Content is focused on fluorescence lifetime imaging techniques. Fluorescence lifetime is computed from data acquired with using of Leica TCS SP8X confocal microscope sequential scanning. Algorithms and software for the computation, imaging and analysis of fluorescence lifetime is presented. Software is allowing both 2D and 3D imaging of fluorescence lifetime. Techniques are used for fluorescence lifetime imaging of mesenchymal cells and fibroblasts tainted with SPIO-Rhodamin complex.

Inorganic alternating current electroluminescent devices (AC-ELs) are known for their ruggedness and extreme long-term reliability, which is why they can often been found in industrial and medical equipment as well as in applications in the military sector. In contrast to the inorganic phosphors used in AC-ELs, organic materials offer a number of advantages, in particular a significantly higher efficiency, easier processibility, and a wide selection of emitter materials spanning the entire visible spectrum. Several efforts towards alternating current driven organic light-emitting devices have recently been made, however, important operating mechanism are still not well understood. In the first part of this theses, alternating current driven, capacitively coupled, pin-based organic light-emitting devices are investigated with respect to the influence of the thickness of the insulating layer and the intrinsic organic layer on the driving voltage. A three-capacitor model is employed to predict the basic behavior of the devices and good agreement with the experimental values is found. The proposed charge regeneration mechanism based on Zener tunneling is studied in terms of field strength across the intrinsic organic layers. A remarkable consistency between the measured field strength at the onset point of light emission (3–3.1 MV/cm) and the theoretically predicted breakdown field strength of around 3 MV/cm is obtained. The latter value represents the field required for Zener tunneling in wide band gap organic materials according to Fowler-Nordheim theory. In a second step, asymmetric driving of capacitively coupled OLEDs is investigated. It is found that different voltages and/or pulse lengths for positive and negative half-cycle lead to significant improvements in terms of brightness and device efficiency. Part two of this work demonstrates a device concept for highly efficient organic light-emitting devices whose emission color can be easily adjusted from, e.g., deep-blue through cold-white and warm-white to saturated yellow. The presented approach exploits the different polarities of the positive and negative half-cycles of an alternating current driving signal to independently address a fluorescent blue emission unit and a phosphorescent yellow emission unit vertically stacked on top of each other. The electrode design is optimized for simple fabrication and driving and allows for two-terminal operation by a single source. The presented approach for color-tunable OLEDs is versatile in terms of emitter combinations and meets application requirements by providing a high device efficiency of 36.2 lm/W, a color rendering index of 82 at application relevant brightness levels of 1000 cd/m², and warm-white emission color coordinates. The final part demonstrates an approach for full-color OLED pixels that are fabricated by vertical stacking of a red-, green-, and blue-emitting unit. Each unit can be addressed separately which allows to efficiently generate every color that is a superposition of spectra of the individual emission units. The device is built in a top-emission geometrywhich is highly desirable for display fabrication as the pixel can be directly deposited onto the back-plane electronics. Furthermore, the presented device design requires only three independently addressable electrodes which simplifies fabrication and electrical driving. The electrical performance of each individual unit is on par with standard pin single emission unit OLEDs, showing very low leakage currents and achieving high brightness levels at moderate voltages of around 3–4 V.

Diagnosis of laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer is often in advanced stages of cancer, resulting in elimination of the possibility of treatment with the least mutilating effect for the patient. The huge progamination. ress in diagnostic process of mucosal tumors of the head and neck has been started with the development of new optical endoscopic imaging methods that are able to visualize initiating discrete mucosal changes with pathological vascularization easier and more accurately. The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the benefit of Narrow Band Imaging (NBI), especially in the differentation of benign, precancerous and malignant changes in three groups of patients, it means in preoperative diagnostics in outpatient department (group I), during the endoscopic surgery (group II) and also in follow-up of patients after curative radiotherapy (group III). The vascular changes within the observed lesion or in close contact with the laryngeal/hypopharyngeal lesion were classified according to two classifications (Ni and Arens) and subsequently correlated with the histopathological results. The dissertation confirmed that NBI plays a key role in early detection of precancerous and malignant changes, in discrimination between benign and malignant vascular patterns with statistical significance. We...

