Issue 10 (2022)

The role of temperature-induced effects generated by plasmonic nanostructures on particle delivery and manipulation: a review

The role of temperature-induced effects generated by plasmonic nanostructures on particle delivery and manipulation: a review

Plasmonic optical tweezers that stem from the need to trap and manipulate ever smaller particles using non-invasive optical forces, have made significant contributions to precise particle motion control at the nanoscale. In addition to the optical forces, …

Recent progress in metasurface-enabled optical waveplates

Recent progress in metasurface-enabled optical waveplates

The polarization of light is crucial for numerous optical applications ranging from quantum information processing to biomedical sensing due to the fundamental role of polarization as another intrinsic characteristic of optical waves, which is uncorrelated …

Third harmonic generation from the gold/amorphous silicon hybrid metasurface

Third harmonic generation from the gold/amorphous silicon hybrid metasurface

The nonlinear optical properties of silicon have great potentials for developing all-optical switches and modulators, etc. Strategies based on all dielectric silicon photonic crystals and resonators have been proposed to design the nanophotonic devices with …

From fixed-dried to wet-fixed to live – comparative super-resolution microscopy of liver sinusoidal endothelial cell fenestrations

From fixed-dried to wet-fixed to live – comparative super-resolution microscopy of liver sinusoidal endothelial cell fenestrations

Fenestrations in liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSEC) are transcellular nanopores of 50–350 nm diameter that facilitate bidirectional transport of solutes and macromolecules between the bloodstream and the parenchyma of the liver. Liver diseases, …

On the excitation and radiative decay rates of plasmonic nanoantennas

On the excitation and radiative decay rates of plasmonic nanoantennas

Plasmonic nanoantennas have the ability to confine and enhance incident electromagnetic fields into very sub-wavelength volumes, while at the same time efficiently radiating energy to the far-field. These properties have allowed plasmonic nanoantennas to be …

Photonic crystal L3 cavity laser fabricated using maskless digital photolithography

Photonic crystal L3 cavity laser fabricated using maskless digital photolithography

Projection photolithography using an extreme-ultraviolet light source is the core technology that has enabled patterning on the scale of a few nanometers that is required for modern electronic chips. However, this high-end system is neither affordable nor …

High-performance silicon polarization switch based on a Mach–Zehnder interferometer integrated with polarization-dependent mode converters

High-performance silicon polarization switch based on a Mach–Zehnder interferometer integrated with polarization-dependent mode converters

As the key element for optical systems, polarization controllers with versatile functionalities are highly desired. Here, a CMOS-compatible polarization switch is proposed and realized by using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer integrated with two …

Mechanisms driving self-organization phenomena in random plasmonic metasurfaces under multipulse femtosecond laser exposure: a multitime scale study

Mechanisms driving self-organization phenomena in random plasmonic metasurfaces under multipulse femtosecond laser exposure: a multitime scale study

Laser-induced transformations of plasmonic metasurfaces pave the way for controlling their anisotropic optical response with a micrometric resolution over large surfaces. Understanding the transient state of matter is crucial to optimize laser processing and …

Picosecond pulse generation from continuous-wave light in an integrated nonlinear Bragg grating

Picosecond pulse generation from continuous-wave light in an integrated nonlinear Bragg grating

The generation of optical pulse trains from continuous-wave light has attracted growing attention in recent years because it provides a simple way to obtain high repetition rate ultrashort pulses. While pulse generation has been extensively demonstrated in …

Gate tunable light–matter interaction in natural biaxial hyperbolic van der Waals heterostructures

Gate tunable light–matter interaction in natural biaxial hyperbolic van der Waals heterostructures

The recent discovery of natural biaxial hyperbolicity in van der Waals crystals, such as ?-MoO3, has opened up new avenues for mid-IR nanophotonics due to their deep subwavelength phonon polaritons. However, a significant challenge is the lack of active …

Anomalous resonance frequency shift in liquid crystal-loaded THz metamaterials

Anomalous resonance frequency shift in liquid crystal-loaded THz metamaterials

Babinet complementary patterns of a spectrally tunable metamaterial incorporating a nematic liquid crystal is normally assumed to exhibit the same tuning range. Here we show that for a hybrid, liquid crystal-loaded metamaterial, the sensitivity of its …

Angularly anisotropic tunability of upconversion luminescence by tuning plasmonic local-field responses in gold nanorods antennae with different configurations

Angularly anisotropic tunability of upconversion luminescence by tuning plasmonic local-field responses in gold nanorods antennae with different configurations

Optical polarization has attracted considerable research attention by extra detection dimension in angular space, flourishing modern optoelectronic applications. Nonetheless, purposive polarization controlling at nanoscales and even at the single-particle …

SAXS measurements of azobenzene lipid vesicles reveal buffer-dependent photoswitching and quantitative Z->E isomerisation by X-rays

SAXS measurements of azobenzene lipid vesicles reveal buffer-dependent photoswitching and quantitative Z->E isomerisation by X-rays

Photoresponsive materials feature properties that can be adjusted by light near-instantaneously, reversibly, and with high spatiotemporal precision. There is considerable interest in maximising the degree of photoswitching, and in measuring this degree during …

Balanced-ternary-inspired reconfigurable vortex beams using cascaded metasurfaces

Balanced-ternary-inspired reconfigurable vortex beams using cascaded metasurfaces

Electromagnetic vortex carries the orbital angular momentum, one of the most fundamental properties of waves. The order of such vortex can be unbounded in principle, thus facilitating high-capability wave technologies for optical communications, photonic …

Subwavelength Bayer RGB color routers with perfect optical efficiency

Subwavelength Bayer RGB color routers with perfect optical efficiency

We introduce subwavelength color routers with perfect optical efficiency in a red-green-green-blue (RGGB) Bayer layout for solid state image sensors. This is the first demonstration of a subwavelength device concept that shows the full potential of color …