Elena Koukharenko

Optical fiber nanowires and microwires: fabrication and applications

Microwires and nanowires have been manufactured by using a wide range of bottom-up techniques such as chemical or physical vapor deposition and top-down processes such as fiber drawing. Among these techniques, the manufacture of wires from optical fibers provides the longest, most uniform and robust nanowires. Critically, the small surface roughness and the high-homogeneity associated with optical fiber nanowires (OFNs) provide low optical loss and allow the use of nanowires for a wide range of new applications for communications, sensing, lasers, biology, and chemistry. OFNs offer a number of outstanding optical and mechanical properties, including (1) large evanescent fields, (2) high-nonlinearity, (3) strong confinement, and (4) low-loss interconnection to other optical fibers and fiberized components. OFNs are fabricated by adiabatically stretching optical fibers and thus preserve the original optical fiber dimensions at their input and output, allowing ready splicing to standard fibers. A review of the manufacture of OFNs is presented, with a particular emphasis on their applications. Three different groups of applications have been envisaged: (1) devices based on the strong confinement or nonlinearity, (2) applications exploiting the large evanescent field, and (3) devices involving the taper transition regions. The first group includes supercontinuum generators, a range of nonlinear optical devices, and optical trapping. The second group comprises knot, loop, and coil resonators and their applications, sensing and particle propulsion by optical pressure. Finally, mode filtering and mode conversion represent applications based on the taper transition regions. Among these groups of applications, devices exploiting the OFN-based resonators are possibly the most interesting; because of the large evanescent field, when OFNs are coiled onto themselves the mode propagating in the wire interferes with itself to give a resonator. In contrast with the majority of high-Q resonators manufactured by other means, the OFN microresonator does not have major issues with input-output coupling and presents a completely integrated fiberized solution. OFNs can be used to manufacture loop and coil resonators with Q factors that, although still far from the predicted value of 10. The input-output pigtails play a major role in shaping the resonator response and can be used to maximize the Q factor over a wide range of coupling parameters. Finally, temporal stability and robustness issues are discussed, and a solution to optical degradation issues is presented.

Optimization of the electrodeposition process of high-performance bismuth antimony telluride compounds for thermoelectric applications

High-quality films of bismuth antimony telluride were synthesized by electrodeposition from nitric acid electroplating baths. The influence of a surfactant, sodium ligninsulfonate, on the structure, morphology, stoichiometry, and homogeneity of the deposited films has been investigated. It was found that addition of this particular surfactant significantly improved the microstructural properties as well as homogeneity of the films with a significant improvement in the thermoelectric properties over those deposited in the absence of surfactant. A detailed microprobe analysis of the deposited films yielded a stoichiometric composition of Bi(0.35)Sb(1.33)Te(3) for the films electrodeposited in the absence of surfactant and a stoichiometry of Bi(0.32)Sb(1.33)Te(3) for films deposited in the presence of surfactant.

Thermoelectric properties of Bi2Te3 material obtained by the ultrarapid quenching process route

Abstract Bismuth telluride materials were fabricated by ultrarapid quenching. Foils are obtained with a thickness varying from 10 to 60 μm. The thermoelectric properties were determined measuring electrical resistivity, Seebeck coefficient and Hall coefficient. The influence of quenching temperature and heat treatment on the Seebeck coefficient was studied. The variation of thermoelectric properties with temperature was also studied. N-type degenerated materials were obtained with a carrier concentration of 10 27 m −3 .

Surfactant-Mediated Electrodeposition of Bismuth Telluride Films and Its Effect on Microstructural Properties

We report the synthesis of highly crystallographically textured films of stoichiometric bismuth telluride (Bi(2)Te(3)) in the presence of a surfactant, sodium lignosulfonate (SL), that resulted in the improved alignment of films in the (110) plane and offered good control over the morphology and roughness of the electrodeposited films. SL concentrations in the range 60-80 mg dm(-3) at a deposition potential of -0.1 V vs SCE (saturated calomel electrode) were found to yield the most improved crystallinity and similar or superior thermoelectric properties compared with results reported in the literature.

