Yu-Ru Huang

Crystalline silicon carbon nitride: A wide band gap semiconductor

Crystalline thin films of SiCN have been grown by microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition using H2, CH4, N2, and SiH4 gases. The ternary compound (C;Si)xNy exhibits a hexagonal structure and consists of a network wherein the Si and C are substitutional elements. While the N content of the compound is about 35–40 at. %, the extent of Si substitution varies and can be as low as 10 at. %. Optical properties of the SiCN compounds have been studied by photoluminescence (PL), piezoreflectance (PzR), and photothermal deflection (PDS) spectroscopies. From the PzR measurement, we determine the direct band gap of the new crystals to be around 3.8 eV at room temperature. PDS measurement shows two absorption features with the first peak at around 3.2 eV which is related to an indirect band gap. The second PDS peak occurred around 3.8 eV and is quite consistent with the direct band gap determined by PzR. From the PL measurement, it is also found that the SiCN compounds have a near band edge emission center...

All-terahertz fiber-scanning near-field microscopy

We demonstrate a room-temperature-operated all-terahertz (THz) fiber-scanning near-field imaging system. The upright-type THz near-field microscope has a compact size, capable of being integrated with an optical microscope. This transmission illumination near-field system could be a promising tool to distinguish breast cancer from the normal tissue without pathologic staining.

Bending loss of terahertz pipe waveguides

We present an experimental study on the bending loss of terahertz (THz) pipe waveguide. Bending loss of pipe waveguides is investigated for various frequencies, polarizations, core diameters, cladding thicknesses, and cladding materials. Our results indicate that the pipe waveguides with lower guiding loss suffer lower bending loss due to stronger mode confinement. The unexpected low bending loss in the investigated simple leaky waveguide structure promises variety of flexible applications.

Probing Hydrophilic Interface of Solid/Liquid-Water by Nanoultrasonics

Despite the numerous devoted studies, water at solid interfaces remains puzzling. An ongoing debate concerns the nature of interfacial water at a hydrophilic surface, whether it is more solid-like, ice-like, or liquid-like. To answer this question, a complete picture of the distribution of the water molecule structure and molecular interactions has to be obtained in a non-invasive way and on an ultrafast time scale. We developed a new experimental technique that extends the classical acoustic technique to the molecular level. Using nanoacoustic waves with a femtosecond pulsewidth and an ångström resolution to noninvasively diagnose the hydration structure distribution at ambient solid/water interface, we performed a complete mapping of the viscoelastic properties and of the density in the whole interfacial water region at hydrophilic surfaces. Our results suggest that water in the interfacial region possesses mixed properties and that the different pictures obtained up to now can be unified. Moreover, we discuss the effect of the interfacial water structure on the abnormal thermal transport properties of solid/liquid interfaces.

Graphene-to-substrate energy transfer through out-of-plane longitudinal acoustic phonons.

Practically, graphene is often deposited on substrates. Given the major substrate-induced modification of properties and considerable energy transfer at the interface, the graphene-substrate interaction has been widely discussed. However, the proposed mechanisms were restricted to the two-dimensional (2D) plane and interface, while the energy conduction in the third dimension is hardly considered. Herein, we disclose the transfer of energy perpendicular to the interface of the combined system of the 2D graphene and the 3D base. More precisely, our observation of the energy dissipation of optically excited graphene via emitting out-of-plane longitudinal acoustic phonon into the substrate is presented. By applying nanoultrasonic spectroscopy with a piezoelectric nanolayer embedded in the substrate, we found that under photoexcitation by a femtosecond laser pulse graphene can emit longitudinal coherent acoustic phonons (CAPs) with frequencies over 1 THz into the substrate. In addition, the waveform of the CAP pulse infers that the photocarriers and sudden lattice heating in graphene caused modification of graphene-substrate bond and consequently generated longitudinal acoustic phonons in the substrate. The direct observation of this unexplored graphene-to-substrate vertical energy transfer channel can bring new insights into the understanding of the energy dissipation and limited transport properties of supported graphene.

