The recent advances in emission and detection of terahertz radiation using two-dimensional (2-D) plasmons in semiconductor nanoheterostructures for nondestructive evaluations are reviewed. The 2-D plasmon resonance is introduced as the operation principle for broadband emission and detection of terahertz radiation. The device structure is based on a high-electron-mobility transistor and incorporates the authors' original asymmetrically interdigitated dual-grating gates. Excellent THz emission and detection performances are experimentally demonstrated by using InAlAs/InGaAs/InP and/or InGaP/InGaAs/GaAs heterostructure material systems. Their applications to nondestructive material evaluation based on THz imaging are also presented.

Properties of self-assembled quantum dots (QDs), often referred to as artificial atoms in solid state, are very interesting in order to study physical effects specific to single quantum systems such as the single-photon emission. Thanks to their huge vertical quantum confinement, GaN QDs are emitting even at room temperature and on a large UV range. This peculiarity makes GaN QDs good candidates for fundamental physics as well as conception of devices such as UV-LEDs. In so-called thick QDs (height larger than 2.3 nm), the energies of the confined electronic states are determined by the quantum confined Stark effect. On the contrary, in thin QDs (height smaller than 2.3 nm) the quantum confinement plays the major role, thus leading to a significantly smaller homogeneous linewidth and to the resolution of the exciton fine-structure splitting [Kindel, PRB81, 241309]. As far as time-resolved measurements are concerned, several papers reported experiments in thick QDs emitting at 350nm or more, either in polar [Bretagnon, PRB73, 113304] or non-polar nanostructures [Founta, APL86, 171901]. We report photoluminescence decay time measurements in thin GaN QDs emitting between 280nm and 360nm. For QDs emitting at 290nm we observe a monoexponential decay and the abscence of any red shift for the luminescence spectrum shows that we are in the regime of a single electronhole pair per dot. In this case, we measure the intrinsic radiative recombination time, without any perturbation due to the Stark effect. We find a radiative lifetime of about 350 ps in good agreement with our theoritical model.

Aggregates formed in an aqueous medium by three ionic liquids CnMImIbu made up of 1-alkyl-3-methyl-imidazolium cation (n = 4, 6, 8) and ibuprofenate anion are investigated. Dynamic light scattering (DLS), cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), 1H nuclear magnetic resonance measurements, and atom-scale molecular dynamics simulations are used to shed light on the main interactions governing the formation of the aggregates and their composition. At high concentration, mixed micelles are formed with a composition that depends on the imidazolium alkyl chain length. For the shortest alkyl chain, micelles are mainly composed of ibuprofenate anions with some imidazolium cations intercalated between the anions. Upon increasing the alkyl chain length, the composition of the aggregates gets enriched in imidazolium cations and aggregates of stoichiometric composition are obtained. Attractive interactions between these aggregates led to the formation of larger aggregates. As suggested by molecular simulations, these larger aggregates might constitute the early stage of phase separation. Transitions from micelles to vesicles or ribbons are observed due to dilution effects and changes in the chemical composition of the aggregates. We also show that aggregation can be probed using simple microscopic quantities such as radial distribution functions and average solvation numbers.

Gold nanoparticles (NPs) coated with stimuli-responsive polymer transfer from water to oil and from oil to water across the planar interfaces when environmental parameters are slightly changed. The oil to water transfer occurs when the temperature is reduced below 5 °C, while they transfer from salty water to oil when the environmental temperature returns to room temperature. The water-to-oil particle transfer after warming is dictated by the ionic strength of the aqueous phase, which is directly associated with the ionic strength response of the polymer brushes anchored on the NPs. In contrast, the temperature onset for the oil-to-water NP transfer after cooling is weakly correlated with the transition temperature of the polymer brushes in either of the bulk phases. The transfer mechanism disparity for the two directions during NP crossing of oil-water interfaces result from an intricate interplay of interfacial interactions and transitions. In this talk, experimental investigations and some modeling will be presented in order to elucidate the NP transfer across fluid interfaces. References Bidirectional Nanoparticle Crossing of Oil-Water Interfaces Induced by Different Stimuli: Insight into Phase Transfer. Stocco Antonio, Chanana Munish, Su Ge, Cernoch Peter, Binks Bernard, Wang Dayang: Angewandte Chemie / Angew Chem Int Ed, vol. 51 p.9647 (2012) Acknowledgements Special thanks go to Helmuth Möhwald, Munish Chanana (MPIKG), and all colleagues involved in this project.

We address, theoretically, the puzzling similarity observed in the thermodynamic behavior of independent clouds of cold dipolar excitons in coupled semiconductor quantum wells. We argue that the condensation of self-trapped exciton gas starts at the same critical temperature in all traps due to the specific scaling rule. As a consequence of the reduced dimensionality of the system, the scaling parameters appear to be insensitive to disorder.