Recently, there has been a notable rise in the use of colored lighting for both indoor andoutdoor spaces. This trend necessitates a clear understanding of the principles behindselecting lighting levels that are both ergonomic and energy efficient. The objective ofthis study was to establish guidelines for planning colored light. An experiment wasconducted where the perceived brightness of three different near-monochromatic lightswere compared to white light. The stimuli covered a narrow visual field. 33 personsaged 18-40Y participated. Through the measurement of the participants' perception ofthe amount of colored light required -to achieve the same level of brightness as withwhite light- the study was able to determine a percentage-based relationship betweencolored and white light. The result showed that there were clear differences in theperceived brightness of the different colored lights, in line with earlier research withsimilar conditions. This implicates that the results may be used as a foundation whenplanning colored light.

Museums and the performing arts have very specific lighting requirements, not only in the technical aspects of their presentation, but also in regard to the communication and interpretation of artistic concepts. Thus, the design intent might have many different perspectives whereas the idea of being “neutral” is more complex to define. One of the critical aspects for the visual experience of art is colour, a subjective experience that can be conceptually approached from many perspectives, from science to the artistic realm.  This study starts by setting a theoretical framework in colour human vision, colour theory and colourimetry; and how this can be applied to lighting design concepts for exhibitions. The experimental part of this work explores some of the opportunities of complex LED colour mix systems in working with fine colour tuning and metamers. This investigation focusses on both the creation of the light stimuli and on how these lighting conditions can influence the perception and interpretation of a painting. In spite of its subjectivity, the perception of the art is contextualized with the colour theory background provided, the quantitative measurements performed and the results of an online survey. Additionally, the artist is interviewed in an attempt to gather views from the origin of the artwork to the viewer interpretation. This work might be useful to those with interest in the opportunities that quality LED technology, specifically colour mixing, offer for lighting design in exhibition and theatre environment. In fact, the complexity of exhibition lighting provides a perfect environment for research and experimentation, where improving the viewer experience is becoming an essential factor for museology.

White light emitting diodes (LED) have drawn increasing attention due to their low energy consumption, high efficiency and potential to become primary lighting source by replacing conventional light sources. White light emission is usually generated either by coating yellow phosphor on a blue-LED or blending red, green and blue phosphor in an appropriate ratio. Maintaining appropriate proportions of individual components in the blend is difficult and the major demerit of such system is the overall self-absorption, which changes the solution concentration. This results in uncontrolled changes in the whiteness of the emitted light. Zinc Oxide (ZnO), a wide bandgap semiconductor with a large exciton binding energy at room temperature has been recognized as a promising material for ultraviolet LEDs and laser diodes. Tuning of structural, optical and electrical properties of ZnO thin films by different dopants (Lithium, Indium and Gallium) is dealt in this thesis. The achievement of white light emission from a semiconducting material without using phosphors offers an inexpensive fabrication technology, good luminescence, low turn-on voltage and high efficiency. The present work is organized chapter wise, which has 8 chapters including the summary and future work. Chapter 1: Gives a brief discussion on the overview of ZnO as an optoelectronic material, crystal structure of semiconductor ZnO, the effect of doping, optical properties and its possible applications in optoelectronic devices. Chapter 2: Deals with various deposition techniques used in the present study, includes pulsed laser deposition and thermal evaporation. The experimental set up details and the deposition procedures are described in detail. A brief note on the structural characterization equipments, namely X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and the optical characterization techniques namely Raman spectroscopy, transmission spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy is presented. The electrical properties of the films were studied by current- voltage, capacitance - voltage and Hall Effect measurements and the experimental details are