SUBSTITUTIONAL CARBON REDUCTION IN SIGEC ALLOYS GROWN BY RAPID THERMAL CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION

The substitutional carbon reduction in Si1−x−yGexCy strained layers, annealed at high temperatures, increases the compressive strain in the originally strain-compensated alloys. From the rocking curve simulation, the maximum amount of carbon reduction was below 0.9% for the various samples which were annealed below 1000 °C in the nitrogen flow. The interstitial silicon injection by thermal oxidation of the Si cap on the Si1−x−yGexCy layer enhances the reduction of substitutional carbon to a concentration of 1.3%. Oxidation of Si1−x−yGexCy alloys yields a Ge-enriched Si1−xGex layer with the Ge concentration larger than the initial content, and the formation of 3C silicon carbide precipitate is observed by the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

Efficient Structure Resonance Energy Transfer from Microwaves to Confined Acoustic Vibrations in Viruses.

Virus is known to resonate in the confined-acoustic dipolar mode with microwave of the same frequency. However this effect was not considered in previous virus-microwave interaction studies and microwave-based virus epidemic prevention. Here we show that this structure-resonant energy transfer effect from microwaves to virus can be efficient enough so that airborne virus was inactivated with reasonable microwave power density safe for the open public. We demonstrate this effect by measuring the residual viral infectivity of influenza A virus after illuminating microwaves with different frequencies and powers. We also established a theoretical model to estimate the microwaves power threshold for virus inactivation and good agreement with experiments was obtained. Such structure-resonant energy transfer induced inactivation is mainly through physically fracturing the virus structure, which was confirmed by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. These results provide a pathway toward establishing a new epidemic prevention strategy in open public for airborne virus.

Pore-size dependent THz absorption of nano-confined water.

We performed a THz absorption spectroscopy study on liquid water confined in mesoporous silica materials, MCM-41-S-18 and MCM-41-S-21, of two different pore sizes at room temperatures. We found that stronger confinement with a smaller pore size causes reduced THz absorption, indicating reduced water mobility due to confinement. Combined with recent theoretical studies showing that the microscopic structure of water inside the nanopores can be separated into a core water region and an interfacial water region, our spectroscopy analysis further reveals a bulk-water-like THz absorption behavior in the core water region and a solid-like THz absorption behavior in the interfacial water region.

Enhanced detection sensitivity of higher-order vibrational modes of gold nanodisks on top of a GaN nanorod array through localized surface plasmons

We report a method that enables the excitation of localized surface plasmons (LSPs) in a gold nanodisk array by placing each nanodisk on top of a GaN nanorod. When the rod length was much longer than the plasmon penetration depth inside the nanorod, the plasmonic field was found to be localized, and coupling between neighboring gold nanodisks was eliminated. The interaction between LSPs and acoustic vibrations in gold nanodisks was then investigated. Owing to the strong localization of the plasmonic field, weak, higher-order vibrational modes of gold nanodisk could be optically observed. Furthermore, such an LSP-based acoustic sensor could be operated at any angle of incident light. Our study not only provides an approach to excite LSPs in high-density metallic arrays, but also opens one of the possible solutions for the development of highly sensitive sub-terahertz hypersonic sensors with high angle tolerance of incident light.

Relaxation dynamics of surface-adsorbed water molecules in nanoporous silica probed by terahertz spectroscopy

Relaxation dynamics of an exclusively adsorbed water molecule in mesoporous silica MCM-41-S was studied by using terahertz spectroscopy. With the temperature controlled from 0 to 50 °C, we observed strongly frequency- and temperature-dependent dielectric relaxation responses, implying that, unlike ice, surface-adsorbed water molecules retained flourishing picosecond dynamics. Based on the Debye relaxation model, a relaxation time constant was found to increase from 1.77 to 4.83 ps when the water molecule was cooled from 50 to 0 °C. An activation energy of ∼15 kJ/mol, which was in close agreement with a hydrogen-bonding energy, was further extracted from the Arrhenius analysis. Combined with previous molecular dynamics simulations, our results indicate that the reorientation relaxation originated from the “flip-flop” rotation of a three hydrogen-bonded surface-adsorbed water molecule.