In 1980, Peter Franken, the second director of the Optical Sciences Center, recruited an international quartet of faculty members from the US, Canada, England and Israel (DS). Peter shaped the Center as a clockwork operation, nailing down every aspect of its administration, business model and academic vision. I found myself from day one in a highly competitive environment with extreme peer pressure to make good science and generate a lot of funds. This paper describes the academic journey through my three decades at the Optical Sciences Center that became the College of Optical Sciences (Optical Sciences, in short) until my retirement in 2010, by highlighting selected areas of my group's research.

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An instability in the growth of nonperiodic InGaAs/GaAs multiple quantum well samples, ordinarily of high-quality when grown with equal periods of order of half the wavelength of light in the material, leads to a dramatic microscopic, self-organized surface grating. This effect was discovered while growing quantum wells with two unequal barrier lengths arranged in a Fibonacci sequence to form an optical quasicrystal. A laser beam incident normal to the surface of the sample is diffracted into a propeller-shaped pattern. The sample surface has a distinctly cloudy appearance when viewed along one crystal axis but is mirror-like when the sample is rotated 90 degrees. The instability results in a five-fold increase in the absorption linewidth of the heavy-hole exciton transition. Atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the samples.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction A Metal as a Free Electron Gas Lorenz Number, NLorenz, and the Wiedemann–Franz Law Fermi Velocity, vF Fermi Temperature, TF Fermi k-Vector, kF Electron Density, Ne Mean Free Path, ℓ Ratio of ℓ / σ Electronic Density of States, De Electronic Specific Heat, Ce Constriction Resistance Electrical Resistance in the Maxwell Limit Electrical Resistance in the Sharvin Limit Combined Electrical Resistance Boundary Resistance Thermal Boundary Resistance of General Media Thermal Boundary Resistance of Metallic Media Electrical Boundary Resistance of Metallic Media Exercises for Chapter 17 References

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Indentation Contact Radius and Contact Force Indentation and Contact Radius Indentation and Contact Force Inverted Functions Contact Force and Contact Radius Contact Radius and Indentation Contact Force and Indentation Limits of Adhesion Parameters Contact Pressure Maximum Contact Pressure Distribution of Contact Pressure Lennard–Jones Potential Total Force and Indentation Push-in Region Push-in Region in the Absence of Adhesion Push-in Region in the Presence of Adhesion Pull-out Region Pull-out Region in the Absence of Adhesion Pull-out Region in the Presence of Adhesion Hysteresis Loop Exercises for Chapter 5 References

This article analyses the operation of an atomic force microscope whose cantilever, which is heated at its free end, is used to map topography and thermal features across a sample surface. The analysis takes into account the thermal flow along the cantilever, between the cantilever and sample via air, and through the constriction formed at the tip-sample contact area. The thermal flow through the constriction is analysed in terms of Maxwell and Sharvin components as given by Wexler. Examples using silicon tips and samples with a rectangular grid consisting of (a) silicon and silicon oxide features and (b) silicon oxide steps of 100 nm height, show that long tips are more sensitive to the thermal features of the sample while short once are more sensitive to its topography.

1 Introduction. 2 Uniform Cantilevers. 3 Cantilever Conversion Tables. 4 V-Shaped Cantilevers. 5 Tip Sample Adhesion. 6 Tip Sample Force Curve. 7 Free Vibrations. 8 Noncontact Mode. 9 Tapping Mode. 10 Metal-Insulator-Metal Tunneling. 11 Fowler-Nordheim Tunneling. 12 Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy. 13 Coulomb Blockade. 14 Density of States. 15 Electrostatics. 16 Near-Field Optics. 17 Constriction and Boundary Resistence. 18 Scanning Thermal Conductivity Microscopy. 19 Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy. 20 Raman Scattering in Nanocrystals.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Tip–Sample Interaction Lennard–Jones Potential Lennard–Jones Force Lennard–Jones Force Derivative Morse Potential Hysteresis Loop Snap-in and Snap-out Points Calculated Hysteresis Loop Observed Hysteresis Loop Evaluation of Hamaker's Constant Animation Exercises for Chapter 6 References

This article describes a novel implementation of an atomic force microscope that can map thermal-conductivity features across a sample with a high spatial resolution. The microscope employs a single-sided, metal-coated cantilever, which acts as a bimetallic strip together with a heating laser whose beam is focused on the cantilever’s free end, on the opposite side of its tip. Subtracting the topography obtained by the unheated and heated cantilevers yields a map of thermal conductivity across the surface of a sample. The article presents (a) the theory of operation of the microscope and (b) the experimental results obtained on a silicon sample with oxide features, showing good agreement between the two.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Capacitance Derivatives Tip–Sample Capacitance Derivative Cantilever–Sample Capacitance Derivative Measurement of Contact Potential Difference Tip–Sample and Cantilever–Sample Electrostatic Forces Harmonic Expansion of Tip–Sample Force Thermal Noise Limitations Exercises for Chapter 19 References

We demonstrate a technique to measure local thermal conductivity of materials using an atomic force, microscope equipped with a commercial silicon cantilever coated by a thin metal film. This bimaterial cantilever acts as a bimetallic strip that bends when heated by a focused laser beam. The bending is apparent as a topographic distortion, which varies with the amount of heat flowing from the cantilever's tip into the sample. By comparing the surface topographies of the sample, as measured with heated and unheated cantilevers, the local thermal conductivity of the tip-sample contact area can be determined. Experimental results with this system are presented and found to be e in good agreement with a finite element model. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

Multilevel conductance switching in poly[2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) films is demonstrated. A thin-film structure, ITO-coated glass/MEH-PPV/Al, has shown the ability to store a continuum of conductance states. These states are nonvolatile and can be switched reproducibly by applying appropriate programing biases above a certain threshold voltage. The electrical conductivity of the highest and lowest states can differ by five orders of magnitude. Furthermore, these devices exhibit good cyclic switching characteristics and retention times of several weeks.

A compact mechanical package is developed for a standard microscope that implements a solid immersion lens (SIL) on a retractable bimorph swing arm. With the compact package mounted on an inverted microscope, far-field and near-field images are obtained at the same location by moving the SIL with the swing arm. With white-light incoherent illumination, the resolution of this system for observing digital versatile discs is around 200 nm with an effective numerical aperture of 1.5. Imaging with the SIL is compared with an atomic force microscopy scan. (c) 2006 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

Organic thin film structures, including organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), are demonstrated to exhibit multiple nonvolatile conductance states at low read voltages. Long retention times and many write-read-rewrite-read cycles have been performed with minimal degradation.