Applied Physics Letters

High performance elastomeric electric heating elements were prepared by incorporating various contents of pristine multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix by using an efficient solution-casting and curing technique. The pristine MWCNTs were identified to be uniformly dispersed in the PDMS matrix and the electrical percolation of MWCNTs was evaluated to be at ∼0.27 wt. %, where the electrical resistivity of the MWCNT/PDMS composite films dropped remarkably. Accordingly, the composite films with higher MWCNT contents above 0.3 wt. % exhibit excellent electric heating performance in terms of temperature response rapidity and electric energy efficiency at constant applied voltages. In addition, the composite films, which were thermally stable up to 250 °C, showed excellent heating-cooling cyclic performance, which was associated with operational stability in actual electric heating applications.

This paper studies the impinging droplets on superhydrophobic textured surfaces and proposes a design guideline for nonwetting surfaces under droplet impingement. A new wetting pressure, the effective water hammer pressure, is introduced in the study to clearly define wetting states for the impinging droplets. This approach establishes the design criteria for nonwetting surfaces to impinging droplets. For impingement speed higher than raindrop speed, the surfaces need to have sub-100-nm features to generate a large enough antiwetting pressure for the droplets to take a nonwetting state after impingement.

Low-temperature atomic layer deposition (ALD) was employed to deposit Al2O3 as a gate dielectric in amorphous In–Ga–Zn–O thin-film transistors fabricated at temperatures below 120 °C. The devices exhibited a negligible threshold voltage shift (ΔVT) during negative bias stress, but a more pronounced ΔVT under positive bias stress with a characteristic turnaround behavior from a positive ΔVT to a negative ΔVT. This abnormal positive bias instability is explained using a two-process model, including both electron trapping and hydrogen release and migration. Electron trapping induces the initial positive ΔVT, which can be fitted using the stretched exponential function. The breakage of residual AlO-H bonds in low-temperature ALD Al2O3 is triggered by the energetic channel electrons. The hydrogen atoms then diffuse toward the In–Ga–Zn–O channel and induce the negative ΔVT through electron doping with power-law time dependence. A rapid partial recovery of the negative ΔVT after stress is also observed during relaxation.

We have confirmed greatly improved resistance to photorefractive damage in compositions of lithium niobate containing 4.5 at. % MgO or more. Holographic diffraction measurements of photorefraction demonstrated that the improved performance is due to a hundredfold increase in the photoconductivity, rather than a decrease in the Glass current. The diffraction efficiency shows an Arrhenius dependence on temperature, with an activation energy of 0.1 eV for the damage-resistant compositions, compared with 0.5 eV for undoped or low-magnesium compositions. The damage-resistant compositions are distinguished by a 2.83-μm absorption line instead of the usual 2.87-μm line due to the OH-stretch vibration.

The Au∕Cr∕Zr+-implanted-ZrO2∕n+-Si sandwiched structure exhibits reversible bipolar resistive switching behavior under dc sweeping voltage. The resistance ratio (Rratio) of high resistive state and low resistive state is as large as five orders of magnitude with 0.5V readout bias. Zr+-implanted-ZrO2 films exhibit good retention characteristics and high device yield. The impact of implanted Zr+ ions on resistive switching performances is investigated. Resistive switching of the fabricated structures is explained by trap-controlled space charge limited current conduction.

The large difference in interatomic spacing between GaN and InN is found to give rise to a solid phase miscibility gap. The temperature dependence of the binodal and spinodal lines in the Ga1−xInxN system was calculated using a modified valence-force-field model where the lattice is allowed to relax beyond the first nearest neighbor. The strain energy is found to decrease until approximately the sixth nearest neighbor, but this approximation is suitable only in the dilute limit. Assuming a symmetric, regular-solutionlike composition dependence of the enthalpy of mixing yields an interaction parameter of 5.98 kcal/mole. At a typical growth temperature of 800 °C, the solubility of In in GaN is calculated to be less than 6%. The miscibility gap is expected to represent a significant problem for the epitaxial growth of these alloys.

Vertically grown cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanowire (NW) arrays were prepared using two different processes: hydrothermal and physical vapor deposition (PVD). The NWs obtained from the hydrothermal process were composed of alternating hexagonal wurtzite (WZ) and cubic zinc blende (ZB) phases with growth direction along WZ ⟨0001⟩ and ZB [111]. The NWs produced by PVD process are single crystalline WZ phase with growth direction along ⟨0001⟩. These vertically grown CdS NW arrays have been used to converting mechanical energy into electricity following a developed procedure [Z. L. Wang and J. Song Science 312, 242 (2006)]. The basic principle of the CdS NW nanogenerator relies on the coupled piezoelectric and semiconducting properties of CdS, and the data fully support the mechanism previously proposed for ZnO NW nanogenerators and nanopiezotronics.

The transfer printing of 2 μm-thick aluminum indium gallium nitride (AlInGaN) micron-size light-emitting diodes with 150 nm (±14 nm) minimum spacing is reported. The thin AlInGaN structures were assembled onto mechanically flexible polyethyleneterephthalate/polydimethylsiloxane substrates in a representative 16 × 16 array format using a modified dip-pen nano-patterning system. Devices in the array were positioned using a pre-calculated set of coordinates to demonstrate an automated transfer printing process. Individual printed array elements showed blue emission centered at 486 nm with a forward-directed optical output power up to 80 μW (355 mW/cm2) when operated at a current density of 20 A/cm2.