Photo-origami—Bending and folding polymers with light

Jennie Ryu, Matteo D’Amato, Xiaodong Cui, Kevin N. Long, H. Jerry Qi, and Martin L. Dunn

An idea based on the traditional Japanese art of paper-folding, optical origami uses light to enable controllable, sequenced, macroscopic bending and folding of organic polymers. The technique uses embedded mechanical and optical fields as actuators that can be used to manipulate the polymer sheets.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 161908 (2012)
Read the press release: [Optical Origami, Ian S. Osborne] www.sciencemag.org

Physics of ultra-high bioproductivity in algal photobioreactors

Efrat Greenwald, Jeffrey M. Gordon, and Yair Zarmi

Traditional microalgae production generally performs well below the fundamental bioproductivity limits. This paper describes a model for photobioreactors that can produce order-of-magnitude increases in bioproductivity, with applications in pharmaceuticals, wastewater treatment, and biofuels.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 143703 (2012)

Fast programming metal-gate Si quantum dot nonvolatile memory using green nanosecond laser spike annealing

Yu-Chung Lien, Jia-Min Shieh, Wen-Hsien Huang, Cheng-Hui Tu, Chieh Wang, Chang-Hong Shen, Bau-Tong Dai, Ci-Ling Pan, Chenming Hu, and Fu-Liang Yang

Researchers present an ultrafast nonvolatile memory solution. The memory, based on silicon quantum dot-embedded dielectrics, resists degradation whilst maintaining fast programming with low operating voltages, and can be integrated into current production processes.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 143501 (2012)

X-ray pulse preserving single-shot optical cross-correlation method for improved experimental temporal resolution

M. Beye, O. Krupin, G. Hays, A. H. Reid, D. Rupp, S. de Jong, S. Lee, W.-S. Lee, Y.-D. Chuang, R. Coffee, J. P. Cryan, J. M. Glownia, A. Föhlisch, M. R. Holmes, A. R. Fry, W. E. White, C. Bostedt, A. O. Scherz, H. A. Durr, and W. F. Schlotter

The authors measured the relative arrival time between an optical pulse and a soft x-ray pulse from a free-electron laser. These time resolution of pump-probe experiments at LCLS were improved at least by a factor of two to 130 fs (FWHM). The results achieved with this method present a clear path toward temporal resolutions below 100 fs.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 121108 (2012)

Electric field effects in low resistance CoFeB-MgO magnetic tunnel junctions with perpendicular anisotropy

H. Meng, R. Sbiaa, M. A. K. Akhtar, R. S. Liu, V. B. Naik, and C. C. Wang

Investigations the electric field effects in low resistance perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices found that the electric field can effectively reduce the coercivity (H_c) of free layer (FL) by 30% for a bias voltage (V_b) of −0.2V. This is in in contrast to a much less sensitive of H_c to V_b for the reference layer (RL). The authors argue these findings are be important for memory technologies.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 122405 (2012)