Cylindrical model of electrochromic colouration of hydrated vanadium pentoxide thin films with point contacts

This article analyses experiments on the kinetics of the internal electrochromism of thin (micron) films of hydrated vanadium pentoxide xerogel with point contacts. It describes a cylindrical model of electrochromic colouration, which was used to evaluate the concentration of the colour centres in the initial film and after additional hydrogenation of this film by plasmaimmersion ion implantation.When we compared the calculated values of the concentration of colour centres with the equilibrium concentration of protons in the xerogel, we saw that the mobility of the protons migrating from the depth of the film to the cathode region, which are involved in the electrochemical reaction, was not a determinant of the electrochromism kinetics.The rate of electrochromic colouration could be increased by the formation of layered film structures based on hydrated vanadium pentoxide, which have increased overall electron conductivity and, as a consequence, low faradaic resistance of the electrochromic cathodic reaction.

The behaviour of sapphire under intense two-colour excitation by picosecond laser

Ultrashort pulse lasers are evidencing their benefits in the processing of transparent materials. Sapphire is one of the most attractive engineering materials today. It is hard and, therefore, difficult to machine mechanically to the required shape. Laser dicing is one of the promising techniques for sapphire separation. Two-pulse two-colour irradiation was applied to initiate free-shape cutting of the material. Two collinear laser beams with wavelengths of 1064 and 355 nm, pulse duration of 10 ps and inter-pulse delay of 0.1 ns were combined to induce intra-volume modifications (directional cracks) in sapphire for wafer separation. The photon energy of both beams is well below the band gap, and various channels of the multi-photon excitation were involved in the process. Significant enhancement in the modification area was experimentally observed when intensities of focused infrared and ultraviolet beams were within narrow ranges. We discuss the resonant laser–sapphire interaction mechanisms, leading to up to four times higher excitation of the material involving multiple photons and energetic levels of intrinsic defects in the band-gap. The energy level schemes of colour centres involved in two-step multi-photon absorption in sapphire under intensive laser irradiation have been prepared.

Thermometric Characterization of Fluorescent Nanodiamonds Suitable for Biomedical Applications

Nanodiamonds have been studied for several biomedical applications due to their inherent biocompatibility and low cytotoxicity. Recent investigations have shown perspectives in using fluorescent nanodiamonds as nanothermometers because of their optical properties’ dependence on temperature. Easy and accurate localized temperature sensing is essential in a wide variety of scientific fields. Our work demonstrated how the fluorescence spectrum of high-pressure high-temperature fluorescent nanodiamonds of three different sizes: 35 nm, 70 nm and 100 nm, changes with temperature within an important biological temperature range (25 °C to 60 °C). Taking advantage of this phenomenon, we obtained nanothermic scales (NS) from the zero phonon lines (ZPL) of the NV0 and NV− colour centres. In particular, the 100 nm-sized features the more intense fluorescence spectra whose linear dependence with temperature achieved 0.98 R2 data representation values for both NV0 and NV−. This model predicts temperature for all used nanodiamonds with sensitivities ranging from 5.73% °C−1 to 6.994% °C−1 (NV0) and from 4.14% °C−1 to 6.475% °C−1 (NV−). Furthermore, the non-cytotoxic interaction with HeLa cells tested in our study enables the potential use of fluorescence nanodiamonds to measure temperatures in similar nano and microcellular aqueous environments with a simple spectroscopic setup.

Preferred skin reproduction centres for different skin groups

Producing preferred skin colours is vital for the digital images on mobile phone manufacturers. Previous studies investigated the skin colours only in chromatic plane excluding lightness. A psychophysical experiment was conducted to determine preferred skin colour centres for different skin colour types on mobile displays in a darkened room. Ten facial images were selected for the experiment to cover different skin colour types (Caucasian, Oriental, South Asian and African). A set of 49 predetermined colour centres uniformly sampled within the skin colour ellipsoid in CIELAB colour space was used to morph skin colours of test images. Thirty observers from each of the 3 ethnic groups (Caucasian, Oriental and South Asian) participated in the experiment. The preferred skin colour centre and region in the form of ellipsoid for each skin group were reported. It was found that the preferred colour centres from different skin colour types were very similar except their lightness as expected, and were also quite similar between the observers from different ethnic groups.

Are Spatial Chromatic Contrast Sensitivity Band-pass or Lowpass Functions?

The goal of this research is to generate high quality chromatic Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF) over a wide range of spatial frequencies from 0.06 to 3.84 cycles per degree (cpd) surrounding 5 CIE proposed colour centres (white, red, yellow, green and blue) to study colour difference. At each centre, 6 colour directions at each of 7 frequencies were sampled, from 0.06 to 3.84 cycles per degree (cpd) corresponding to the number of cycles: from 2.3 to 144.4 respectively. A threshold method based on forced-choice stair-case was adopted to investigate the just noticeable (threshold) colour difference. The results revealed that the chromatic CSF under the present experimental conditions having many lower spatial frequencies covering five colour centres to be band pass, whereas previous results indicated it was low pass. However, this could be caused by the present experimental conditions such as fixed-size stimuli and constant luminance. The new chromatic CSF for R-G and Y-B channels were also developed.