A water bridge refers to an experimental "flexible cable" made up of pure deionized water which can hang across two supports maintained with a sufficiently large voltage difference. The resulting electric fields within the deionized water flexible cable, maintain a tension which sustains the water against the downward force of gravity. A detailed calculation of the water bridge tension will be provided in terms of the Maxwell pressure tensor in a dielectric fluid medium. General properties of the dielectric liquid pressure tensor are discussed along with unusual features of dielectric fluid Bernoulli flows in an electric field. Analogies between dielectric fluid Bernoulli flows in strong electric fields and quantum Bernoulli flows in superfluids are explored.

A highly scalable approach for producing surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy substrates is introduced. The novel method involves assembling individual nanoparticles in pre‐defined templates, one particle per template, forming a high denisity of nanogaps over large areas, while decoupling nanostructure synthesis from placement.

We introduce a nanoplasmonic platform merging multiple modalities for optical trapping, nanospectroscopy, and biosensing applications. Our platform is based on surface plasmon polariton driven monopole antenna arrays combining complementary strengths of localized and extended surface plasmons. Tailoring of spectrally narrow resonances lead to large index sensitivities ͑S ϳ 675 nm/ RIU͒ with record high figure of merits ͑FOMϳ 112.5͒. These monopole antennas supporting strong light localization with easily accessible near-field enhanced hotspots are suitable for vibrational nanospectroscopy and optical trapping. Strong optical forces ͑350 pN/ W / m 2 ͒ are shown at these hotspots enabling directional control with incident light polarization.

The authors describe a general high throughput directed assembly technique to address some of the challenges to enable high rate∕high volume nanomanufacturing. The directed assembly of colloidal particles using an applied electric field shows the ability of precise control of nanoparticles by controlling assembly voltage, time, and geometric design of templates. The results show that single nanoparticle lines as small as 10nm wide and 100000nm long over a 2.25cm2 area as well as other nanoparticle structures can be fabricated using electrophoresis. This approach offers a simple, robust, and fast means of directed assembly of nanoelements for many applications.

No abstract