Laser printed two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides.

Laser processing is a highly versatile technique for the post-synthesis treatment and modification of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). However, to date, TMDCs synthesis typically relies on large area CVD growth and lithographic post-processing for nanodevice fabrication, thus relying heavily on complex, capital intensive, vacuum-based processing environments and fabrication tools. This inflexibility necessarily restricts the development of facile, fast, very low-cost synthesis protocols.

Enhancement of nonlinear functionality of step-index silica fibers combining thermal poling and 2D materials deposition.

This work proposes a new route to overcome the limits of the thermal poling technique for the creation of second order nonlinearity in conventional silica optical fibers. We prove that it is possible to enhance the nonlinear behavior of periodically poled fibers merging the effects of poling with the nonlinear intrinsic properties of some materials, such as MoS, which are deposited inside the cladding holes of a twin-hole silica fiber. The optical waves involved in a second harmonic generation process partially overlap inside the thin film of the nonlinear material and exploit its higher third order susceptibility to produce an enhanced SHG.

Continuous wave Fe:ZnSe mid-IR optical fiber lasers.

Today fiber lasers in the visible to near-infrared region of the spectrum are well known, however mid-infrared fiber lasers have only recently approached the same commercial availability and power output. There has been a push to fabricate optical fiber lasers out of crystalline materials which have superior mid-IR performance and the ability to directly generate mid-IR light. However, these materials cannot currently be fabricated into an optical fiber via traditional means.

The Significance of Metal Coordination in Imidazole-Functionalized Metal-Organic Frameworks for Carbon Dioxide Utilization.

The grafting of imidazole species onto coordinatively unsaturated sites within metal-organic framework MIL-101(Cr) enables enhanced CO capture in close proximity to catalytic sites. The subsequent combination of CO and epoxide binding sites, as shown through theoretical findings, significantly improves the rate of cyclic carbonate formation, producing a highly active CO utilization catalyst. An array of spectroscopic investigations, in combination with theoretical calculations reveal the nature of the active sites and associated catalytic mechanism which validates the careful design of the hybrid MIL-101(Cr).

Nitrous oxide detection at 5.26 µm with a compound glass antiresonant hollow-core optical fiber.

Laser-based gas sensors utilizing various light-gas interaction phenomena have proved their capacity for detecting different gases. However, achieving reasonable sensitivity, especially in the mid-infrared, is crucial. Improving sensor detectivity usually requires incorporating multipass cells, which increase the light-gas interaction path length at a cost of reduced stability.