There is a special reason for reviewing this book at this time: it is the 50th edition of a compendium that is known and used frequently in most chemical and physical laboratories in many parts of the world. Surely, a publication that has been published for 56 years, withstanding the vagaries of science in this century, must have had something to offer. There is another reason: while the book is a standard fixture in most chemical and physical laboratories, including those in medical centers, it is not as frequently seen in the laboratories of physician's offices (those either in solo or group practice). I believe that the Handbook can be useful in those laboratories. One of the reasons, among others, is that the various basic items of information it offers may be helpful in new tests, either physical or chemical, which are continuously being published. The basic information may relate

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

A topical review of numerical and experimental studies of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber is presented over the full range of experimentally reported parameters, from the femtosecond to the continuous-wave regime. Results from numerical simulations are used to discuss the temporal and spectral characteristics of the supercontinuum, and to interpret the physics of the underlying spectral broadening processes. Particular attention is given to the case of supercontinuum generation seeded by femtosecond pulses in the anomalous group velocity dispersion regime of photonic crystal fiber, where the processes of soliton fission, stimulated Raman scattering, and dispersive wave generation are reviewed in detail. The corresponding intensity and phase stability properties of the supercontinuum spectra generated under different conditions are also discussed.

Supercontinuum generation, photonic crystal fiber

A review on recent advances in the applications of surface-enhanced Raman scattering in analytical chemistry

We describe the history, guiding mechanism, recent advances, applications, and future prospects for hollow-core negative curvature fibers. We first review one-dimensional slab waveguides, two-dimensional annular core fibers, and negative curvature tube lattice fibers to illustrate the inhibited coupling guiding mechanism. Antiresonance in the glass at the core boundary and a wavenumber mismatch between the core and cladding modes inhibit coupling between the modes and have led to remarkably low loss in negative curvature fibers. We also summarize recent advances in negative curvature fibers that improve the performance of the fibers, including negative curvature that increases confinement, gaps between tubes that increase confinement and bandwidth, additional tubes that decrease mode coupling, tube structures that suppress higher-order modes, nested tubes that increase guidance, and tube parameters that decrease bend loss. Recent applications of negative curvature fibers are also presented, including mid-infrared fiber lasers, micromachining, and surgical procedures. At the end, we discuss the future prospects for negative curvature fibers.

Negative curvature fibers

This review presents an overview of “Lab on Fiber” technologies and devices with special focus on the design and development of advanced fiber optic nanoprobes for biological applications. Depending on the specific location where functional materials at micro and nanoscale are integrated, “Lab on Fiber Technology” is classified into three main paradigms: Lab on Tip (where functional materials are integrated onto the optical fiber tip), Lab around Fiber (where functional materials are integrated on the outer surface of optical fibers), and Lab in Fiber (where functional materials are integrated within the holey structure of specialty optical fibers).

This work reviews the strategies, the main achievements and related devices developed in the “Lab on Fiber” roadmap, discussing perspectives and challenges that lie ahead, with special focus on biological sensing applications.

Lab on Fiber Technology for biological sensing applications

Characterization of slow chemical reactions is essential for assessing catalytic efficiency in chemistry and biology. Traditionally, chemical reaction rates are obtained from population relaxation kinetics measurements and the Arrhenius equation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to use this approach to characterize reactions wherein concentrations change slowly. Thus, it is interesting to see whether a dynamical view of chemical reactions may be used to obtain the reaction rates of slow processes. In the present work, we perform Brownian dynamics simulations of an asymmetric double-well potential to investigate how enhanced sampling of barrier crossing at transition states improves the characterization of reaction rate constants. We then present the design of a liquid-filled capillary optical fiber-based fluorescence spectrometer, which, like rare events, is also based on Poissonian statistics. We use the instrument to characterize the slow photochemical degradation kinetics of poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexy...

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsomega.7b00004

Characterizing Slow Photochemical Reaction Kinetics by Enhanced Sampling of Rare Events with Capillary Optical Fibers and Kramers’ Theory

We describe the fabrication of metamaterial magnifying hyperlenses with subwavelength wire array structures for operation in the mid-infrared (around 3 μm). The metadevices are composed of approximately 500 tin wires embedded in soda-lime glass, where the metallic wires vary in diameter from 500 nm to 1.2 μm along the tapered structure. The modeling of the hyperlenses indicates that the expected overall losses for the high spatial frequency modes in such metadevices are between 20 dB to 45 dB, depending on the structural parameters selected, being promising candidates for far-field subdiffraction imaging in the mid-infrared. Initial far-field subdiffraction imaging attempts are described, and the problems encountered discussed.

/pdf/towards-subdiffraction-imaging-with-wire-array-metamaterial-34x62tk53b.pdf

Towards subdiffraction imaging with wire array metamaterial hyperlenses at MIR frequencies

An optical mymargin fiber anemometer based on a flexible multi-FBG curvature sensor is reported. The probe is comprised of a structured polymer shell with embedded single-mode fibers with written fiber Bragg gratings. When the sensor is bent, the different spectral shift of the Bragg wavelengths allows the determination of the mechanical stimulus. Moreover, the probe was also used as a cantilever sensor for assessing the airflow speed in a wind tunnel. The sensor presented sensitivities of 0.8 nm/m−m and 1.05 pm/(m/s) for curvature and square speed measurements, respectively, and the sensing characteristics can be improved by simply changing the material and the geometry of the bulk polymer shell, providing a versatile and feasible probe for the mechanical and flow measurements.

Optical Fiber Anemometer Based on a Multi-FBG Curvature Sensor

We report fabrication of an antiresonant hollow core fiber made from Tellurite glass. Initial results are promising for fabrication of a low loss mid-IR fiber made from non-toxic and durable glass for power delivery applications.

Tellurite antiresonant hollow core microstructured fiber for mid-IR power delivery

Laser dispersion spectroscopy provides an attractive way of gas sensing by measuring refractive index rather than absorption. The previous dispersion gas sensors were mostly developed with free-space optics. In this work, we demonstrated heterodyne phase-sensitive dispersion spectroscopy (HPSDS) for sensitive nitric oxide (NO) detection in a hollow-core fiber to take advantage of the enhanced light-gas interaction in a compact setup. A quantum cascade laser (QCL) at 5.26 µm was coupled into a 35 cm tellurite hollow-core antiresonant fiber to exploit the strong absorption line of NO. The injection current of the QCL was modulated at 1 GHz to generate the three-tone beam for dispersion measurements. We achieved a noise equivalent concentration (NEC) of 0.8 ppm at the measurement time of 80 s. A comparative study of HPSDS with wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) was also conducted to evaluate these two methods in terms of sensitivity and dynamic range. 

Juliano G. Hayashi

Papers

Characterizing Slow Photochemical Reaction Kinetics by Enhanced Sampling of Rare Events with Capillary Optical Fibers and Kramers’ Theory

Towards subdiffraction imaging with wire array metamaterial hyperlenses at MIR frequencies

Optical Fiber Anemometer Based on a Multi-FBG Curvature Sensor

Tellurite antiresonant hollow core microstructured fiber for mid-IR power delivery

Trace gas detection in a hollow-core antiresonant fiber with heterodyne phase-sensitive dispersion spectroscopy