Quantitative heterogeneity and subgroup classification based on motility of breast cancer cells

Cancer cell motility and its heterogeneity play an important role in metastasis, which is responsible for death of 90% of cancer patients. Here, in combination with a microfluidic technique, single-cell tracking, and systematic motility analysis,we present a rapid and quantitative approach to judge the motility heterogeneity of breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 in a well-defined three-dimensional(3D) microenvironment with controllable conditions. Following this approach,identification of highly mobile active cells in a medium with epithelial growth factor will provide a practical tool for cell invasion and metastasis investigation of multiple cancer cell types, including primary cells. Further, this approach could potentially become a speedy(~ hours) and efficient tool for basic and clinical diagnosis.

Comparison between Top and Bottom NiO-pinning Spin Valves: Effect of Interfacial Roughness on Specular Reflection

Top and bottom NiO-pinning spin valves of Si/Ta/NiO/Co/Cu/Co/Ta and Si/Ta/Co/Cu/Co/NiO/Ta were prepared by magnetron sputtering, and X-ray diffraction and giant magnetoresistance （GMR） ratio were measured in the temperature range from 5 to 300 K. For the bottom spin valve, the interracial roughness at NiO/Co is much smaller than that of Co/NiO in the top one. The Co/Cu and Cu/Co interfaces have the same roughness in the bottom and the top spin valves. NiO, Co, and Cu layers have （111） preferred orientations in the top one and random orientations in the bottom one. The GMR ratio of the bottom spin valve is larger than that of the top one at all temperatures and their difference increases with decreasing temperature.

Terahertz spoof surface-plasmon-polariton subwavelength waveguide

Surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs) with the features of subwavelength confinement and strong enhancements have sparked enormous interest. However, in the terahertz regime, due to the perfect conductivities of most metals, it is hard to realize the strong confinement of SPPs, even though the propagation loss could be sufficiently low. One main approach to circumvent this problem is to exploit spoof SPPs, which are expected to exhibit useful subwavelength confinement and relative low propagation loss at terahertz frequencies. Here we report the design,fabrication, and characterization of terahertz spoof SPP waveguides based on corrugated metal surfaces. The various waveguide components, including a straight waveguide, an S-bend waveguide, a Y-splitter, and a directional coupler, were experimentally demonstrated using scanning near-field terahertz microscopy. The proposed waveguide indeed enables propagation, bending, splitting, and coupling of terahertz SPPs and thus paves a new way for the development of flexible and compact plasmonic circuits operating at terahertz frequencies.

Develop a 3D neurological disease model of human cortical glutamatergic neurons using micropillar-based scaffolds

Establishing an effective three-dimensional(3D) in vitro culture system to better model human neurological diseases is desirable, since the human brain is a 3D structure. Here, we demonstrated the development of a polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) pillar-based 3D scaffold that mimicked the 3D microenvironment of the brain. We utilized this scaffold for the growth of human cortical glutamatergic neurons that were differentiated from human pluripotent stem cells. In comparison with the 2D culture, we demonstrated that the developed 3D culture promoted the maturation of human cortical glutamatergic neurons by showing significantly more MAP2 and less Ki67 expression. Based on this 3D culture system,we further developed an in vitro disease-like model of traumatic brain injury(TBI), which showed a robust increase of glutamate-release from the neurons, in response to mechanical impacts, recapitulating the critical pathology of TBI. The increased glutamate-release from our 3D culture model was attenuated by the treatment of neural protective drugs, memantine or nimodipine. The established 3D in vitro human neural culture system and TBI-like model may be used to facilitate mechanistic studies and drug screening for neurotrauma or other neurological diseases.

Polarization-independent all-silicon dielectric metasurfaces in the terahertz regime

Dielectric metasurfaces have achieved great success in realizing high-efficiency wavefront control in the optical and infrared ranges. Here, we experimentally demonstrate several efficient, polarization-independent, all-silicon dielectric metasurfaces in the terahertz regime. The metasurfaces are composed of cylindrical silicon pillars on a silicon substrate, which can be easily fabricated using etching technology for semiconductors. By locally tailoring the diameter of the pillars, full control over abrupt phase changes can be achieved. To show the controlling ability of the metasurfaces, an anomalous deflector, three Bessel beam generators, and three vortex beam generators are fabricated and characterized. We also show that the proposed metasurfaces can be easily combined to form composite devices with extended functionalities. The proposed controlling method has promising applications in developing low-loss, ultra-compact spatial terahertz modulation devices.

Broadband terahertz rotator with an all-dielectric metasurface

Polarization manipulation is essential in developing cutting-edge photonic devices ranging from optical communication displays to solar energy harvesting. Most previous works for efficient polarization control cannot avoid utilizing metallic components that inevitably suffer from large ohmic loss and thus low operational efficiency.Replacing metallic components with Mie resonance-based dielectric resonators will largely suppress the ohmic loss toward high-efficiency metamaterial devices. Here, we propose an efficient approach for broadband, highquality polarization rotation operating in transmission mode with all-dielectric metamaterials in the terahertz regime. By separating the orthogonal polarization components in space, we obtain rotated output waves with a conversion efficiency of 67.5%. The proposed polarization manipulation strategy shows impressive robustness and flexibility in designing metadevices of both linear-and circular-polarization incidences.

Dual non-diffractive terahertz beam generators based on all-dielectric metasurface

The applications of terahertz(THz)technology can be greatly extended using non-diffractive beams with unique field distributions and non-diffiactive transmission characteristics.Here,we design and experimentally demonstrate a set of dual non-diffractive THz beam generators based on an all-dielectric metasurface.Two kinds of non-diffractive beams with dramatically opposite focusing properties,Bessel beam and abruptly autofocus-ing(AAF)beam,are considered.A Bessel beam with longdistance non-diffractive characteristics and an AAF beam with low energy during transmission and abruptly increased energy near the focus are generated for x-and^-polarized incident waves,respectively.These two kinds of beams are characterized and the results agree well with simulations.In addition,we show numerically that these two kinds of beams can also carry orbital angular momentum by further imposing proper angular phases in the design.We believe that these metasurface-based beam generators have great potential use in THz imaging,communications,non-destructive evaluation,and many other fields.

Achieving room-temperature M_(2)-phase VO_(2) nanowires for superior thermal actuation

Vanadium dioxide (VO_(2)) has emerged as a promising micro-actuator material for its large amplitude and high work density across the transition between the insulating (M_(1) and M_(2)) and metallic (R) phase. Even though M_(2)–R transition offers about 70% higher transformation stress than M_(1)–R structural phase transition, the application of the M_(2) phase in the micro-actuators is hindered by the fact that previously, M_(2) phase can only stay stable under tensile stress. In this work, we propose and verify that by synthesizing the VO_(2) nanowires under optimized oxygen-rich conditions, stoichiometry change can be introduced into the nanowires (NWs) which in turn yield a large number free-standing single-crystalline M_(2)-phase NWs stable at room temperature. In addition, we demonstrate that the output stress of the M_(2)-phase NWs is about 65% higher than that of the M_(1)-phase NWs during their transition to R phase, quite close to the theoretical prediction. Our findings open new avenues towards enhancing the performance of VO_(2)-based actuators by using M_(2)–R transition.