Abstract: Building blocks are provided for on-chip chemical sensors and other highly-compact photonic integrated circuits combining interband or quantum cascade lasers and detectors with passive waveguides and other components integrated on a III-V or silicon. A MWIR or LWIR laser source is evanescently coupled into a passive extended or resonant-cavity waveguide that provides evanescent coupling to a sample gas (or liquid) for spectroscopic chemical sensing. In the case of an ICL, the uppermost layer of this passive waveguide has a relatively high index of refraction that enables it to form the core of the waveguide, while the ambient air, consisting of the sample gas, functions as the top cladding layer. A fraction of the propagating light beam is absorbed by the sample gas if it contains a chemical species having a fingerprint absorption feature within the spectral linewidth of the laser emission.

Abstract: A method of designing a morphable aerodynamic surface includes discretizing and parameterizing a model of a morphable surface to create a function to optimize; utilizing finite element analysis to solve for displacements and associated errors at an initialization point; and iteratively calculating a gradient cost function, define step size and search direction, step according to defined step size and search direction, and recalculate displacements and associated errors to converge on final thickness vector.

Abstract: A device having: an article having a flat surface and a lower surface opposed to the flat surface; a cavity formed in the lower surface forming a complete loop surrounding a central portion of the article; a heating element having the same shape as the complete loop in the cavity and positioned to warm a portion of the flat surface adjacent to the heating element when the heating element is activated; a cooling device positioned to cool a portion of the flat surface in the central portion; and a release layer on the flat surface. A device having: an article having an upper surface; a heating element on the upper surface forming a complete loop surrounding a central portion of the article; and an electrically insulating material on the upper surface within the central portion.