Τhe incumbent technology for bringing light to the nanoscale, the near-field scanning optical microscope, has notoriously small throughput efficiencies of the order of 10^4-10^5 or less. We report on a broadband, topological, unidirectionally guiding structure, not requiring adiabatic tapering and, in principle, enabling near-perfect (∼100%) optical transmission through an unstructured single arbitrarily subdiffraction slit at...

Mirrors are used in optical sensors and measurement setups. This creates a demand for mirrors made of new materials and having various properties tailored to specific applications. In this work, we propose silicon covered with a thin silicon nitride layer as a mirror for near-infrared measurements. SiN layer was deposited on a standard silicon wafer with a Low-Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition furnace. Then, the created layer...

This study explores the high-temperature (HT) tensile rupture characteristics of a dissimilar gas-tungsten-arc-welded (GTAW) joint between P92 steel and Alloy 617, fabricated using ER62SB9 and ERNiCrCoMo-1 fillers. The high-temperature tensile tests were performed at elevated temperatures of 550 ◦C and 650 ◦C. An optical microscope (OM) and a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) were utilized to characterize the...

We present an alternative to the conventional approach, phantoms without scattering nanoparticles, where scattering is achieved by the material itself: spherical cavities trapped in a silicone matrix. We describe the properties and fabrication of novel optical phantoms based on a silicone elastomer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and glycerol mixture. Optical properties (absorption coefficient µa, reduced scattering coefficient µs',...