We present a new wrinkling-based measurement technique for quantifying the viscoelastic properties of confined polymer thin films. This approach utilizes real-time laser-light scattering to observe the kinetics of thermally-induced surface wrinkling, which evolves isothermally as a function of annealing time. Specifically, wrinkling is induced by applying a thermal stress to a polystyrene film ...

A detailed theoretical study of composite plasmonic waveguide structures is reported. Expressions for modal expansion coefficients, optical transmittance and surface intensity are presented and used to describe the behavior of dielectric channel waveguides containing a short gold-coated section. The superstrate refractive index is shown to control modal beating and modal attenuation in the gold...

Near-infrared metamaterials that possess a reconfigurable index of refraction from negative through zero to positive values are presented. Reconfigurability is achieved by cladding thin layers of liquid crystal both as a superstrate and a substrate on an established negative-index metamaterial, and adjusting the permittivity of the liquid crystal. Numerical results show that the index of refrac...

Sb2Se3 is a promising alternative absorber material for thin-film solar cells. However, by thermal evaporation technique, it appears to partially decompose, leading Se deficiency. In this work, we propose two routes the supply of selenium in deposition thin films. The first method co-evaporation and Sb2Se3, while second post-deposition selenization. Superstrate glass/FTO/TO/CdS/Sb2Se3/Au-config...

In the present work, a new compact microstrip patch antenna has been proposed in stacked configuration. The characteristics of the antenna are obtained in terms of return loss, gain and bandwidth and are compared with the conventional microstrip patch. It is observed that the new proposed configuration reduces the patch area by 66.34% and at the same time enhances the gain and bandwidth signifi...

The idea that processes of second language acquisition (SLA) are highly relevant for an account of creole genesis is far from new or original (see Plag (2008a) for some discussion and further references). However, it is still controversial which kinds of interlanguage processes are relevant, and how much of a given creole’s structures can be attributed to such processes. In my previous two Colu...