Ring patterns generated by an expanding colloidal meniscus.

The drop-and-dry is a common technique allowing for creation of periodic nanoparticle (NP) structures for sensing, photonics, catalysis, etc. However, the reproducibility and scalability of this approach for fabrication of NP-based structures faces serious challenges due to the complexity of the simple, at first glance, evaporation process. In this work we study the effect of the spatial confinement on the NP self-assembly under slow solvent evaporation, when the air-liquid-substrate contact line (CL) expands from the center towards the walls of a cylindrical cell, forming a toroid.

High-resolution Thermal Micro-imaging Using Europium Chelate Luminescent Coatings.

Micro-electronic devices often undergo significant self-heating when biased to their typical operating conditions. This paper describes a convenient optical micro-imaging technique which can be used to map and quantify such behavior. Europium thenoyltrifluoroacetonate (EuTFC) has a 612 nm luminescence line whose activation efficiency drops strongly with increasing temperature, due to T-dependent interactions between the Eu ion and the organic chelating compound.

Triode for Magnetic Flux Quanta.

In an electronic triode, the electron current emanating from the cathode is regulated by the electric potential on a grid between the cathode and the anode. Here we demonstrate a triode for single quantum magnetic field carriers, where the flow of individual magnetic vortices in a superconducting film is regulated by the magnetic potential of striae of soft magnetic strips deposited on the film surface. By rotating an applied in-plane field, the magnetic strip potential can be varied due to changes in the magnetic charges at the strip edges, allowing accelerated or retarded motion of magnetic vortices inside the superconductor.

Stripe domains and first-order phase transition in the vortex matter of anisotropic high-temperature superconductors.

We report the direct imaging of a novel modulated flux striped domain phase in a nearly twin-free YBCO crystal. These domains arise from instabilities in the vortex structure within a narrow region of tilted magnetic fields at small angles from the in-plane direction. By comparing the experimental and theoretically derived vortex phase diagrams we infer that the stripe domains emerge from a first-order phase transition of the vortex structure.