Rod

Abstract: Although negligible at macroscopic scales, capillary forces become dominant as the sub-millimetric scales of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are considered. We review various situations, not limited to micro-technologies, where capillary forces are able to deform elastic structures. In particular, we define the different length scales that are relevant for 'elasto-capillary' problems. We focus on the case of slender structures (lamellae, rods and sheets) and describe the size of a bundle of wet hair, the condition for a flexible rod to pierce a liquid interface or the fate of a liquid droplet deposited on a flexible thin sheet. These results can be generalized to similar situations involving adhesion or fracture energy, which widens the scope of possible applications from biological systems, to stiction issues in micro-fabrication processes, the manufacturing of 3D microstructures or the formation of blisters in thin film coatings.

Abstract: Contact-controlled sensing is realized from flowerlike ZnO structures composed of rods. The rods are around 150 nm in diameter and up to a few micrometers in length. When they are exposed to air, a depletion region formed below the surface of the rods arising from the adsorption of oxygen. Surface depletion does not greatly reduce either the carrier density or the mobility in the rods but significantly modify the potential barrier of the contacts between the rods. Both the large diameter and the long length result in a low sensor resistance down to 104kΩ in air at 300 °C. The exponential increase of the tunneling rate with the thickness and height of the contact barrier leads to a high sensitivity up to 14.6 for 100 ppm ethanol. These results indicate that contact-controlled sensing can be used to fabricate high-performance sensors with both high sensitivity and low resistance.

Abstract: Light propagation in all-dielectric rod-type metamaterials is studied theoretically. The electric and magnetic dipole moments of the rods are derived analytically in the long-wavelength limit. The effective permittivity and permeability of a square lattice of rods are calculated by homogenizing the corresponding array of dipoles. The role of dipole resonances in the optical properties of the rod array is interpreted. This structure is found to exhibit a true left-handed behavior, confirming previous experiments [L. Peng et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 157403 (2007)]. A scaling analysis shows that this effect holds at optical frequencies and can be obtained by using rods made, for example, of silicon.