discussed. Chapter 3: High quality ZnO/Si heterojunctions fabricated by growing ZnO thin films on p-type Si (100) substrate by pulsed laser deposition without using buffer layers are discussed in this chapter. The crystallinity of the heterojunction was analyzed by high resolution X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy. The optical quality of the film was analyzed by room temperature (RT) photoluminescence measurements. The high intense band to band emission confirmed the high quality of the ZnO thin films on Si. The electrical properties of the junction were studied by temperature dependent resistivity, current- voltage measurements and RT capacitance-voltage (C-V) analysis. ZnO thin film showed the lowest resistivity of 6.4x10-3 Ω.cm, mobility of 7 cm2/V.sec and charge carrier concentration of 1.58x1019cm-3 at RT. The charge carrier concentration and the barrier height (BH) were calculated to be 9.7x1019cm-3 and 0.6 eV respectively from the C-V plot. The BH and ideality factor, calculated by using the thermionic emission (TE) model were found to be highly temperature dependent. We observed a much lower value in Richardson constant, 5.19x10-7 A/cm2K2 than the theoretical value (32 A/cm2K2) for ZnO. This analysis revealed the existence of a Gaussian distribution (GD) with a standard deviation of σ2=0.035 V. By implementing GD to the TE, the values of BH and Richardson constant were obtained as 1.3 eV and 39.97 A/cm2K2 respectively from the modified Richardson plot. The obtained Richardson constant value is close to the theoretical value for n-ZnO. These high quality heterojunctions can be used for solar cell applications. Chapter 4: This chapter describes the structural and optical properties of Li doped ZnO thin films and the properties of ZnO/Li doped ZnO multilayered thin film structures. Thin films of ZnO, Li doped ZnO (ZLO) and multilayer of ZnO and ZLO (ZnO/ZLO) were grown on silicon and Corning glass substrates by pulsed laser deposition technique. Single phase formation and the crystalline qualities of the films were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and Li composition in the film was investigated to be 15 Wt % by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Raman spectrum reveals the hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO, ZLO and ZnO/ZLO multilayer, confirms the single phase formation. Films grown on Corning glass show more than 80 % transmittance in the visible region and the optical band gaps were calculated to be 3.245, 3.26 and 3.22 eV for ZnO, ZLO and ZnO/ZLO respectively. An efficient blue emission was observed in all films that were grown on silicon (100) substrate by photoluminescence (PL). PL measurements at different temperatures reveal that the PL emission intensity of ZnO/ZLO multilayer was weakly dependent on temperature as compared to the single layers of ZnO and ZLO and the wavelength of emission was independent of temperature. Our results indicate that ZnO/ZLO multilayer can be used for the fabrication of blue light emitting diodes. Chapter 5: This chapter is divided in to two parts. The fabrication and characterization of In doped ZnO thin films grown on Corning glass substrate is discussed in the first section. Zinc Oxide (ZnO) and indium doped ZnO (IZO) thin films with different indium compositions were grown by pulsed laser deposition technique. The effect of indium concentration on the structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of the film was studied. The films were oriented along the c-direction with wurtzite structure and are highly transparent with an average transmittance of more than 80 % in the visible wavelength region. The energy band gap was found to be decreasing with increasing indium concentration. High transparency makes the films useful as optical windows while the high band gap values support the idea that the film could be a good candidate for optoelectronic devices. The value of resistivity observed to be decreasing initially with doping concentration and subsequently increasing. The XPS and Raman spectrum confirm the presence of indium in indium doped ZnO thin films. The photoluminescence spectrum showed a tunable red light emission with different In concentrations. Undoped and In doped ZnO (IZO) thin films were grown on Pt coated silicon substrates (Pt/Si) to fabricate Pt/ZnO:Inx Schottky contacts (SC) is discussed in the second section. The SCs were investigated by conventional two probe current-voltage (I-V) measurement and by the I-V spectroscopy of conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). X-ray diffraction technique was used to examine the thin film quality. Changes in various parameters like Schottky barrier height (SBH) and ideality factor (IF) as a function of temperature were presented. The estimated BH was found to be increasing and the IF was found to be decreasing with increase in temperature. The variation of SBH and IF with