CNT-AlSi10Mg composites fabricated by SLM have drawn a lot attention in structural application due to its excellent strength, elasticity and thermal conductivities. A planetary ball milling method was used to prepare the carbon nanotube (CNT)-AlSi10Mg powders, and the CNT-AlSi10Mg composites were fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM). The density, microstructure and mechanical properties of CNT-AlSi10Mg composites were studied. The density of the test samples increased at first and then decreased with increasing scan speed. When the laser scan speed was 800 mm/s, the test sample exhibited the highest density. The hardness increased by approximately 26%, and the tensile strength increased by approximately 13% compared to those values exhibited by the unreinforced AlSi10Mg. The grains of CNT-AlSi10Mg composite are finer than that in the AlSi10Mg. The CNTs were distributed along the grain boundaries of AlSi10Mg. Some of the CNTs reacted with Al element and transformed into Al₄C₃ during SLM, while some of the CNTs still maintained their tubular structure. The combination of CNTs and Al₄C₃ has a significant improvement in mechanical properties of the composites through fine grain strengthening, second phase strengthening, and load transfer strengthening.

There is a growing interest to use live cells to replace the widely used non-biological microsphere lenses. In this work, we demonstrate the use of yeast cells for such imaging purpose. Using fiber-based optical trapping technique, we trap a chain of three yeast cells and bring them to the vicinity of imaging objects. These yeast cells work as near-field magnifying lenses and simultaneously pick up the sub-diffraction information of the nanoscale objects under each cell and project them into the far-field. The experimental results demonstrated that Blu-ray disc of 100 nm feature can be clearly resolved in a parallel manner by each cell.