[en] We provide a convenient recipe for fabricating reliable superconducting microbolometers as acoustic phonon detectors with sub-nanosecond response, using image-reversal optical lithography and dc-magnetron sputtering, and our recipe requires no chemical or plasma etching. Our approach solves the traditional problem for granular aluminium bolometers of unreliable (i.e., non-Ohmic) electrical contacts by sequentially sputtering the granular aluminium film and then a palladium capping layer. We use dc calibration data, the method of Danilchenko et al. [1], and direct nanosecond-pulsed photoexcitation to obtain the microbolometer's characteristic current, thermal conductance, characteristic relaxation time, and heat capacity. We also demonstrate the use of the deconvolution algorithm of Edwards et al. [2] to obtain the phonon flux in a heat pulse experiment with nanosecond resolution

[en] The chemistry associated with atmospheric dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) in air has been studied. Laboratory and industrial DBD systems have been investigated. In this work, we have emphasized the use of aqueous extractions of treated surfaces, followed by analyses by ion chromatography to study the DBD chemistry. A range of DBD factors including dose, humidity, airflow and electrode configuration (one versus two dielectric barriers) is found to influence the levels of acids, notably nitrous, nitric and oxalic acids, on the treated surfaces. A mechanistic rationale involving the primary formation of the nitrous and nitric acids in the gas phase is proposed

[en] We report the first experimental evidence for the resonant excitation of coherent high-frequency acoustic phonons in semiconducting doping superstructures by far-infrared laser radiation. After a grating-coupled delta-doped silicon doping superlattice is illuminated with ∼1 kW/mm² nanosecond-pulsed 246 GHz laser radiation, a delayed nanosecond pulse is detected by a superconducting bolometer at a time corresponding to the appropriate time-of-flight for ballistic longitudinal acoustic phonons across the (100) silicon substrate. The absorbed phonon power density in the microbolometer is observed to be ∼10 μW/mm², in agreement with theory. The phonon pulse duration also matches the laser pulse duration. The absence of any delayed transverse acoustic phonon signal by the superconducting bolometer is particularly striking and implies there is little or no incoherent phonon generation occurring in the process.