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Applied Sciences
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Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the...
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Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Optics and Lasers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2022) | Viewed by 14540

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Saulius Juodkazis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Optical Sciences Centre and ARC Training Centre in Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials (SEAM), School of Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3122, Australia
Interests: nanofabrication; nanophotonics; micro-optics; 3D laser fabrication (additive and subtractive); ablation; light-matter interaction; solar hydrogen
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Applied Sciences is going to reach a remarkable milestone by publishing its 20,000th article. In celebration of this special occasion, we have taken the initiative to launch a Special Issue called “Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section.”

In 2014, when we received our first impact factor for Applied Sciences, we published 35 manuscripts from 53 submissions, i.e., the acceptance rate was roughly 66%. However, we have now significantly improved the review quality; hence, in 2018, we published 2703 manuscripts from 9757 submissions, keeping the acceptance rate below 28%. This reasonably gave us an impact factor jump from 1.484 in 2014 to 2.217 in 2018. We have also reduced the manuscript turnaround time; presently, the median publication time is only 37 days, which will be further reduced in the coming days, and we hope to increase the impact factor to above 3.0 by 2021.

Among all sections of Applied Sciences, the “Optics and Lasers” section is doing extremely well, it appears, with 1775 articles published so far and 130 Special Issues. On this occasion, we would like to thank all our Editorial Board Members, Managing Editors, Reviewers, and Authors for their great contributions and continuous support. Please help us to celebrate our 20,000th article milestones by submitting your review article to this Special Issue.

As Editor in the section, I am thrilled to see a continuing recognition of optical sciences getting stronger from 2015, the “Year of Light” (UNESCO). The most recent recognition of chirped pulse amplification (Nobel prize 2018) paved the way for high intensity lasers which are used for frontier science, and now are advancing to applied science of 3D laser machining/printing, generation of practical sources for THz, X-rays, deep-UV radiation. Laser tweezers (the same Nobel prize 2018) are on the same trajectory of becoming a versatile tool used to probe nano-micro-scale interactions, mechanics, and chemistry.  Applied science has its strength via its multi-disciplinary character. Photonics and optics is truly becoming one of the technology drivers in telecom, computing, sensors, and energy and justifies its role as one of the key drivers of the fourth industrial revolution, blending different sciences.

We would like to invite you to contribute a comprehensive review article or an original research paper for peer review and possible publication.

Prof. Dr. Saulius Juodkazis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • 3D laser printing, laser machining, digital manufacturing
  • applications of bursts of ultra-short laser pulses in subtractive/additive manufacturing
  • laser-driven sources of: THz, X-rays (hard and soft), vacuum UV, acoustics
  • nano-lithography and nano-writing 2D and 3D
  • sensors based on optics (telecom. fiber optics, opto-fluidics, spectroscopies) 
  • new multi-dimensional imaging (space, time, spectrum, +) and superresolution
  • optical metamaterials, flat optics
  • optics/photonics for energy: solar and thermal energy harvesting and manipulation
  • satellite / space optics and imaging
  • artificial intelligence (AI) for learning optical functions and image recognition