temperature has been explained by considering the lateral inhomogeneities in nanometer scale lengths at metal–semiconductor (MS) interface. The inhomogeneities of SBH in nanometer scale length were confirmed by C-AFM. The SBH and IF estimated from I-V spectroscopy of C-AFM showed large deviation from the conventional two probe I-V measurements. IZO thin films showed a decrease in SBH, lower turn on voltage and an enhancement in forward current with increase in In concentration. Chapter 6: In this chapter the properties of Ga doped ZnO thin films with different Ga concentrations along with undoped ZnO as a reference is discussed. Undoped and Ga doped ZnO thin films with different Ga concentrations were grown on Corning glass substrates by PLD. The structural, optical and electrical properties of Ga doped ZnO thin films are discussed. The XRD, XPS and Raman spectrum reveal the phase formation and successful doping of Ga on ZnO. All the films show good transmittance in the visible region and the photoluminescence of Ga doped ZnO showed a stable emission in the blue- green region. The resistivity of Ga doped ZnO thin films was found to be first decreasing and then increasing with increase in Ga concentrations. Chapter 7: The effect of co-doping to ZnO on the structural, optical and electrical properties was described in this chapter. Ga and In co-doped ZnO (GIZO) thin films together with ZnO, In doped ZnO (IZO), Ga doped ZnO (GZO), IZO/GZO multilayer for comparison, were grown on Corning glass and boron doped Si substrates by PLD. GIZO showed better structural, optical and electrical properties compared with other thin films. The Photoluminescence spectra of GIZO showed a strong white light emission and the current-voltage characteristics showed relatively lower turn on voltage and larger forward current. The CIE co-ordinates for GIZO were observed to be (0.31, 0.33) with a CCT of 6650 K, indicating a cool white light and established a possibility of white light emitting diodes. Finally the chapter 8 presents the summary derived out of the work and a few suggestions on future work.

Organic semiconducting materials have received a lot of attention in recent years and can now be found in many applications. One of the applications, the light emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) has emerged due to its flat and lightweight device structure, low operating voltage, and possibility to be fully solution processed. Today LECs can emit light of various colors, but to be applicable in the lighting industry, white light need to be produced in an efficient way. White light on the other hand, is one of the toughest "colors" to achieve in an efficient way, and is of particular interest in general lighting applications, where high color-rendering index devices are necessary. In this thesis I show that blue light can be partially converted, into white light, by utilizing the photoluminescence of color conversion layers (CCLs). Furthermore, I show that a high color-quality white light can be attained by adopting a blue-emitting LEC with a CCL. Particularly, three different color-conversion materials were embedded onto a blue bottom-emitting LEC, to study the resulting spectrum. One of the materials, MEH-PPV, have good absorption compatibility with the electroluminescence of the blue emitters, but the materials photoluminescence do not cover the red to deep-red range of the spectrum. These parts of the spectrum are necessary to obtain high color rendering indices (≥80). A single layer of MEH-PPV adapted onto a blue-emitting LEC, led to a cold white LEC with CIE-coordinates x = 0.29, and y = 0.36, color-rendering index = 71, and correlated color temperature = 7200 K. These properties makes it potentially useful in outdoor-lighting applications. The photoluminescence of another studied color-converting material, polymer red, covers the red to deep-red range of the spectrum but the material lacks absorption in the green parts of the blue emitters electroluminescence spectrum. Thus it is necessary to combine it with MEH-PPV to be able to absorb all wavelengths from the blue-emitter and get a broad light-spectrum out of the device. In order to preserve a part of the blue light, a new device configuration was designed. It features a top-emitting blue LEC with a dual-layer CCL which reach an impressive color rendering index = 89 at a correlated color temperature = 6400 K (CIE-coordinates x = 0.31, y = 0.33). The color-rendering index is the highest reported for a white LEC. The absence of UV-, and IR-radiation, together with the high color rendering properties make the white LEC a possible candidate for even the most demanding lighting-applications, such as art galleries, and shop display windows, together with indoor lighting. In this thesis, I show that the CCLs function well. However, for the LECs to be worthy competitors, the efficiency and lifetime of the blue emitter need improvements.

