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A specialized high-precision thermal gradient furnace with a rotating stage was developed for in situ observation of the equilibrated grain boundary groove shapes at multiple crystallographic orientations in transparent materials. Anisotropies of solid–liquid interfacial free energy for the distillated succinonitrile (SCN) and pivalic acid (PVA) are determined experimentally through direct observation of the equilibrated grain boundary grooves at the multiple crystallographic orientations stabilized within a controlled thermal gradient. The average anisotropies of solid–liquid interfacial energy for distillated SCN and PVA are found to be 0.42 and 3.12% from observed grain boundary groove shapes at multiple crystallographic orientations. Details related to the experimental apparatus and experimental procedures are given.

Anisotropic surfaces with micropillar- or micropillar/nanobump structures and anisotropic wetting behavior were fabricated. Structures were arranged as three parallel zones where the structure of the middle zone differed from that of the edge zones. The widths of the middle zones were increased systematically, and the effects of the middle zone structures and widths on the contact and sliding angles of water were investigated. Structures were fabricated on PP by injection molding. Microstructured mold inserts for injection molding were obtained by structuring aluminum foils with a microworking robot, and hierarchically structured mold inserts by anodizing the microstructured foils. It was possible to create surfaces where the microstructure in the middle zone was lower or higher than on the edges, or where the middle zone had only nanostructure or was unstructured. The behavior of water on the surfaces was characterized by measuring the dynamic contact angles and sliding angles parallel and perpendicular to the zones. Hydrophobic surfaces were achieved. With appropriate middle zone widths, clearly differing parallel and perpendicular contact angles were measured and elongation of droplets along the middle zones was detected.

The magnetoimpedance effect of Ni${}_{80}$Fe${}_{20}$/Cu composited wires was experimentally investigated by varying the Ni${}_{80}$Fe${}_{20}$ coating thickness. An asymmetric MI behavior with a tunable linear region around zero magnetic field by altering the thickness of Ni${}_{80}$Fe${}_{20}$ layer was demonstrated. And the MI behavior was governed by the different anisotropy induced by the residual local stress in the multi-layer region. In addition, our investigation also suggested that the interactions between interface phase and outer phase of coating layer decreased with thickness, resulting in the domination of the asymmetric MI characteristic. For thickness of 485nm, the sensitivity was up to 225%/Oe from $-2$ Oe to 2 Oe, providing a promising candidate for linear sensor application.

By combining synchronous fluorescence (SF) spectroscopy and fluorescence polarization (FP) technology, a new spectral technique, termed synchronous fluorescence polarization (SFP) can be obtained. It inherits the advantages of both, such as high sensitivity, less sample demand, rapid detection, and so on. This concept has been proposed before without implementation details. In this work, a detailed implementation scheme of the technology is proposed, including the hardware requirements of the instrument, the measurement and calculation of the instrument correction factor G-factor, the spectral acquisition, the removal of inner filter effect (IFE), the removal of solvent background and the calculation and analysis of anisotropy. Furthermore, exploring the mechanism of quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescent sensor to detect heavy metal ions was taken as an example to introduce the application of the SFP method. Through detecting SF anisotropy, the mechanism of QDs probing ${\text{Hg}}^{2+}$ ion was explained. If an appropriate fluorescent polarization enhancer is chosen, SFP can be used for quantitative detection. This work provides a specific implementation scheme of the SFP technology for the first time, which expands the application of fluorescence technology.