The ability to create superoleophobic surfaces repellent toward low-surface-tension liquids is important for various applications, and has been recently demonstrated using re-entrant or doubly re-entrant microtopography. Liquid droplets on such surfaces feature composite liquid-solid-air interfaces, whereas composite liquid-lubricant-air interfaces would have potential for additional repellency. Here, the development of a novel slippery superoleophobic surface with low adhesion is demonstrated via combining doubly re-entrant microtopography with slippery lubricant-infused porous surfaces. This is realized by using 3D direct laser writing to fabricate doubly re-entrant micropillars with dedicated nanostructures on top of each pillar. The top nanostructures stabilize the impregnated slippery lubricant, while the re-entrant geometry of the micropillars prevents lubricant from spreading. The slippery layer reduces the adhesion of liquid to the pillars, as proved using scanning droplet adhesion microscopy (SDAM), while the doubly re-entrant micropillars make the surface superoleophobic. This novel interface combining two extremes, superoleophobicity and slippery lubricant-infused surface, is of importance for designing superoleophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces with advanced liquid repellent, anti-icing, or anti-fouling properties.

Integrated optical chips have already been established for application in optical communication. They also offer interesting future perspectives for integrated quantum optics on a chip. At present, however, they are mostly fabricated using essentially planar fabrication approaches like electron-beam lithography or UV optical lithography. Many further design options would arise if one had complete fabrication freedom in regard to the third dimension normal to the chip without having to give up the virtues and the know-how of existing planar fabrication technologies. As a step in this direction, we here use three-dimensional dip-in direct-laser-writing optical lithography to fabricate three-dimensional polymeric functional devices on pre-fabricated planar optical chips containing Si 3 N 4 waveguides as well as grating couplers made by standard electron-beam lithography. The first example is a polymeric dielectric rectangular-shaped waveguide which is connected to Si 3 N 4 waveguides and that is adiabatically twisted along its axis to achieve geometrical rotation of linear polarization on the chip. The rotator's broadband performance at around 1550 nm wavelength is verified by polarization-dependent grating couplers. Such polarization rotation on the optical chip cannot easily be achieved by other means. The second example is a whispering-gallery-mode optical resonator connected to Si 3 N 4 waveguides on the chip via polymeric waveguides. By mechanically connecting the latter to the disk, we can control the coupling to the resonator and, at the same time, guarantee mechanical stability of the three-dimensional architecture on the chip.

IntroductionSuccinylcholine and rocuronium are widely used to facilitate rapid sequence induction (RSI) intubation in intensive care. Concerns relate to the side effects of succinylcholine and to slower onset and inferior intubation conditions associated with rocuronium. So far, succinylcholine and rocuronium have not been compared in an adequately powered randomized trial in intensive care. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to compare the incidence of hypoxemia after rocuronium or succinylcholine in critically ill patients requiring an emergent RSI.MethodsThis was a prospective randomized controlled single-blind trial conducted from 2006 to 2010 at the University Hospital of Basel. Participants were 401 critically ill patients requiring emergent RSI. Patients were randomized to receive 1 mg/kg succinylcholine or 0.6 mg/kg rocuronium for neuromuscular blockade. The primary outcome was the incidence of oxygen desaturations defined as a decrease in oxygen saturation ≥ 5%, assessed by continuous pulse oxymetry, at any time between the start of the induction sequence and two minutes after the completion of the intubation. A severe oxygen desaturation was defined as a decrease in oxygen saturation ≥ 5% leading to a saturation value of ≤ 80%.ResultsThere was no difference between succinylcholine and rocuronium regarding oxygen desaturations (succinylcholine 73/196; rocuronium 66/195; P = 0.67); severe oxygen desaturations (succinylcholine 20/196; rocuronium 20/195; P = 1.0); and extent of oxygen desaturations (succinylcholine -14 ± 12%; rocuronium -16 ± 13%; P = 0.77). The duration of the intubation sequence was shorter after succinycholine than after rocuronium (81 ± 38 sec versus 95 ± 48 sec; P = 0.002). Intubation conditions (succinylcholine 8.3 ± 0.8; rocuronium 8.2 ± 0.9; P = 0.7) and failed first intubation attempts (succinylcholine 32/200; rocuronium 36/201; P = 1.0) did not differ between the groups.ConclusionsIn critically ill patients undergoing emergent RSI, incidence and severity of oxygen desaturations, the quality of intubation conditions, and incidence of failed intubation attempts did not differ between succinylcholine and rocuronium.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00355368.

Nontransparent contact fingers on the sun-facing side of solar cells represent optically dead regions which reduce the energy conversion per area. We consider two approaches for guiding the incident light around the contacts onto the active area. The first approach uses graded-index metamaterials designed by two-dimensional Schwarz-Christoffel conformal maps, and the second uses freeform surfaces designed by one-dimensional coordinate transformations of a point to an interval. We provide proof-of-principle demonstrators using direct laser writing of polymer structures on silicon wafers with opaque contacts. Freeform surfaces are amenable to mass fabrication and allow for complete recovery of the shadowing effect for all relevant incidence angles.Today, when extracting electrical power from photovoltaic (PV) devices, every improvement matters. To reduce serial Ohmic resistance losses otherwise limiting the PV efficiency, metallic fingers and bus bar grids on the sun-facing surface of crystalline silicon solar cells are required. Likewise, interconnecting bus bar lines between cell stripes in thin-film PV modules are also necessary. All of these contact schemes create significant shading losses of the PV modules such that the overall active area is reduced by a few percent, resulting in correspondingly decreased power-conversion efficiencies [1]. If a contact could be made "invisible" by guiding the incident light around it and absorbing the light within the PV active region, this loss would be recovered. One might then even consider increasing the fractional metal contact area on top of the PV cell to further reduce the serial Ohmic resistance.The contact shadowing problem has been recognized previously: proposed concepts like refracting triangular grooves in a dielectric layer on top of the PV cell [2,3] or experimentally realized reflecting triangular metal contacts called light-harvesting strings [4] have already provided partial remedy. However, can the shadow effect be eliminated completely? What are the practical limits?Recently, ideal invisibility cloaks have been designed theoretically by mapping coordinate transformations, which exclude a certain region from space, onto spatially inhomogeneous and anisotropic material distributions. Theoretically, these devices could be integrated into the solar cell where they serve the purpose of perfectly molding the flow of light around the metal contact and onto the PV cell active area for any angle of incidence and any polarization of light. Intuitively, one can think of the resulting structures as anisotropic yet polarization-independent gradedindex lenses. However, the required electric permittivity ε ↔ and magnetic permeability μ ↔ tensors within these ideal cloaks contain elements with zeros and infinities [5]. For the broad spectral range relevant for solar energy conversion, however, nature has only provided us with transparent dielectrics with refractive indices n within the rather limited range of about n 1 − 3 (⇔ ε 1 − 9 and μ 1). Hence, such ideal cloaks a...