Um Amplificador Paramétrico Óptico (optical parametric amplifier - OPA) é uma fonte de luz coerente, de alta qualidade e sintonizável, baseada em processos ópticos não-lineares de segunda ordem. Alguns modelos possuem largura de banda estreita e um amplo intervalo de sintonia, podendo alcançar regiões que vão desde o ultravioleta até o infravermelho médio. A nossa motivação para construir este amplificador paramétrico óptico é sua utilização em experimentos de espectroscopia vibracional de superfícies através do processo óptico não-linear de segunda ordem, geração de soma de frequências (sum-frequency generation - SFG), que é uma técnica que exige fontes sintonizáveis no infravermelho médio e com altas intensidades de pico e largura de banda estreita. O objetivo desse trabalho foi projetar, montar e testar um amplificador paramétrico óptico capaz de produzir pulsos sintonizáveis de alta energia no infravermelho médio (λ ~ 2,5 a 10 μm) a partir de um laser de bombeio que fornece pulsos de 25 ps, com alta energia em λ = 1064 nm. Para obter-se uma geração de infravermelho bastante eficiente, foi proposto um projeto inovador para amplificadores paramétricos de picossegundos, utilizando-se a geração de supercontínuo de luz branca como feixe sinal do estágio de amplificação paramétrica. O pulso de bombeio (λ = 1064 nm) é dividido em duas partes: a primeira, de menor energia, é utilizada para gerar um pulso de alta largura espectral no infravermelho próximo (supercontínuo de luz branca de picossegundos). Uma fração espectral desse pulso é selecionada através de um monocromador e utilizada como semente do estágio de amplificação paramétrica. O cristal amplificador paramétrico (sulfeto de prata e gálio, AgGaS2) é então bombeado pelo restante do pulso de bombeio e simultaneamente amplifica a semente sintonizável no infravermelho próximo e gera um novo pulso de frequência complementar no infravermelho médio. Foram testados vários meios para geração de supercontínuo, mas os melhores resultados foram obtidos em uma cubeta de 10 cm de comprimento com uma mistura de água e água deuterada (3 % em volume de H2O em D2O) e em uma fibra fotônica não-linear com 2 m de comprimento. Usando o supercontínuo como feixe semente, observou-se amplificação paramétrica no caso do feixe gerado na fibra fotônica com um ganho de 260 vezes, mas não com o feixe gerado na mistura de água/água deuterada, presumivelmente pela maior instabilidade desse supercontínuo. / An Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA) is a tunable light source of high quality, coherent radiation, based on second-order nonlinear optical processes. Some models have a narrow spectral bandwidth and a tuning range from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared. The motivation for building this optical parametric amplifier is its use in vibrational spectroscopy of surfaces by a second-order nonlinear optical process, sum-frequency generation (SFG), which is a technique that requires tunable sources in the mid-infrared with narrow bandwidth and high peak intensities. The purpose of this work is to design, implement and test an OPA to generate tunable high energy pulses tuneable in the mid-infrared (λ ~ 2.5 to 10 μm) from a pumping laser that provides 25 ps pulses with high energy at λ = 1064 nm. For an efficient mid-infrared generation, we propose an innovative design for picosecond parametric amplifiers, using the near infrared portion of a white-light supercontinuum pulse as the seed beam for the parametric amplifier. The pump pulse (λ = 1064 nm) is divided into two parts: the first one, with lower energy, generates a high spectral width pulse in the near infrared (white-light supercontinuum picosecond pulse). A spectral fraction of this pulse is selected through a monochromator and is used as seed for the parametric amplification stage. The second part of the laser beam pumps the parametric amplifier crystal (silver gallium sulfide, AgGaS2) which simultaneously amplifies the tunable seed beam in the near infrared and generates a new pulse with complementary frequency in the mid-infrared. Several media were tested for supercontinuum generation, but the best results were obtained with a 10 cm long cuvette with a mixture of water and deuterated water (3 % volume of H2O in D2O) and with a 2 m long nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. Using the supercontinuum as a seed beam, we have obtained parametric amplification of the seed generated by the photonic fiber with a gain of 260 times, but not of the beam generated by the water mixture, presumably because of its significantly higher instability.

