Note: a microfluidic chip setup for capillarity-assisted particle assembly.

We developed a microfluidic chip setup for capillarity-assisted particle assembly (CAPA). A capillary bridge is formed between the aperture of a silicon chip and the assembly template. The bridge is fed with particle suspension through a microfluidic channel on the chip top side. With this setup, we can control the particle assembly location and tune the suspension composition during particle assembly. In this note, we describe the chip setup, the CAPA process using the microfluidic chip, and results of complex particle assemblies, such as composite particle arrays and particle gradients, that could not be obtained using a conventional CAPA setup.

Implementation of diffractive optical element in four-wave mixing scheme for ex situ characterization of hydride vapor phase epitaxy-grown GaN layers.

A holographic beam splitter has been integrated into a picosecond four-wave mixing (FWM) scheme. This modification significantly simplified the procedure of dynamic grating recording, thus making the FWM technique an easy-to-use tool for the holographic characterization of wide band gap materials. The novel FWM scheme was applied for characterization of hydride vapor phase epitaxy-grown undoped GaN layers of different thickness. It allowed the determination of carrier lifetime, diffusion coefficient, and carrier diffusion length by optical means, as well as the study of carrier recombination peculiarities with respect to dislocation and excess carrier density.