Single Shot Lensless Interferenceless Phase Imaging of Biochemical Samples Using Synchrotron near Infrared Beam.

Phase imaging of biochemical samples has been demonstrated for the first time at the Infrared Microspectroscopy (IRM) beamline of the Australian Synchrotron using the usually discarded near-IR (NIR) region of the synchrotron-IR beam. The synchrotron-IR beam at the Australian Synchrotron IRM beamline has a unique fork shaped intensity distribution as a result of the gold coated extraction mirror shape, which includes a central slit for rejection of the intense X-ray beam. The resulting beam configuration makes any imaging task challenging. For intensity imaging, the fork shaped beam is usually tightly focused to a point on the sample plane followed by a pixel-by-pixel scanning approach to record the image. In this study, a pinhole was aligned with one of the lobes of the fork shaped beam and the Airy diffraction pattern was used to illuminate biochemical samples. The diffracted light from the samples was captured using a NIR sensitive lensless camera. A rapid phase-retrieval algorithm was applied to the recorded intensity distributions to reconstruct the phase information. The preliminary results are promising to develop multimodal imaging capabilities at the IRM beamline of the Australian Synchrotron.

Nonlinear Reconstruction of Images from Patterns Generated by Deterministic or Random Optical Masks-Concepts and Review of Research.

Indirect-imaging methods involve at least two steps, namely optical recording and computational reconstruction. The optical-recording process uses an optical modulator that transforms the light from the object into a typical intensity distribution. This distribution is numerically processed to reconstruct the object's image corresponding to different spatial and spectral dimensions. There have been numerous optical-modulation functions and reconstruction methods developed in the past few years for different applications. In most cases, a compatible pair of the optical-modulation function and reconstruction method gives optimal performance. A new reconstruction method, termed nonlinear reconstruction (NLR), was developed in 2017 to reconstruct the object image in the case of optical-scattering modulators. Over the years, it has been revealed that the NLR can reconstruct an object's image modulated by an axicons, bifocal lenses and even exotic spiral diffractive elements, which generate deterministic optical fields. Apparently, NLR seems to be a universal reconstruction method for indirect imaging. In this review, the performance of NLR isinvestigated for many deterministic and stochastic optical fields. Simulation and experimental results for different cases are presented and discussed.

Impact of Furan Substitution on the Optoelectronic Properties of Biphenylyl/Thiophene Derivatives for Light-Emitting Transistors.

Biphenylyl/thiophene systems are known for their ambipolar behavior and good optical emissivity. However, often these systems alone are not enough to fabricate the commercial-grade light-emitting devices. In particular, our recent experimental and theoretical analyses on the three-ring-constituting thiophenes end capped with biphenylyl have shown good electrical properties but lack of good optical properties. From a materials science perspective, one way to improve the properties is to modify their structure and integrate it with additional moieties. In recent years, furan moieties have proven to be a potential substitution for thiophene to improve the organic semiconductive materials properties. In the present work, we systematically substituted different proportions of furan rings in the biphenylyl/thiophene core and studied their optoelectronic properties, aiming toward organic light-emitting transistor applications. We have found that the molecular planarity plays a vital role on the optoelectronic properties of the system. The lower electronegativity of the O atom offers better optical properties in the furan-substituted systems. Further, the furan substitution significantly affects the molecular planarity, which in turn affects the system mobility. As a result, we observed drastic changes in the optoelectronic properties of two furan-substituted systems. Interestingly, addition of furan has reduced the electron mobility by one fold compared to the pristine thiophene-based derivative. Such a variation is interpreted to be due to the low average electronic coupling in furan systems. Overall, systems with all furan and one ring of furan in the center end capped with thiophene have shown better optoelectronic properties. This molecular architecture favors more planarity in the system with good electrical properties and transition dipole moments, which would both play a vital role in the construction of an organic light-emitting transistor.