Issue 6 (2020)

Multiparticle quantum plasmonics

Multiparticle quantum plasmonics

A single photon can be coupled to collective charge oscillations at the interfaces between metals and dielectrics forming a single surface plasmon. The electromagnetic near-fields induced by single surface plasmons offer new degrees of freedom to perform an …

Physics and applications of quantum dot lasers for silicon photonics

Physics and applications of quantum dot lasers for silicon photonics

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have enabled numerous high performance, energy efficient, and compact technologies for optical communications, sensing, and metrology. One of the biggest challenges in scaling PICs comes from the parasitic reflections that …

Integrated lithium niobate photonics

Integrated lithium niobate photonics

Lithium niobate (LiNbO3) on insulator (LNOI) is a promising material platform for integrated photonics due to single crystal LiNbO3 film’s wide transparent window, high refractive index, and high second-order nonlinearity. Based on LNOI, the fast-developing …

Subwavelength structured silicon waveguides and photonic devices

Subwavelength structured silicon waveguides and photonic devices

Subwavelength structures such as subwavelength gratings (SWGs) and subwavelength metamaterials are capable of tailoring the optical properties of materials and controlling the flow of light at the nanoscale. The effective indices of the subwavelength …

Nonlinear optical microscopies (NOMs) and plasmon-enhanced NOMs for biology and 2D materials

Nonlinear optical microscopies (NOMs) and plasmon-enhanced NOMs for biology and 2D materials

In this review, we focus on the summary of nonlinear optical microscopies (NOMs), which are stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS), second harmonic generation (SHG), and two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF). The …

Enhancement of upconversion luminescence using photonic nanostructures

Enhancement of upconversion luminescence using photonic nanostructures

Lanthanide-based upconversion materials convert low energy infrared photons into high energy visible photons. These materials are of interest in a myriad of applications such as solar energy harvesting, color displays and photocatalysis. Upconversion …

3D Nanophotonic device fabrication using discrete components

3D Nanophotonic device fabrication using discrete components

Three-dimensional structure fabrication using discrete building blocks provides a versatile pathway for the creation of complex nanophotonic devices. The processing of individual components can generally support high-resolution, multiple-material, and …

A flexible platform for controlled optical and electrical effects in tailored plasmonic break junctions

A flexible platform for controlled optical and electrical effects in tailored plasmonic break junctions

Mechanically controllable break junctions are one suitable approach to generate atomic point contacts and ultrasmall and controllable gaps between two metal contacts. For constant bias voltages, the tunneling current can be used as a ruler to evaluate the …

Effects of roughness and resonant-mode engineering in all-dielectric metasurfaces

Effects of roughness and resonant-mode engineering in all-dielectric metasurfaces

The development of all-dielectric metasurfaces vigorously prompts the applications of optical metasurfaces for the visible and near-IR light range. Compared to IR or longer wavelength light, visible and near-IR light have shorter wavelengths. As a result, …

Colloidal quantum dots decorated micro-ring resonators for efficient integrated waveguides excitation

Colloidal quantum dots decorated micro-ring resonators for efficient integrated waveguides excitation

Micro-ring resonators made of titanium dioxide were decorated with local light sources comprising CdSe/CdS colloidal quantum dot aggregates. The active micro-resonators are operated to achieve efficient evanescent excitation of nearby co-planar integrated …

Engineered telecom emission and controlled positioning of Er3+ enabled by SiC nanophotonic structures

Engineered telecom emission and controlled positioning of Er3+ enabled by SiC nanophotonic structures

High-precision placement of rare-earth ions in scalable silicon-based nanostructured materials exhibiting high photoluminescence (PL) emission, photostable and polarized emission, and near-radiative-limited excited state lifetimes can serve as critical …

Diffraction engineering for silicon waveguide grating antenna by harnessing bound state in the continuum

Diffraction engineering for silicon waveguide grating antenna by harnessing bound state in the continuum

Silicon waveguide grating antennas (SWGAs) have been widely employed to interface the guided and radiation modes in various integrated photonic systems. However, ultrasmall feature sizes or heteromaterial integrations are usually required to obtain long …

On-chip scalable mode-selective converter based on asymmetrical micro-racetrack resonators

