This paper surveys end-of-life strategies currently used in the electronics and appliances industries and identifies product characteristics that define feasible end-of-life strategies. The authors' survey indicates that two key characteristics serve as factors to categorize appropriate products' end-of-life path: product life and technology cycle. The categorization leads to a methodology that guides product developers to specify, end-of-life strategies, to seek environmentally friendly designs, and to identify opportunities for developing new recycling technologies. The goal of disassembly differs depending an each product category, however, efficient disassembly is a key to carry out the ideal end-of-life strategies for every product category. To enhance disassemblability, the authors propose the concept of the product embedded disassembly process. The fundamental idea is to embed a separation feature inside a product during manufacturing and activate it at disassembly.
The less invasive stimulation of neurons at the single-cell level was demonstrated with a focused femtosecond laser. The evoked neuronal activity by the laser irradiation was evaluated by simultaneous fluorescent Ca 2+ imaging and electrophysiological recordings.
Direct laser writing through two-photon polymerization lithography is used to fabricate 3D nanostructures containing aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). SWCNTs are aligned in the laser scanning directions while they are embedded in the structure. The alignment is induced by spatial confinement, volume shrinkage, and the optical gradient force. This method is expected to lead to new applications based on aligned SWCNTs.
Nonlinear optical effects play key roles to communication, sensing, imaging, and so on. Recently, nonlinear scattering (saturation and reverse saturation) was discovered in gold nanospheres, providing a novel approach to nonbleaching super-resolution microscopy. However, the nonlinearity was previously limited to green-orange plasmonic band. It is highly desirable to extend the applicable wavelength range. In this work, we demonstrated nonlinear scattering in near-infrared with gold nanorods and in blue-violet with silver nanospheres. Besides, the nonlinear mechanism is clarified via different material/geometry. By spectrally decoupling the contributions of plasmonic absorption/scattering and interband/intraband transitions, we have verified plasmonic absorption, and the subsequent thermal effects to be the dominating source of nonlinearity. Our work not only provides the physical mechanism of the nonlinear scattering, but also paves the way toward multicolor super-resolution imaging based on plasmonic scattering.
We report here a novel phenomenon: selective metal deposition on photoswitchable diarylethene (DAE) surfaces. Magnesium vapor was deposited by vacuum evaporation on the colored DAE but not on the uncolored surface. The selective deposition originates in the change of the glass transition temperature of the amorphous DAE film resulting from photoisomerization and therefore from changes of surface molecular motion. We clarified that Mg atoms on the uncolored surface actively migrated on the surface and were desorbed from the surface. The possibility of depositing other metals is also discussed. Light-controllable metal-integrated deposition was demonstrated as a new function of the photoswitchable molecular surfaces. This study reveals new features of the photoswitchable molecular surfaces, and their potential suggests bright prospects for future applications in organic electronics.
We have developed a non-invasive and high-resolution imaging method for the two-dimensional dynamics of metal ions in the vicinity of cells based on Surface Plasmon Resonance Microscope.
