The on-demand generation of viscous microdroplets to print functional or biological materials remains challenging using conventional inkjet-printing methods, mainly due to aggregation and clogging issues. In an effort to overcome these limitations, we implement a jetting method to print viscous microdroplets by laser-induced shockwaves. We experimentally investigate the dependence of the jetting regimes and the droplet size on the laser-pulse energy and on the inks’ physical properties. The range of printable liquids with our device is significantly extended compared to conventional inkjet printers’s performances. In addition, the laser-induced flow-focusing phenomenon allows us to controllably generate viscous microdroplets up to 210 mPa s with a diameter smaller than the nozzle from which they originated ($200\mu \mathrm{m}$). Inks containing proteins are printed without altering their functional properties, thus demonstrating that this jetting technique is potentially suitable for bioprinting.

Nondestructive analysis (NDA) based on x-ray emission is widely used, for example, in the semiconductor and concrete industries. Here, we demonstrate significant quantitative and qualitative improvements in broadband x-ray NDA by combining particle-induced emission with detection based on superconducting microcalorimeter arrays. We show that the technique offers great promise in the elemental analysis of thin-film and bulk samples, especially in the difficult cases where tens of different elements with nearly overlapping emission lines have to be identified down to trace concentrations. We demonstrate the efficiency and resolving capabilities by spectroscopy of several complex multielement samples in the energy range 1–10 keV, some of which have a trace amount of impurities not detectable with standard silicon drift detectors. The ability to distinguish the chemical environment of an element is also demonstrated by measuring the intensity differences and chemical shifts of the characteristics x-ray peaks of titanium compounds. In particular, we report measurements of the $K\alpha /K\beta$ intensity ratio of thin films of TiN and measurements of Ti $K\alpha$ satellite peak intensities in various Ti thin-film compounds. We also assess the detection limits of the technique, comment on detection limits possible in the future, and discuss possible applications.

Understanding the fill factor in organic solar cells remains challenging due to its complex dependence on a multitude of parameters. By means of drift-diffusion simulations, we thoroughly analyze the fill factor of such low-mobility systems and demonstrate its dependence on a collection coefficient defined in this work. We systematically discuss the effect of different recombination mechanisms, space-charge regions, and contact properties. Based on these findings, we are able to interpret the thickness dependence of the fill factor for different experimental studies from the literature. The presented model provides a facile method to extract the photoactive layer’s electronic quality which is of particular importance for the fill factor. We illustrate that over the past 15 years, the electronic quality has not been continuously improved, although organic solar-cell efficiencies increased steadily over the same period of time. Only recent reports show the synthesis of polymers for semiconducting films of high electronic quality that are able to produce new efficiency records.

The identification of new solid-state defect-qubit candidates in widely used semiconductors has the potential to enable the use of nanofabricated devices for enhanced qubit measurement and control operations. In particular, the recent discovery of optically active spin states in silicon carbide thin films offers a scalable route for incorporating defect qubits into on-chip photonic devices. Here, we demonstrate the use of 3C silicon carbide photonic crystal cavities for enhanced excitation of color-center defect spin ensembles in order to increase measured photoluminescence signal count rates, optically detected magnetic-resonance signal intensities, and optical spin initialization rates. We observe an up to a factor of 30 increase in the photoluminescence and optically detected magnetic-resonance signals from Ky5 color centers excited by cavity-resonant excitation and increase the rate of ground-state spin initialization by approximately a factor of 2. Furthermore, we show that the 705-fold reduction in excitation mode volume and enhanced excitation and collection efficiencies provided by the structures can be used to overcome inhomogenous broadening in order to facilitate the study of defect-qubit subensemble properties. These results highlight some of the benefits that nanofabricated devices offer for engineering the local photonic environment of color-center defect qubits to enable applications in quantum information and sensing.

The propulsion of a liquid indium-tin microdroplet by nanosecond-pulse laser impact is experimentally investigated. We capture the physics of the droplet propulsion in a scaling law that accurately describes the plasma-imparted momentum transfer over nearly three decades of pulse energy, enabling the optimization of the laser-droplet coupling. The subsequent deformation of the droplet is described by an analytical model that accounts for the droplet’s propulsion velocity and the liquid properties. Comparing our findings to those from vaporization-accelerated millimeter-sized water droplets, we demonstrate that the fluid-dynamic response of laser-impacted droplets is scalable and decoupled from the propulsion mechanism. By contrast, the physics behind the propulsion of liquid-metal droplets differs from that of water. It is studied here in detail and under industrially relevant conditions as found in next-generation nanolithography machines.