On-chip scalable mode-selective converter based on asymmetrical micro-racetrack resonators

Mode division multiplexing (MDM) technology has been well known to researchers for its ability to increase the link capacity of photonic network. While various mode processing devices were demonstrated in recent years, the reconfigurability of multi-mode …

High-Q dark hyperbolic phonon-polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride nanostructures

High-Q dark hyperbolic phonon-polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride nanostructures

The anisotropy of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) gives rise to hyperbolic phonon-polaritons (HPhPs), notable for their volumetric frequency-dependent propagation and strong confinement. For frustum (truncated nanocone) structures, theory predicts five, …

Multilevel phase supercritical lens fabricated by synergistic optical lithography

Multilevel phase supercritical lens fabricated by synergistic optical lithography

The advent of planar metalenses, including the super-oscillatory lens (SOL) and the supercritical lens (SCL) with distinctive interference properties, has profoundly impacted on the long-lasting perception of the far-field optical diffraction limit. In spite …

Continuously-tunable Cherenkov-radiation-based detectors via plasmon index control

Continuously-tunable Cherenkov-radiation-based detectors via plasmon index control

A recent study , finally, demonstrated the plasmon-analog of refractive index enhancement in metal nanostructures (MNSs), which has already been studied in atomic clouds for several decades. Here, we simply utilize this phenomenon for achieving …

Cherenkov radiation generated in hexagonal boron nitride using extremely low-energy electrons

Cherenkov radiation generated in hexagonal boron nitride using extremely low-energy electrons

Cherenkov radiation (CR) is the electromagnetic shockwaves generated by the uniform motion of charged particles at a velocity exceeding the phase velocity of light in a given medium. In the Reststrahlen bands of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), hyperbolic …

Geometric phase for multidimensional manipulation of photonics spin Hall effect and helicity-dependent imaging

Geometric phase for multidimensional manipulation of photonics spin Hall effect and helicity-dependent imaging

The spin Hall effect of light, associated with spin-orbit interactions, describes a transport phenomenon with optical spin-dependent splitting, leading to a plethora of applications such as sensing, imaging, and spin-controlled nanophotonics. Although …

Stable blue-emissive aluminum acetylacetonate nanocrystals with high quantum yield of over 80% and embedded in polymer matrix for remote UV-pumped white light–emitting diodes

Stable blue-emissive aluminum acetylacetonate nanocrystals with high quantum yield of over 80% and embedded in polymer matrix for remote UV-pumped white light–emitting diodes

Blue-emissive nanocrystals (NCs) with high photoluminescence quantum yields (PL QYs) and excellent stability are essential for lighting and displays. Here, a facile top-down approach (including two steps: thermal annealing and ultrasonic treatment) by using …

Pumping-controlled multicolor modulation of upconversion emission for dual-mode dynamic anti-counterfeiting

Pumping-controlled multicolor modulation of upconversion emission for dual-mode dynamic anti-counterfeiting

Lanthanide up-conversion features stepwise multi-photon processes, where the difference in photon number that is required for specific up-conversion process usually leads to significant variance in pumping-related processes/properties. In this work, a …

Broadband graphene-on-silicon modulator with orthogonal hybrid plasmonic waveguides

Broadband graphene-on-silicon modulator with orthogonal hybrid plasmonic waveguides

Graphene, a two-dimensional nanomaterial, possess unique photoelectric properties that have potential application in designing optoelectronic devices. The tunable optical absorption is one of the most exciting properties that can be used to improve the …

Non-noble metal based broadband photothermal absorbers for cost effective interfacial solar thermal conversion

Non-noble metal based broadband photothermal absorbers for cost effective interfacial solar thermal conversion

In recent years, noble metal-based solar absorbers have been extensively studied as their pronounced plasmonic resonances and high solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency. However, the high cost of noble metals is the unavoidable roadblock restricting the way …

Metal-insulator-metal nanoresonators – strongly confined modes for high surface sensitivity

Metal-insulator-metal nanoresonators – strongly confined modes for high surface sensitivity

Photonic and plasmonic refractive index sensors are able to detect increasingly smaller refractive index changes and concentrations of clinically relevant substances. They typically exploit optical resonances and aim to maximise the field overlap with the …