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 2622 KiB  
Article
Mechanistic Exploration of Visible Light-Activated Carbon/TiO2 Hybrid Dots Damaging Bacterial Cells
by Audrey F. Adcock, Weixiong Liang, Peter A. Okonjo, Xiuli Dong, Kirkland Sheriff, Ping Wang, Isaiah S. Ferguson, Shiou-Jyh Hwu, Ya-Ping Sun and Liju Yang
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(19), 9633; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12199633 - 25 Sep 2022
Viewed by 1616
Abstract
The carbon/TiO2 hybrid dots (C/TiO2-Dots) are structurally TiO2 nanoparticles (in the order of 25 nm in diameter from commercially available colloidal TiO2 samples) surface-attached by nanoscale carbon domains with organic moieties, thus equivalent to hybrids of individual TiO [...] Read more.
The carbon/TiO2 hybrid dots (C/TiO2-Dots) are structurally TiO2 nanoparticles (in the order of 25 nm in diameter from commercially available colloidal TiO2 samples) surface-attached by nanoscale carbon domains with organic moieties, thus equivalent to hybrids of individual TiO2 nanoparticles each decorated with many carbon dots. These hybrid dots with exposure to visible light exhibit potent antibacterial properties, similar to those found in neat carbon dots with the same light activation. The results from the use of established scavengers for reactive oxygen species (ROS) to “quench” the antibacterial activities, an indication for shared mechanistic origins, are also similar. The findings in experiments on probing biological consequences of the antibacterial action suggest that the visible light-activated C/TiO2-Dots cause significant damage to the bacterial cell membrane, resulting in higher permeability, with the associated oxidative stress leading to lipid peroxidation, inhibiting bacterial growth. The induced bacterial cell damage could be observed more directly in the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging. Opportunities for the further development of the hybrid dots platform for a variety of antibacterial applications are discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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8 pages, 11759 KiB  
Article
Polarization Sensitive Imaging with Qubits
by Vitaly Sukharenko and Roger Dorsinville
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(4), 2027; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12042027 - 15 Feb 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1555
Abstract
We compare reconstructed quantum state images of a birefringent sample using direct quantum state tomography and inverse numerical optimization technique. Qubits are used to characterize birefringence in a flat transparent plastic sample by means of polarization sensitive measurement using density matrices of two-level [...] Read more.
We compare reconstructed quantum state images of a birefringent sample using direct quantum state tomography and inverse numerical optimization technique. Qubits are used to characterize birefringence in a flat transparent plastic sample by means of polarization sensitive measurement using density matrices of two-level quantum entangled photons. Pairs of entangled photons are generated in a type-II nonlinear crystal. About half of the generated photons interact with a birefringent sample, and coincidence counts are recorded. Coincidence rates of entangled photons are measured for a set of sixteen polarization states. Tomographic and inverse numerical techniques are used to reconstruct the density matrix, the degree of entanglement, and concurrence for each pixel of the investigated sample. An inverse numerical optimization technique is used to obtain a density matrix from measured coincidence counts with the maximum probability. Presented results highlight the experimental noise reduction, greater density matrix estimation, and overall image enhancement. The outcome of the entanglement distillation through projective measurements is a superposition of Bell states with different amplitudes. These changes are used to characterize the birefringence of a 3M tape. Well-defined concurrence and entanglement images of the birefringence are presented. Our results show that inverse numerical techniques improve overall image quality and detail resolution. The technique described in this work has many potential applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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18 pages, 18697 KiB  
Article
Assessment of Different Channel Equalization Algorithms for a Converged OFDM-Based 5G mm-wave A-RoF System at 60 GHz
by Umar Farooq and Amalia Miliou
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(3), 1511; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12031511 - 30 Jan 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2734
Abstract
In this article, we simulate a converged 5G mm-wave analogue radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) system at 60 GHz, and perform offline signal processing to equalize the dispersive optical link with the three most frequently employed algorithms, i.e., the simple least mean square (LMS) algorithm, the [...] Read more.
In this article, we simulate a converged 5G mm-wave analogue radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) system at 60 GHz, and perform offline signal processing to equalize the dispersive optical link with the three most frequently employed algorithms, i.e., the simple least mean square (LMS) algorithm, the constant modulus algorithm (CMA) and the adaptive median filtering (AMF), which are implemented in Matlab. The performances of the different algorithms are compared for various optical fiber lengths with respect to the EVM values obtained before and after equalization. In the case of QPSK in OFDM subcarriers, it is observed that the CMA algorithm performs better than the LMS and MF algorithms, with 2% and 1.4% EVM improvement respectively, while for 16QAM in OFDM subcarriers it is observed that the LMS algorithm has a very small improvement of 0.2% EVM compared to the MF algorithm, while CMA is not suitable for 16QAM modulation in the proposed converged 5G mm-wave A-RoF system at 60 GHz. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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8 pages, 2313 KiB  
Article
Switchable Chiral Metasurface for Terahertz Anomalous Reflection Based on Phase Change Material
by Jiajia Chen, Xieyu Chen and Zhen Tian
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 932; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12020932 - 17 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2730
Abstract
A switchable chiral metasurface based on a phase change material Ge2Sb2Te5, which can switch between a right-handed circularly polarized mirror and a left-handed circularly polarized mirror, is theoretically discussed. When the conductivity of Ge2Sb2 [...] Read more.
A switchable chiral metasurface based on a phase change material Ge2Sb2Te5, which can switch between a right-handed circularly polarized mirror and a left-handed circularly polarized mirror, is theoretically discussed. When the conductivity of Ge2Sb2Te5 σ is 0 S/m, the metasurface will reflect incident right-handed circularly polarized light and absorb incident left-handed circularly polarized light at 0.76 THz. As σ is set to 3 × 105 S/m, the response of the metasurface to circularly polarized light will be reversed. That is, it reflects the incident left-handed circularly polarized light and absorbs the incident right-handed circularly polarized light at 0.66 THz. The circular dichroism is from 76% to −64%. Then, we also study the performance of the mirror structure of the initial metasurface. By simulating the reflected spectra with different conductivities and the surface current distribution, the reason for the switchable function is clear. Moreover, the switchable chiral metasurface can be applied in spin-selective beam deflectors, which is proven by simulation. This work provides a new strategy for the development of tunable chiral devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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Review