We examine electric power generation from Earth’s rotation through its own nonrotating magnetic field (that component of the field symmetric about Earth’s rotation axis). There is a simple general proof that this is impossible. However, we identify a loophole in that proof and show that voltage can be continuously generated in a low-magnetic-Reynolds-number conductor rotating with Earth, provided magnetically permeable material is used to ensure $\text{curl}(\mathbf{v}\times {\mathbf{B}}_{\mathbf{0}})\ne \mathbf{0}$ within the conductor, where ${\mathbf{B}}_{\mathbf{0}}$ derives from the axially symmetric component of Earth’s magnetic flux density, and $\mathbf{v}$ is Earth’s rotation velocity at the conductor’s location. We solve the relevant equations for one laboratory realization, and from this solution, we predict the voltage magnitude and sign dependence on system dimensions and orientation relative to Earth’s rotation. The effect, which would be available nearly globally with no intermittency, requires testing and further examination to see if it can be scaled to practical emission-free power generation.

Scaling beyond two-node quantum networks using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is limited by the low probability of collecting zero-phonon-line (ZPL) photons from single centers. Here, we demonstrate GaP-on-diamond disk resonators which resonantly couple ZPL photons from single NV centers to single-mode waveguides. In these devices, the probability of a single NV center emitting a ZPL photon into the waveguide mode after optical excitation can reach 9%, due to a combination of resonant enhancement of the ZPL emission and efficient coupling between the resonator and waveguide. We verify the single-photon nature of the emission and experimentally demonstrate both high in-waveguide photon numbers and substantial Purcell enhancement for a set of devices. These devices may enable scalable integrated quantum networks based on NV centers.

A different paradigm is proposed to selectively manipulate and transport small engineered chiral particles and discriminate different enantiomers using unstructured chiral light. It is theoretically shown that the response of a chiral metamaterial particle may be tailored to enable an optical conveyor-belt operation with no optical traps, such that for a fixed incident light helicity the nanoparticle is either steadily pushed towards the direction of the photon flow or steadily pulled against the photon flow, independent of its position. Our findings create distinct opportunities for unconventional optical manipulations of tailored nanoparticles and may have applications in sorting racemic mixtures of artificial chiral molecules and in particle delivery.

Efficient thermoelectric (TE) energy conversion requires materials with low thermal conductivity and good electronic properties. Si-Ge alloys, and their nanostructures such as thin films and nanowires, have been extensively studied for TE applications; other group-IV alloys, including those containing Sn, have not been given as much attention as TEs, despite their increasing applications in other areas including optoelectronics. We study the lattice thermal conductivity of binary (Si-Sn and Ge-Sn) and ternary (Si-Ge-Sn) alloys and their thin films in the Boltzmann transport formalisms, including a full phonon dispersion and momentum-dependent boundary-roughness scattering. We show that Si-Sn alloys have the lowest conductivity ($3\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{mK}$) of all the bulk alloys, more than 2 times lower than Si-Ge, attributed to the larger difference in mass between the two constituents. In addition, we demonstrate that thin films offer an additional reduction in thermal conductivity, reaching around $1\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{mK}$ in 20-nm-thick Si-Sn, Ge-Sn, and ternary Si-Ge-Sn films, which is near the conductivity of amorphous ${\mathrm{SiO}}_2$. We conclude that group-IV alloys containing Sn have the potential for high-efficiency TE energy conversion.

Binary-outcome measurements allow one to determine whether a multilevel quantum system is in a certain state while preserving quantum coherence between all orthogonal states. In this paper, we explore different regimes of the dispersive readout of a three-level superconducting quantum system coupled to a microwave cavity in order to implement binary-outcome measurements. By designing identical cavity-frequency shifts for the first and second excited states of the system, we realize strong projective binary-outcome measurements onto its ground state with a fidelity of 94.3%. Complemented with standard microwave control and low-noise parametric amplification, this scheme enables the quantum nondemolition detection of leakage errors and can be used to create sets of compatible measurements to reveal the contextual nature of superconducting circuits.

