New Method for Monitoring the Process of Freeze Drying of Biological Materials.

A capacitive sensor was proposed and tested for the monitoring and control of a freeze drying process of a vaccine against the Newcastle disease of birds. The residual moisture of the vaccine was measured by the thermogravimetric method. The vaccine activity was determined by titration in chicken embryos.

Harvesting light at the nanoscale by GaAs-gold nanowire arrays.

A nanoscale metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector with a 40 nm-thick GaAs absorbing layer has been studied numerically and experimentally. A gold nanowire array is the top mirror of a Fabry-Perot cavity and forms interdigitated Schottky contacts. Nearly perfect absorption is achieved in TE polarization.