Optical materials and structures articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors showcase a method to design negative lumped elements by engineering the effective permittivity within the waveguide, which enables realizations of wideband waveguide metatronics and promises performance enhancement in various fields.

    • Xu Qin
    • , Pengyu Fu
    •  & Yue Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing an efficient activation function for optical neural networks remains a challenge. Here, the authors demonstrate a modulator-detector-in-one graphene/silicon heterojunction ring resonators enabling on-chip reconfigurable activation function devices with phase activation capability for optical neural networks.

    • Chuyu Zhong
    • , Kun Liao
    •  & Hongtao Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Preparation of photodiodes with photomultiplication/photovoltaic two operating modes is promising but challenging. Here, the authors report a bias-switchable dual-mode organic photodiode by adopting traps and blocking layer, achieving detectivity of 1012 Jones and fast response speed in both modes.

    • Qingxia Liu
    • , Lingfeng Li
    •  & Yadong Jiang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light-responsive polymers with polarization-dependent deformation are promising material to develop tunable devices usually limited by irreversible dynamic control. Here, the authors use controlled polarization of visible light to produce arbitrary deformations into amorphous composites containing azopolymer microdomains to unlock the next level of complex actuation in soft lightdriven robots.

    • David Urban
    • , Niccolò Marcucci
    •  & Emiliano Descrovi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate robust optical communication around fully opaque occlusions, partially or entirely blocking the light path, using a pair of electronic encoder and passive diffractive decoder that are jointly optimized using deep learning.

    • Md Sadman Sakib Rahman
    • , Tianyi Gan
    •  & Aydogan Ozcan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gan et al. have developed sodium polyacrylate-based films for passive radiative cooling that can be fabricated using atmospheric moisture alone, offering radiative and evaporative cooling, reducing temperatures by up to 5 °C under partly cloudy skies.

    • Roisul Hasan Galib
    • , Yanpei Tian
    •  & Qiaoqiang Gan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Laser machining can modify and reshape materials on the scale comparable to light’s wavelength. Here, authors use tailored microstructures to push the limit of laser machining to a scale that is almost 100 times smaller than a wavelength of light.

    • Maxim R. Shcherbakov
    • , Giovanni Sartorello
    •  & Gennady Shvets

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Authors present an exciting dielectric waveguide mechanism that can confine light in regions of varying sizes, unlike conventional designs. The platform offers a unique blend of properties by leveraging radiation modes while minimizing optical losses. This work holds promise for serving as the next generation of fundamental building blocks for integrated photonics applications.

    • Janderson R. Rodrigues
    • , Utsav D. Dave
    •  & Michal Lipson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors experimentally discover a class of higher-order Weyl semimetal phase in a three-dimensional photonic crystal, exhibiting the concurrence of the surface and hinge Fermi arcs from the nonzero Chern number and the nontrivial generalized real Chern number, respectively, coined a real higher-order Weyl photonic crystals.

    • Yuang Pan
    • , Chaoxi Cui
    •  & Yihao Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present a comprehensive framework for on-demand dispersion control with a single-layer metasurface, particularly in an ultra-broad bandwidth. An achromatic metalens spanning the visible and near-infrared spectra is experimentally demonstrated.

    • Yueqiang Hu
    • , Yuting Jiang
    •  & Huigao Duan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phosphor efficiency can be improved via materials development or structural engineering, the latter only begun lately. Here the authors propose and investigate simple vertical resonant cavity as a platform for nanostructurally engineered phosphor.

    • Tae-Yun Lee
    • , Yeonsang Park
    •  & Heonsu Jeon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate here a method for the production of arbitrarily long, light-guiding microstructured fibers with shape-memory properties. The showcased design of adaptative fibers here holds potential for the development of functional actuators and sensors.

    • Clément Strutynski
    • , Marianne Evrard
    •  & Frédéric Smektala

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the Authors demonstrate a 2D isotropic, polarization-independent, broadband edge detection with high transmission efficiency under both coherent and incoherent illumination along the visible range using a metasurface based on Fourier optics principles.