Fabrication processes involving anhydrous hydrofluoric vapor etching are developed to create high-$Q$ aluminum superconducting microwave resonators on free-standing silicon membranes formed from a silicon-on-insulator wafer. Using this fabrication process, a high-impedance 8.9-GHz coil resonator is coupled capacitively with a large participation ratio to a 9.7-MHz micromechanical resonator. Two-tone microwave spectroscopy and radiation pressure backaction are used to characterize the coupled system in a dilution refrigerator down to temperatures of $T_f=11\mathrm{mK}$, yielding a measured electromechanical vacuum coupling rate of $g_0/2\pi =24.6\mathrm{Hz}$ and a mechanical resonator $Q$ factor of $Q_m=1.7\times 10^7$. Microwave backaction cooling of the mechanical resonator is also studied, with a minimum phonon occupancy of $n_m\approx 16$ phonons being realized at an elevated fridge temperature of $T_f=211\mathrm{mK}$.

Nanoelectromechanical systems are considered as ultrasensitive devices for mass and force detection. Capacitive actuation is widely used in these devices but is known to degrade the quality factor of the resonator due to dc electrostatic damping. We report the enhancement of the quality factor of SiC vibrating nanowires detected nano-optomechanically and electrically by applying an ac capacitive driving at a frequency above both the resonance frequency and the electrical cutoff frequency. Self-oscillations are demonstrated for optimal conditions. We develop an analytical model of the phenomenon and show that it can lead to an improvement of the force sensitivity.

We report on the exciton propagation in polar $(\mathrm{Al},\mathrm{Ga})\mathrm{N}/\mathrm{GaN}$ quantum wells over several micrometers and up to room temperature. The key ingredient to achieve this result is the crystalline quality of GaN quantum wells grown on GaN substrate that limits nonradiative recombination. From the comparison of the spatial and temporal dynamics of photoluminescence, we conclude that the propagation of excitons under continuous-wave excitation is assisted by efficient screening of the in-plane disorder. Modeling within drift-diffusion formalism corroborates this conclusion and suggests that exciton propagation is still limited by the exciton scattering on defects rather than by exciton-exciton scattering so that improving interface quality can boost exciton transport further. Our results pave the way towards room-temperature excitonic devices based on gate-controlled exciton transport in wide-band-gap polar heterostructures.

We present a complete analysis of the electron- and hole-capture and -emission processes of the deep levels ON1, ON2a, and ON2b in $4H\text{-SiC}$ and their $6H\text{-SiC}$ counterparts OS1a and OS1b through OS3a and OS3b, which are produced by lifetime enhancement oxidation or implantation and annealing techniques. The modeling is based on a simultaneous numerical fitting of multiple high-resolution capacitance deep-level transient spectroscopy spectra measured with different filling-pulse lengths in $n$- and $p$-type material. All defects are found to be double-donor-type positive-$U$ two-level defects with very small hole-capture cross sections, making them recombination centers of low efficiency, in accordance with minority-carrier-lifetime measurements. Their behavior as trapping and weak recombination centers, their large concentrations resulting from the lifetime enhancement oxidations, and their high thermal stability, however, make it advisable to minimize their presence in active regions of devices, for example, the base layer of bipolar junction transistors.

