2012, Prikhna, T., Gawalek, W., Eisterer, M., Weber, H.W., Noudem, J., Sokolovsky, V., Chaud, X., Moshchil, V., Karpets, M., Kovylaev, V., Borimskiy, A., Tkach, V., Kozyrev, A., Kuznietsov, R., Dellith, J., Shmidt, C., Basyuk, T., Litzkendorf, D., Karau, F., Dittrich, U., Tomsic, M.

Structures of MgB2-based materials manufactured under pressure (up to 2 GPa) by different methods having high superconducting performance and connectivity are multiphase and contain different Mg-B-O compounds. Some oxygen can be incorporated into MgB2 and boron into MgO structures, MgBx (X=4-20) inclusions contain practically no oxygen. Regulating manufacturing temperature, pressure, introducing additions one can influence oxygen and boron distribution in the materials and thus, affect the formation, amount and sizes of Mg-B-O and MgBx inclusions and changing type of pinning, pinning force and so affect critical current density jc. The boron concentration increase in initial Mg and B mixture allows obtaining sample containing 88.5 wt% of MgB12 with Tc of 37.4 K (estimated magnetically).

2016, Trautmann, S., Aizpurua, J., Götz, I., Undisz, A., Dellith, J., Schneidewind, H., Rettenmayr, M., Deckert, V.

Recent experiments have evidenced sub-nanometer resolution in plasmonic-enhanced probe spectroscopy. Such a high resolution cannot be simply explained using the commonly considered radii of metallic nanoparticles on plasmonic probes. In this contribution the effects of defects as small as a single atom found on spherical plasmonic particles acting as probing tips are investigated in connection with the spatial resolution provided. The presence of abundant edge and corner sites with atomic scale dimensions in crystalline metallic nanoparticles is evident from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. Electrodynamic calculations based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) are implemented to reveal the impact of the presence of such atomic features in probing tips on the lateral spatial resolution and field localization. Our analysis is developed for three different configurations, and under resonant and non-resonant illumination conditions, respectively. Based on this analysis, the limits of field enhancement, lateral resolution and field confinement in plasmon-enhanced spectroscopy and microscopy are inferred, reaching values below 1 nanometer for reasonable atomic sizes.

2014, Dellith, J., Scheffel, A., Wendt, M.

The KL2,3 (α)1,2-lines of 19K, the L3M4,5 (α)1,2-lines of 48Cd, and the M5N6,7 (α)1,2-lines of 92U are lines of comparable energy in the region of approximately 3 keV. In none of these cases were we able to resolve the three doublets when recording the spectra in first order Bragg spectrometry using a PET crystal as the dispersing element. For the purpose of enhancing the resolving power of the spectrometer, the three α spectra were recorded in second order reflection, thereby transferring the lines into another spectral region dominated by X-ray quanta of half the energy. In order to achieve high net peak intensities as well as a high peak-to-background ratio and, consequently, a high level of detection capability, the discriminator settings should be optimized quite carefully. In this manner, we were able to resolve the three α doublets and estimate α2/α1 intensity ratios. Inexplicably, current monographs, e.g., by Goldstein et al, do not contain any indications about the rational use of high order spectrometry. Only a few rather old monographs contain some hints in this regard.

2018, Trautmann, S., Richard-Lacroix, M., Dathe, A., Schneidewind, H., Dellith, J., Fritzsche, W., Deckert, V.

The optical response of realistic 3D plasmonic substrates composed of randomly shaped particles of different size and interparticle distance distributions in addition to nanometer scale surface roughness is intrinsically challenging to simulate due to computational limitations. Here, we present a Finite Element Method (FEM)-based methodology that bridges in-depth theoretical investigations and experimental optical response of plasmonic substrates composed of such silver nanoparticles. Parametrized scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) active substrate and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) probes are used to simulate the far-and near-field optical response. Far-field calculations are consistent with experimental dark field spectra and charge distribution images reveal for the first time in arbitrary structures the contributions of interparticle hybridized modes such as sub-radiant and super-radiant modes that also locally organize as basic units for Fano resonances. Near-field simulations expose the spatial position-dependent impact of hybridization on field enhancement. Simulations of representative sections of TERS tips are shown to exhibit the same unexpected coupling modes. Near-field simulations suggest that these modes can contribute up to 50% of the amplitude of the plasmon resonance at the tip apex but, interestingly, have a small effect on its frequency in the visible range. The band position is shown to be extremely sensitive to particle nanoscale roughness, highlighting the necessity to preserve detailed information at both the largest and the smallest scales. To the best of our knowledge, no currently available method enables reaching such a detailed description of large scale realistic 3D plasmonic systems.