    • Ibrahim Tanriover
    • , Sina Abedini Dereshgi
    •  & Koray Aydin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report the realization of a sub-THz wireless data link based on a graphene-integrated optoelectronic mixer with a >96 GHz bandwidth, −44 dB upconversion efficiency and <0.1 mm2 footprint, providing an alternative approach for the realization of millimeter-wave transmitters.

    • Alberto Montanaro
    • , Giulia Piccinini
    •  & Marco Romagnoli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Integrating coherent light sources on surface wave platforms would offer opportunities for sensing and data processing. The authors realize a microfabricated coherent light source based on the stimulated emission of a guided Bloch surface wave mode.

    • Yang-Chun Lee
    • , Ya-Lun Ho
    •  & Jean-Jacques Delaunay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate an efficient way to generate high-purity vortex beams by applying optical neural networks to cascaded phase-only metasurfaces. Specifically, they present record-high-quality Laguerre-Gaussian (LGp,l) optical modes with polynomial orders p = 10 and l = 200 with purity in p, l and relative conversion efficiency of 96%, 85%, and 70%, respectively.

    • Feng Mei
    • , Geyang Qu
    •  & Shumin Xiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent years have seen a growing need for miniaturized spectroscopic tools. Here, authors present a novel integrated spectrometer with programmable photonic circuits, achieving record-high resolution and bandwidth via only a few filtering components.

    • Chunhui Yao
    • , Kangning Xu
    •  & Richard Penty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inspired by Alan Turing’s last works on morphogenesis, this research introduces a technique for generating metasurfaces through the emergence of anisotropic patterns capable of self-structuring in response to electromagnetic constraints.

    • Thomas Fromenteze
    • , Okan Yurduseven
    •  & Cyril Decroze

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Capillary breakup in multimaterial fibers is explored for the self-assembly of optoelectronic systems. However, its insights primarily stem from numerical simulations, qualitative at best. The authors formulate an analytical model of such breakup, obtaining a window in the governing parameters where the generally chaotic breakup becomes predictable and thus engineerable.

    • Camila Faccini de Lima
    • , Fan Wang
    •  & Alexander Gumennik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, the authors demonstrate a ‘jointly modulated’ amplifying programmable metasurface (APM) for simultaneous wireless information and power transmission (SWIPT). Their technique outperforms existing methods, significantly improving power transmission and adaptability for conveying energy and data across various domains, including wireless implants, 6 G networks, and IoT systems.

    • Xin Wang
    • , Jia Qi Han
    •  & Tie Jun Cui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Three-dimensional structures with micro-/nanoscale features can be produced by two-photon polymerization lithography but suffering from a non-uniform shrinkage. Here, the authors report a poly(vinyl alcohol)-assisted pick-and-place process to uniformly heat shrink three-dimensional micro-/nano-architected materials printed by two-photon polymerization lithography.

    • Tomohiro Mori
    • , Hao Wang
    •  & Joel K. W. Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Accelerated electron beams are potentially useful for imaging and different type of light sources. Here the authors demonstrate electron acceleration using metallic laser acceleration with efficiency comparable to that of dielectric laser accelerators.

    • Dingguo Zheng
    • , Siyuan Huang
    •  & Jianqi Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dissipative optomechanics, once limited to low frequencies, now operates in a sideband-resolved regime, reshaping optical and mechanical spectra and paving the way for the individual addressing of different mechanical modes in a single device.

    • André G. Primo
    • , Pedro V. Pinho
    •  & Thiago P. Mayer Alegre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic, electronic and lattice resonances in patterned semiconductor microcavities are tailored to demonstrate coherent bidirectional microwave-to-optical conversion via phonon-exciton-photon quasi-particles in the strong-coupling regime.

    • Alexander Sergeevich Kuznetsov
    • , Klaus Biermann
    •  & Paulo Ventura Santos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors correlate the position and spectral emission properties of single photon emitters in monolayer WSe2 with the surrounding local strain potential by combining deep-subwavelength photoluminescence imaging and atomic force microscopy, providing insights on the microscopic mechanisms behind the formation of the quantum emitters.