The tin sulfides SnS, ${\mathrm{Sn}}_2{\mathrm{S}}_3$, and $\mathrm{Sn}{\mathrm{S}}_2$ are investigated for a wide variety of applications such as photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, two-dimensional electronic devices, Li ion battery electrodes, and photocatalysts. For these applications, native point defects play important roles, but only those of SnS have been investigated theoretically in the literature. In this study, we consider the band structures, band-edge positions, and thermodynamical stability of the tin sulfides using a density functional that accounts for van der Waals corrections and the $G{W}_0$ approximation. We revisit the point-defect properties, namely, electronic and atomic structures and energetics of defects, in SnS and newly examine those in $\mathrm{Sn}{\mathrm{S}}_2$ and ${\mathrm{Sn}}_2{\mathrm{S}}_3$ with a comparison to those in SnS. We find that $\mathrm{Sn}{\mathrm{S}}_2$ shows contrasting defect properties to SnS: Undoped SnS shows $p$-type behavior, whereas $\mathrm{Sn}{\mathrm{S}}_2$ shows $n$ type, which are mainly attributed to the tin vacancies and tin interstitials, respectively. We also find that the defect features in ${\mathrm{Sn}}_2{\mathrm{S}}_3$ can be described as a combination of those in SnS and $\mathrm{Sn}{\mathrm{S}}_2$, intrinsically ${\mathrm{Sn}}_2{\mathrm{S}}_3$ showing $n$-type behavior. However, the conversion to $p$ type can be attained by doping with a large monovalent cation, namely, potassium. The ambipolar dopability, coupled with the earth abundance of its constituents, indicates great potential for electronic applications, including photovoltaics.

We propose a realization of a two-dimensional topological insulator using an array of microwave piezoelectric resonators. The resonators are coupled electrically, but acoustically isolated. The inter-resonator electromagnetic coupling required to reproduce an effective mechanical topological insulator is found explicitly. Both the acoustic and electric response show the essential features of topological insulator, e.g., helical edge states. The helical edge states may be useful for engineering nonreciprocal electronic devices like isolators and circulators. These components do not often appear in the radios of modern mobile phones since they traditionally require bulky magnetic material. However, a nonreciprocal device based on piezoelectric resonators may meet the demands of phone manufacturers due to their small size, high-linearity, and ease of fabrication.

Nuclear spin-lattice relaxation times are measured on copper using magnetic-resonance force microscopy performed at temperatures down to 42 mK. The low temperature is verified by comparison with the Korringa relation. Measuring spin-lattice relaxation times locally at very low temperatures opens up the possibility to measure the magnetic properties of inhomogeneous electron systems realized in oxide interfaces, topological insulators, and other strongly correlated electron systems such as high-$T_c$ superconductors.

It is shown that superconducting charge and flux quantum bits (qubits) can be classified as memory capacitive and inductive systems, respectively. We demonstrate that such memcapacitive and meminductive devices offer remarkable and rich response functionalities. In particular, when subjected to periodic input, qubit-based memcapacitors and meminductors exhibit unusual hysteresis curves. Our work not only extends the set of known memcapacitive and meminductive systems to qubit-based devices, but also highlights their unique properties potentially useful for future technological applications.

The proximal coupling between graphene and transition-metal-oxide heterostructures may integrate their unique features and further generate emergent states. Using the photoconductivity of graphene as an effective probe, we demonstrate the existence of a built-in polar field within the $\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3$ layer of the $\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$ heterostructures for both conducting and insulating $\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$ interfaces. Such a polar field is a prerequisite for the validity of the electronic reconstruction mechanism for the interfacial conductivity. The built-in polar field is reflected by the hole doping in the graphene in proximity to the $\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$ induced by pulsed deep-ultraviolet illumination regardless of the graphene’s carrier type. These photoresponse characteristics also render the $\mathrm{graphene}/\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$ hybrid system a convenient deep-ultraviolet sensor. Moreover, we design an efficient broad-spectrum photodetector benefiting from the large in-plane electric field in graphene across the boundary between the $\text{graphene}/\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{AlO}}_3/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$ and $\text{graphene}/\mathrm{Sr}{\mathrm{TiO}}_3$. Our findings may provide clues to the design of photosensors based on the hybrid structures of graphene and oxide heterostructures.

We report enhanced Stark tuning of single exciton lines in self-assembled $(211)B$ InAs quantum dots (QDs) as a consequence of pronounced piezoelectric effects in polar orientations, making this QD system particularly sensitive to relatively “small” applied external fields. The Stark shifts in the first hundreds of kilovolts per centimeter of applied external field are at least 2.5 times larger, compared to those observed in nonpiezoelectric (100) InAs QDs of similar size. To account quantitatively for the observed transition energies and Stark shifts, we utilize a graded In-composition potential profile, as deduced from local strain analysis performed on high-resolution transmission microscopy images of the QDs. Our results provide a direct demonstration of the importance of nonlinear piezoelectric effects in zincblende semiconductors.