Electrospinning is a technique employed for preparing polymer fibers having diameters in the range of 10 μm–10 nm using high electrostatic field. In this letter, we report the formation of aligned polymer fibers, several centimeters in length, with separation between the fibers in the range of 5–100 μm. Achieving alignment is an important step toward the exploitation of these fibers in applications. We have employed about 4500 V and a separation distance of about 1–3 cm between the electrodes. Smaller distance between electrodes, we believe, provides better control on the formation of the fibers.

X-ray diffraction studies reveal Pnma space group for YFe_0.5Cr_0.5O₃. The Neel temperature for YFe_0.5Cr_0.5O₃ is found to be ∼275 K using temperature dependence of magnetization and neutron diffraction studies. The variation of magnetization with applied magnetic field shows a hysteresis loop at 20 K, which depicts a weak ferromagnetic behavior. Rietveld refinement of the neutron diffraction data divulge a canted antiferromagnetic structure (Γ₄ = G_zF_yA_x) for YFe_0.5Cr_0.5O₃. Dielectric measurement depicts a relaxor like transition (peak at ∼507 K for 10 kHz) for YFe_0.5Cr_0.5O₃. An anomaly in the magnetization curve around this transition temperature points the possibility of magnetodielectric effect in YFe_0.5Cr_0.5O₃. Non-Debye type relaxation is observed with activation energy of 0.40 eV at low temperature and 1.01 eV at high temperature. At high temperatures, oxygen ion vacancies are found to contribute to the conduction process in addition to polaron hopping.

The giant optical activity of chiral metamaterials (CMMs) holds great potential for tailoring the polarization state of an electromagnetic (EM) wave. In controlling the polarization state, the aspect of asymmetric transmission (AT), where a medium allows the EM radiation to pass through in one direction while restricting it in the opposite direction, adds additional degrees of freedom such as one-way channelling functionality. In this work, a CMM formed by a pair of mutually twisted slanted complementary metal strips is realized for broadband AT accompanied with cross-polarization (CP) conversion for linearly polarized EM waves. Numerically, the proposed ultra-thin (∼λ/42) CMM shows broadband AT from 8.58 GHz to 9.73 GHz (bandwidth of 1.15 GHz) accompanied with CP transmission magnitude greater than 0.9. The transmission and reflection spectra reveal the origin of the asymmetric transmission as the direction sensitive cross polarization conversion and anisotropic electric coupling occurring in the structure which is then elaborated with the surface current analysis and electric field distribution within the structure. An experiment is carried out to verify the broadband AT based CP conversion of the proposed CMM at microwave frequencies, and a reliable agreement between numerical and experimental results is obtained. Being ultra-thin, the reported broadband AT based CP conversion of the proposed CMM is useful for controlling radiation patterns in non-reciprocal EM devices and communication networks.