TiO Films with Macroscopic Chiral Nematic-Like Structure Stabilized by Copper Promoting Light-Harvesting Capability for Hydrogen Generation.

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) have inspired the synthesis of various advanced nanomaterials, opening opportunities for different applications. However, a simple and robust approach for transferring the long-range chiral nematic nanostructures into TiO photocatalyst is still fancy. Herein, a successful fabrication of freestanding TiO films maintaining their macroscopic chiral nematic structures after removing the CNCs biotemplate is reported.

Unsupervised topological analysis of polarized light microscopy: application to quantitative birefringence imaging.

The determination of birefringence (magnitude and axis orientation) of optical materials is of significant interest in various fields. In the case of composite samples, this task becomes complicated and time-consuming; therefore, a partially automated procedure for reconstructing birefringence spatial distribution becomes valuable. Herein, we propose a procedure to reconstruct the spatial distributions of the retardance and optical axis orientation in a geological thin section from sparse quantitative birefringence measurements, using automatic boundary detection on cross-polarized light microscopy images.

Secondary ion mass spectrometry, a powerful tool for revealing ink formulations and animal skins in medieval manuscripts.

Book production by medieval scriptoria have gained growing interest in recent studies. In this context, identifying ink compositions and parchment animal species from illuminated manuscripts is of great importance. Here, we introduce time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) as a non-invasive tool to identify both inks and animal skins in manuscripts, at the same time.

Manipulating multi-spectral slow photons in bilayer inverse opal TiO@BiVO composites for highly enhanced visible light photocatalysis.

Manipulation of light has been proved to be a promising strategy to increase light harvesting in solar-to-chemical energy conversion, especially in photocatalysis. Inverse opal (IO) photonic structures are highly promising for light manipulation as their periodic dielectric structures enable them to slow down light and localize it within the structure, thereby improving light harvesting and photocatalytic efficiency. However, slow photons are confined to narrow wavelength ranges and hence limit the amount of energy that can be captured through light manipulation.

Analysis of accuracy and ambiguities in spatial measurements of birefringence in uniaxial anisotropic media: publisher's note.

This publisher's note corrects an error in Appl. Opt.61, 8081 (2022)APOPAI0003-693510.