We are delighted to announce the winners of the STS Elionix Scientific Image Competition for Q3/Q4 of 2020. The STS Elionix Scientific Image Competition offers a unique opportunity for Tyndall researchers to flex their creative muscle, showcase and share scientific images from their research which they have discovered to be visually striking or informative to the technically excellent. Six winners are each awarded a €100 All-4-One voucher, kindly sponsored by STS Elionix.
The judges for the Q3/Q4 Competition were William Scanlon, CEO; Eoin O'Reilly, Chief Scientist; Peter Smyth, Commercial Director; Ursula Morrish, Marketing & Communications Manager; Graeme Maxwell, Head of Specialty Products & Services; and Daniela Iacopino, Researcher, MNS.
The outstanding quality and creativity demonstrated resulted in votes cast for six joint winners – Xing Ouyang, Michael Raju, Arindam Samanta, Daniel Smallwood, Zhi Li Vitaly Zubialevich and Fionán Davitt. Congratulations to all!
Starry Starry Night
This image captures the constellation diagram of received signals with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) of an order 256 without being compensated. This type of signal is widely used in our 5G mobile networks, WiFi, etc., for communications, and is obtained as part of the IPIC project. The swirling galaxy visual is because the signal constellations is distorted (rotated) by uncompensated phase noise, and each star in the galaxy represents a QAM signal with an information entropy of 8 bit. What an intriguing starry night in the world of information.
Xing Ouyang
Photonics
Wave Focusing through Disorder
This modelling study is from the Acousto-Optical Tomography project (Biophotonics@Tyndall) investigating the application of wavefront shaping methods to focus light through tissue like media. The image shows the simulated wave field associated with an application of wavefront shaping in a random medium. The highly diffusive random slab medium (within the blue boundaries) together with a tailored wavefront (incident on the slab from the right side), form a focus of the size of a typical wave speckle by overcoming multiple scattering. Time reversal symmetry of the wave equation is used to achieve this phenomenon. This project is funded by Science Foundation Ireland.
Michael Raju
BioPhotonics
Magnetic Maze
In reality, this maze reveals the magnetic domains with multi-colour contrasts which are the self-organization of magnetization into alternating magnetized upwarddownward nano-areas to form straight, parallel, and evenly spaced stripe domains by breaking the system into a multi-domain state.
Arindam Samanta
Micropower and Nanomagnetic
Vulcan
Through the lens of the SEM, we glimpse the rippled surface of an etched photoresist Cu pillar micromould. When coloured in vibrant orange and yellow, the micromould appears to warp across time and space and morph into the fiery planet Kepler10b. Once suggested to be unofficially named “Vulcan” after the hypothetical planet, this exoplanet is located a staggering 560 light-years from Earth. These micromoulds enable vertical interconnect access points (VIAs) for next generation MEMS devices with 2.5D and 3D System on Chip (SoC) and System in Package (SiP) applications. This technology is expected to hold great promise in spearheading the future of the microelectronics industry. Spock himself would be proud! This work is part of the SFI ADEPT project No. 15/IA/3180 "Advanced Integrated Power Magnetics Technology - From Atoms to Systems" and funded by SFI.
Daniel Smallwood
Integrated Magnetics & Electrochemical Materials and Energy
Perfect pyramid micro-LEDs
These highly-uniform and crystalline GaN pyramids are obtained by MOCVD in Tyndall using a selective area growth technique. With unique semi-polar facets and geometry, these pyramids are promising to get high efficiency long wavelength emission in the visible range, which provides a pathway to achieve all-GaN-based micro-LEDs displays.
Zhi Li, Vitaly Zubialevich
III-V Materials and Devices, III Nitride material
Red Blood Cell Imposters
This is a false coloured scanning electron microscope (SEM) image, in which semiconductor SnSe has formed into a shape which resembles that of red blood cells. This image was taken using the FEI Helios SEM in Tyndall.
Fionán Davitt
Materials Chemistry and Analysis Group