Towards a nanostructured thermoelectric generator using ion-track lithography

This paper presents the process development towards a new generation of nanostructured thermoelectric generators for power harvesting from small temperature gradients by using a combination of traditional silicon microfabrication techniques, electroplating and submicron ion-track nanolithography. Polyimide nanotemplates with pore diameters ranging from 30 nm to 120 nm were fabricated. Preliminary results from the fabrication of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-nanostructured templates are reported. Bi2Te3 nanowires (80 and 120 nm diameters) were electroplated into polyimide ion-track nanotemplates. Bi2Te3 nanowires of a R3 m structure, with preferential orientation in (1 1 0) crystallographic plans, were electroplated. The chemical composition of Bi2Te3 with nearly stoichiometric composition (Bi2.31Te3) was obtained. Homogeneity profiles of the chemical composition were obtained. A fine-grained observed microstructure (6–10 nm) and (1 1 0) crystalline orientation were obtained, which is extremely promising for improving the thermoelectric material properties. The thermoelectric properties of the Bi2Te3-electroplated thin films (Seebeck coefficient ?) and electrical resistivity of the Bi2Te3 bundle nanowires were found to be ?52 ?V K?1 and ?14 M cm, respectively. Polyimide (Kapton foil) and PMMA 950 photoresists were promising materials for the realization of a nanostructured thermoelectric generator on flexible and rigid substrates, respectively

Design and performance of a microelectromagnetic vibration powered generator

In this paper we, report on the design, simulation and initial results of a microgenerator, which converts external vibrations into electrical energy. Power is generated by means of electromagnetic transduction with static magnets positioned either side of a moving coil located on a silicon structure designed to resonate laterally in the plane of the chip. The development and fabrication of a micromachined microgenerator that uses standard silicon based fabrication techniques and a low cost, batch process is presented. Finite element simulations have been carried out using ANSYS to determine an optimum geometry for the microgenerator. Electromagnetic FEA simulations using Ansofts Maxwell 2D software have shown voltage levels of 4 to 9 V can be generated from the single beam generator designs. Initial results at atmospheric pressure yield 0.5 /spl mu/W at 9.81 ms/sup -2/ and 9.5 kHz and emphasise the importance of reducing unwanted loss mechanisms such as air damping.

High density p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanowires by electrochemical templating through ion-track lithography.

High density p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanowire arrays are produced by a combination of electrodeposition and ion-track lithography technology. Initially, the electrodeposition of p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 films is investigated to find out the optimal conditions for the deposition of nanowires. Polyimide-based Kapton foils are chosen as a polymer for ion track irradiation and nanotemplating Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanowires. The obtained nanowires have average diameters of 80 nm and lengths of 20 microm, which are equivalent to the pore size and thickness of Kapton foils. The nanowires exhibit a preferential orientation along the {110} plane with a composition of 11.26 at.% Bi, 26.23 at.% Sb, and 62.51 at.% Te. Temperature dependence studies of the electrical resistance show the semiconducting nature of the nanowires with a negative temperature coefficient of resistance and band gap energy of 0.089+/-0.006 eV.

Screen printed flexible Bi2Te3-Sb2Te3 based thermoelectric generator

This paper reports the fabrication and testing of Bismuth Tellurium (Bi2Te3) – Antimony Tellurium (Sb2Te3) based thermocouples using screen printing technology. In this study, screen printable thermoelectric pastes were developed and the transport properties of cured material were measured. The dimension of each planer thermoleg is 39.3 mm × 3 mm with a thickness of 67 μm for Bi2Te3 leg and 62 μm for Sb2Te3 leg. A single thermocouple with this dimension can generate a voltage of 6 mV and a peak output power of 48 nW at a temperature difference of 20°C. The calculated Seebeck coefficient of a single thermocouple is in the range of 262 – 282 μV/K. The Seebeck coefficient at room temperature were measured to be −134 – −119 μV/K and 128 – 134 μV/K for Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 respectively. This work demonstrates that the low-cost screen printing technology and low-temperature materials are promising for the fabrication of flexible thermoelectric generators (TEGs).

Fabrication of a thermoelectric generator on a polymer-coated substrate via laser-induced forward transfer of chalcogenide thin films

We have demonstrated the fabrication of a thermoelectric energy harvesting device via laser-induced forward transfer of intact solid thin films. Thermoelectric chalcogenide materials, namely bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3), bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) and bismuth antimony telluride (Bi0:5Sb1:5Te3), were sequentially printed using a nanosecond excimer laser onto an elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane-coated glass substrate to form thermocouples connected in series creating a thermoelectric generator. The resulting generator Seebeck coefficient and series resistance per leg pair were measured to be 0.17 mV K-1 and 10 kilohms respectively. It was shown that laser-induced forward transfer allows device fabrication from inorganic semiconductor compounds on inexpensive elastic polymer substrates and demonstrates the ability to print materials with pre-defined thermoelectric properties. This allows the rapid manufacturing of a complete thermoelectric device on mm2-areas with µm-scale precision, without the need of further lithographic steps.

Controlling the nanostructure of bismuth telluride by selective chemical vapour deposition from a single source precursor

High quality, nanostructured Bi2Te3, with an unprecedented degree of positional and orientational control of the material form on the nanoscale, is readily obtained by low pressure chemical vapour deposition using a new molecular precursor. This system offers a convenient method that delivers key structural requirements necessary to improve the thermoelectric efficiency of Bi2Te3 and to develop the nascent field of topological insulators.