L'utilisation de franges d'interférence en lumière blanche comme une sonde optique en microscopie interférométrique est d'une importance croissante dans la caractérisation des matériaux, la métrologie de surface et de l'imagerie médicale. L'Interférométrie en lumière blanche est une technique basée sur la détection de l'enveloppe de franges d'interférence. Il a été démontré antérieurement, la capacité des approches 2D à rivaliser avec certaines méthodes classiques utilisées dans le domaine de l'interférométrie, en termes de robustesse et de temps de calcul. En outre, alors que la plupart des méthodes tiennent compte seulement des données 1 D, il semblerait avantageux de prendre en compte le voisinage spatial utilisant des approches multidimensionnelles (2D/3D), y compris le paramètre de temps afin d'améliorer les mesures. Le but de ce projet de thèse est de développer de nouvelles approches n-D qui sont appropriées pour une meilleure caractérisation des surfaces plus complexes et des couches transparentes. / The use of white light interference fringes as an optical probe in microscopy is of growing importance in materials characterization, surface metrology and medical imaging. Coherence Scanning Interferometry (CSI, also known as White Light Scanning Interferometry, WSLI) is well known for surface roughness and topology measurement [1]. Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography (FF-OCT) is the version used for the tomographic analysis of complex transparent layers. Both techniques generally make use of some sort of fringe scanning along the optical axis and the acquisition of a stack of xyz images. Image processing is then used to identify the fringe envelopes along z at each pixel in order to measure the positions of either a single surface or of multiple scattering objects within a layer.In CSI, the measurement of surface shape generally requires peak or phase extraction of the mono dimensional fringe signal. Most of the methods are based on an AM-FM signal model, which represents the variation in light intensity measured along the optical axis of an interference microscope [2]. We have demonstrated earlier [3, 4] the ability of 2D approaches to compete with some classical methods used in the field of interferometry, in terms of robustness and computing time. In addition, whereas most methods only take into account the 1D data, it would seem advantageous to take into account the spatial neighborhood using multidimensional approaches (2D, 3D, 4D), including the time parameter in order to improve the measurements.The purpose of this PhD project is to develop new n-D approaches that are suitable for improved characterization of more complex surfaces and transparent layers. In addition, we will enrich the field of study by means of heterogeneous image processing from multiple sensor sources (heterogeneous data fusion). Applications considered will be in the fields of materials metrology, biomaterials and medical imaging.

The global lighting source energy consumption accounts for about 22% of the total electricity generated. New high-efficiency solid-state light sources are needed to reduce the ever increasing demand for energy. Single-phased emitter-based composed of transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) nanocrystals and fluorescent dyes can potentially revolutionize the typical composition of phosphors, the processing technology founded on the binding of dye acceptors on the surface of nanocrystals, and the configurations of the light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and electroluminescence devices. The hybrid white-light-emitting nanomaterial is based on the expanded spectral range of the donor-acceptor pair (DAP) emission originated from the γ-gallium oxide nanocrystals via Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to the surface-anchored fluorescent dyes. The emission of the nanocrystals and the sensitized emission of the chromophore act in sync as an internal relaxation upon the excitation of the γ–gallium oxide nanocrystals. It extends the lifetime of the secondary fluorescent dye chromophore and the internal relaxation within this hybrid complex act as a sign for a quasi single chromophore. The model system of white-light-emitting nanostructure system developed based on this technology is the γ–gallium oxide nanocrystals-Rhodamine B lactone (RBL) hybrid complex. The sufficient energy transfer efficiency of 31.51% within this system allowed for the generation of white-light emission with the CIE coordinates of (0.3328, 0.3380) at 5483 K. The relative electronic energy differences of the individual components within the hybrid systems based on theoretical computation suggested that the luminance of the nanocomposite comprised of RBL is dominantly mediated by FRET. The production of white-light-emitting diode (WLED) based on this technology have been demonstrated by solution deposition of the hybrid nanomaterials to the commercially available ultraviolet (UV) LED due to the versatility and chemical compatibility of the developed phosphors.