Spatial Bessel-like beams along arbitrary convex trajectories based on a 3D-printed metasurface.

A 3D-printed all-dielectric metasurface is presented in this Letter which can generate an accelerating beam with a circularly symmetric non-spreading transverse profile that can propagate along arbitrary convex trajectories. The curved trajectory is mapped to the corresponding direct-space spatial phases by the basic cube units with different geometrical heights. The required phase distribution is derived in detail based on the enveloping theory of differential geometry and the Bessel beam generation method. A metasurface with a preset trajectory is simulated and measured to demonstrate the validity of the phase distribution calculated by the proposed theory. The full-wave simulation and measurement results verify that the Bessel-like beam whose intensity follows a curved (off-axis) trajectory can be produced by the proposed metasurface. The generated hybrid beam merges the advantages of non-accelerating and accelerating diffractive-free beams. Therefore, the proposed metasurface has great potential in ultrahigh-speed communication, secure communication, near-field imaging, wireless energy transmission applications, and so on. The all-dielectric characteristic provides the proposed metasurface with the competitive advantages of low cost and easy large-scale processing.

Photoelectrocatalytic degradation of methylene blue using F doped TiO2 photoelectrode under visible light irradiation.

Photoelectrocatalysis (PEC) has attracted great interest due to cost effectiveness and high efficiency in water treatment. In this study, F doped TiO2 (F-TiO2) photoelectrodes with honeycomb like morphology were prepared, and the PEC performance was investigated. F-TiO2 particles that showed enhanced absorption of visible light were synthesized via a sol-gel method. F-TiO2 particles were anchored onto the surface of F-doped SnO2 glass by a screen-printing method to prepare the F-TiO2 photoelectrodes. The PEC performance of the F-TiO2 photoelectrodes was investigated via the degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation. The results show that the F-TiO2 photoelectrodes exhibited an excellent PEC performance that was affected by the F doping content, applied bias and solution pH. A maximum decolorization percentage of 97.8% was achieved by the FT-15 photoelectrode, with a 1.4 V bias at pH 9.94 after 4.0 h of visible light irradiation. The high PEC performance of the F-TiO2 photoelectrodes is mainly ascribed to the efficient separation of electron-hole (e--h+) pairs and the creation of active radicals such as hydroxyl radicals (OH). The PEC decolorization kinetic data were analyzed using the first-order kinetic model and the Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) model. The data indicates that the PEC degradation of MB molecules mainly occurred on the surface of the F-TiO2 photoelectrodes, and the MB molecules were discolored mainly by h+ (41.5%) and OH (46.5%). In addition, 8.2% of the MB molecules were discolored by other oxidative species, and 3.8% of the MB molecules were discolored by self-sensitized oxidation.