    • Artem N. Abramov
    • , Igor Y. Chestnov
    •  & Vasily Kravtsov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Further extending the band edge of perovskite approaching the ideal bandgap of single-junction solar cell is essential to improve device efficiency. Here, the authors integrate optical resonances with perovskite solar cells to extend the band edge, achieving EQE-integrated current of 26.0 mA/cm2.

    • Jiangang Feng
    • , Xi Wang
    •  & Yi Hou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional optical tweezers require high laser powers risking photothermal damage of the trapped objects. Here, the authors present hypothermal opto-thermophoretic tweezers (HOTTs), which use environmental cooling to simultaneously enhance thermophoretic trapping force at low laser powers and suppress the thermal damage to trapped objects.

    • Pavana Siddhartha Kollipara
    • , Xiuying Li
    •  & Yuebing Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present a generation-elimination framework that correlates the spectra from different frequency bands, where the inaccessible spectra are precisely forecasted without consulting structural information. The spectral correlation will accelerate the unification of all metasurface designs and facilitate versatile applications involving cross-wavelength information correlation.

    • Jieting Chen
    • , Chao Qian
    •  & Hongsheng Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Manipulation of nano-sized extracellular vesicles are of significant interest for disease detection, monitoring, and therapeutics, yet it is still challenging to expedite the process. Here, the authors presented geometry-induced electrohydrodynamic tweezers, which enable fast parallel transport and trapping of single vesicle within seconds.

    • Chuchuan Hong
    •  & Justus C. Ndukaife

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoresonator is proven to be an excellent platform for molecular detection, yet a set of them is necessary to identify a molecule fingerprint. Here, the authors utilise low quality resonators with large radiative losses, despite its lower quality factor, to identify molecular absorption spectrum between 5 and 10 μm.

    • Laura Paggi
    • , Alice Fabas
    •  & Patrick Bouchon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The scattering of light by small particles plays a central role in a myriad of fields. Here, the authors demonstrate a super dipole resonance that arises when two resonant modes of a small particle interfere, overcoming a widely accepted limitation to the cross section.

    • Adrià Canós Valero
    • , Hadi K. Shamkhi
    •  & Alexander S. Shalin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The progress development of multispectral camouflage technologies has been limited to the choice of materials and structural design. Here, authors propose a material-informatics-based inverse design framework to efficiently design multilayer metamaterials with satisfying visible-infrared camouflage performance.

    • Wang Xi
    • , Yun-Jo Lee
    •  & Run Hu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Smooth topological photonic interfaces lead to less localized boundary modes which improves their guiding characteristics in both spin- and valley Hall metasurfaces. The modes become insensitive to the lattice details, showcasing improved bandgap crossing and longer propagation distances.

    • Anton Vakulenko
    • , Svetlana Kiriushechkina
    •  & Alexander B. Khanikaev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors employ quantum electrodynamics to formulate thermal emission effects in time-modulated media, resulting in innovative thermal emitters. They show that time modulation induces strong field fluctuations in epsilon-near-zero bodies, enabling narrowband emission across the entire range of wavevectors, from near to far-field regimes.

    • J. Enrique Vázquez-Lozano
    •  & Iñigo Liberal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Data security of internet is increasingly more demanding in the current era, yet the traditional electronic approach is limited in speed and efficiency. Here, the authors proposed a dual-layer optical encryption fluorescent polymer waveguide chip based on optical pulse-code modulation to mitigate the limitations.

    • Chunxue Wang
    • , Daming Zhang
    •  & Teng Fei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present a high quality factor metasurface that enables sensitive and highly-parallelized detection of biomolecules. Amplification-free detection of gene fragments down to femtomolar levels is demonstrated within 5 minutes, for rapid nucleic acid analysis.

    • Jack Hu
    • , Fareeha Safir
    •  & Jennifer A. Dionne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Owing to the nonequilibrium nature, photonic topological phenomena can involve multiple band gaps. Here the authors report on the discovery of a class of hybrid topological photonic crystals that host quantum anomalous Hall and valley Hall phases simultaneously.

    • Yanan Wang
    • , Hai-Xiao Wang
    •  & Guang-Yu Guo

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