surface of PAH/PAA-coated ZrO(2), and a simple fluorination. Moreover, the chemical stability of the film was greatly increased by heat-induced cross-linking of the film. The incorporation of ZrO(2) nanoparticles in superhydrophobic films promises better mechanical properties than the organic film.

We propose a design for producing a conveyable quasi-periodic optical chain that can stably trap and deliver multiple individual particles in three dimensions at different planes near the focus. A diffractive optical element (DOE) is designed to spatially modulate the phase of an incoming radially polarized beam. For a tighly focused beam, a three-dimensional (3D) optical chain can be formed because of the difference in the Gouy phase shift from two concentric regions of the DOE. A desired number of particles can be stably tweezed one by one with individual 3D volumes in this trapping structure. By controlling the phase modulation of the incident beam, one can manipulate the interference pattern to accelerate and transport trapped particles along the optical axis in a prescribed way.

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An isobaric yield ratio difference (IBD) method is proposed to study the ratio of the difference between the chemical potential of neutron and proton to temperature (∆µ/T ) in heavy-ion collisions. The ∆µ/T determined by the IBD method (IB-∆µ/T ) is compared to the results of the isoscaling method (IS-∆µ/T ), which uses the isotopic or the isotonic yield ratio. Similar distributions of the IB-and IS-∆µ/T are found in the measured 140A MeV 40,48 Ca + 9 Be and the 58,64 Ni + 9 Be reactions. The IB-and IS-∆µ/T both have a distribution with a plateau in the small mass fragments plus an increasing part in the fragments of relatively larger mass. The IB-and IS-∆µ/T plateaus show dependence on the n/p ratio of the projectile. It is suggested that the height of the plateau is decided by the difference between the neutron density (ρn) and the proton density (ρp) distributions of the projectiles, and the width shows the overlapping volume of the projectiles in which ρn and ρp change very little. The difference between the IB-and IS-∆µ/T is explained by the isoscaling parameters being constrained by the many isotopes and isotones, while the IBD method only uses the yields of two isobars. It is suggested that the IB-∆µ/T is more reasonable than the IS-∆µ/T , especially when the isotopic or isotonic ratio disobeys the isoscaling. As to the question whether the ∆µ/T depends on the density or the temperature, the density dependence is preferred since the low density can result in low temperature in the peripheral reactions.

The Shannon information entropy theory is used to explain the recently proposed isobaric yield ratio difference (IBD) probe which aims to determine the nuclear symmetry energy. Theoretically, the difference between the Shannon uncertainties carried by isobars in two different reactions ( In 21 ), is found to be equivalent to the difference between the chemical potentials of protons and neutrons of the reactions [the IBD probe, IB-(βμ) 21 , with β the reverse temperature]. From the viewpoints of Shannon information entropy, the physical meaning of the above chemical potential difference is interpreted by In 21 as denoting the nuclear symmetry energy or density difference between neutrons and protons in reactions more concisely than from the statistical ablation-abrasion model.(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP 3 .Nuclear matter with different density range from sub-saturation to supra-saturation can be produced in heavy-ion collisions (HICs). Because of the difficulty to measure the nuclear density and nuclear symmetry energy directly, various probes have been proposed to study the nuclear property based on different models. The results of these probes differ from each other in different extent both theoretically and experimentally [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The entire process of HICs is dynamical, in which the nuclear matter experience the hot and high density state by violent compressing between projectile and target nuclei, and the dilute states in the process of system expanding. At last, the final residue fragments, which cease to emit particle anymore and are chemically frozen, are measured. Many probes to investigate the nuclear property in HICs are based on the yield of fragments [1,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].The Shannon information entropy, which was put forward by C.E. Shannon, is to measure the uncertainty in a random variable which quantifies the expected value of the information contained in a message [17]. The Shannon entropy tells the average unpredictability in a random variable, which is equivalent to its information content, and provides a constructive criterion for setting up probability distributions on the basis of partial knowledge, and leads to a type of statistical inference called as the maximumentropy estimate [18]. In the information communication, the