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18 pages, 6609 KiB  
Review
Interactions of Self-Localised Optical Wavepackets in Reorientational Soft Matter
by Gaetano Assanto, Timothy R. Marchant and Noel F. Smyth
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(5), 2607; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12052607 - 02 Mar 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1866
Abstract
The interaction of optical solitary waves in nematic liquid crystals, nematicons and vortices, with other nematicons and localised structures, such as refractive index changes, is reviewed. Such interactions are shown to enable simple routing schemes as a basis for all-optical guided wave signal [...] Read more.
The interaction of optical solitary waves in nematic liquid crystals, nematicons and vortices, with other nematicons and localised structures, such as refractive index changes, is reviewed. Such interactions are shown to enable simple routing schemes as a basis for all-optical guided wave signal manipulation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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Other

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20 pages, 4719 KiB  
Concept Paper
Attenuated Total Reflection at THz Wavelengths: Prospective Use of Total Internal Reflection and Polariscopy
by Meguya Ryu, Soon Hock Ng, Vijayakumar Anand, Stefan Lundgaard, Jingwen Hu, Tomas Katkus, Dominique Appadoo, Zoltan Vilagosh, Andrew W. Wood, Saulius Juodkazis and Junko Morikawa
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(16), 7632; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11167632 - 19 Aug 2021
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 2993
Abstract
Capabilities of the attenuated total reflection (ATR) at THz wavelengths for increased sub-surface depth characterisation of (bio-)materials are presented. The penetration depth of a THz evanescent wave in biological samples is dependent on the wavelength and temperature and can reach 0.1–0.5 mm depth, [...] Read more.
Capabilities of the attenuated total reflection (ATR) at THz wavelengths for increased sub-surface depth characterisation of (bio-)materials are presented. The penetration depth of a THz evanescent wave in biological samples is dependent on the wavelength and temperature and can reach 0.1–0.5 mm depth, due to the strong refractive index change ∼0.4 of the ice-water transition; this is quite significant and important when studying biological samples. Technical challenges are discussed when using ATR for uneven, heterogeneous, high refractive index samples with the possibility of frustrated total internal reflection (a breakdown of the ATR reflection mode into transmission mode). Local field enhancements at the interface are discussed with numerical/analytical examples. Maxwell’s scaling is used to model the behaviour of absorber–scatterer inside the materials at the interface with the ATR prism for realistic complex refractive indices of bio-materials. The modality of ATR with a polarisation analysis is proposed, and its principle is illustrated, opening an invitation for its experimental validation. The sensitivity of the polarised ATR mode to the refractive index between the sample and ATR prism is numerically modelled and experimentally verified for background (air) spectra. The design principles of polarisation active optical elements and spectral filters are outlined. The results and proposed concepts are based on experimental conditions at the THz beamline of the Australian Synchrotron. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Celebrating Applied Sciences’s 20,000 Articles Milestone: Invited Papers in the Optics and Lasers Section)
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