Optical techniques articles within Nature Materials

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  • Article |

    Combining resonant inelastic X-ray scattering and photoluminescence spectroscopy, an elementary excitation in hexagonal-boron-nitride-based single-photon emitters has been demonstrated, giving rise to multiple regular harmonics that can explain the wide frequency range of these emitters.

    • Jonathan Pelliciari
    • , Enrique Mejia
    •  & Gabriele Grosso

  • News & Views |

    Cancer cells adjust the composition of their glycocalyx to increase its thickness and create a physical barrier that shields them from immune recognition and engagement.

    • Edward N. Schmidt
    •  & Matthew S. Macauley

  • Article |

    Propagation losses have limited the practical use of polaritons in photonic applications. Here the authors demonstrate a substantial enhancement in the propagation distance of phonon polaritons, employing synthetic optical excitation of complex frequency with virtual gain synthesized by combining multiple real frequency measurements.

    • Fuxin Guan
    • , Xiangdong Guo
    •  & Shuang Zhang

  • Research Briefing |

    Hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite materials have promise as the photovoltaic technology of the future. A method for spectroscopic optical control reveals how the structural dynamics and vibrations of a perovskite’s organic cations affect the electronic performance of working photovoltaic devices.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optically stimulated vibrational control for materials has the potential to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices. The vibrational control of FAPbBr3 perovskite solar cells has been demonstrated, where the fast dynamics of coupling between cations and inorganic sublattice may suppress non-radiative recombinations in perovskites, leading to reduced voltage losses.

    • Nathaniel. P. Gallop
    • , Dmitry R. Maslennikov
    •  & Artem A. Bakulin

  • Article |

    Employing a miniaturized spectrometer that combines a metasurface-based spectrometer array and a metalens, angle-resolved spectral imaging is achieved with a wavelength accuracy of 0.17 nm, spectral resolution of 0.40 nm and angular resolution of 4.88 × 10−3 rad for a spectrometer with a 4 × 4 μm2 footprint.

    • Guiyi Cai
    • , Yanhao Li
    •  & Qinghai Song

  • News & Views |

    Quantum dots are engineered to use dopant states to achieve substantially enhanced impact ionization, which is potentially useful for light-harvesting applications.

    • Miri Kazes
    •  & Dan Oron

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carrier multiplication generates multiple excitons for each absorbed photon but is normally limited by fast phonon-assisted relaxation. Here the authors achieve a threefold enhancement in multiexciton yields in Mn-doped PbSe/CdSe quantum dots, due to very fast spin-exchange interactions between Mn ions and the quantum dots that outpace energy losses arising from phonon emission.

    • Ho Jin
    • , Clément Livache
    •  & Victor I. Klimov

  • News & Views |

    Understanding, at the atomic level, the effect of the stacking and twisting of different layered two-dimensional materials is a major challenge for the future of twistronics. Optical excitations evidence twist-angle-dependent whirlpool-shaped distortions in such materials.

    • Ado Jorio

  • News & Views |

    Early time transient absorption microscopy in quantum dot solids reveals anomalous exciton transport with multiple different temporal regimes within hundreds of femtoseconds after photoexcitation.

    • Naomi S. Ginsberg
    •  & William A. Tisdale

  • News & Views |

    Revealing the molecular orientations of anisotropic materials is desired in materials science and soft-matter physics. Now, an optical diffraction tomographic approach enables the direct reconstruction of dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures in three dimensions.

    • Anne Sentenac
    • , Guillaume Maire
    •  & Patrick C. Chaumet

  • Article |

    Measuring three-dimensional dielectric tensors is desired for applications in material and soft matter physics. Here, the authors use a tomographic approach and inversely solve the vectorial wave equation to directly reconstruct dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures.

    • Seungwoo Shin
    • , Jonghee Eun
    •  & YongKeun Park

  • Article |

    A pump–push–probe time-resolved technique is developed to characterize the dynamics of photoexcitations at buried, disordered interfaces. Applied to organic bulk heterojunctions, the method provides insight on charge separation in photovoltaic films.

    • Andreas C. Jakowetz
    • , Marcus L. Böhm
    •  & Richard H. Friend

  • Article |

    A large-area fabrication approach to achieve three-dimensional architectured metamaterials, with structural features spanning seven orders of magnitude, results in advanced mechanical properties, including high elasticity.

    • Xiaoyu Zheng
    • , William Smith
    •  & Christopher M. Spadaccini

  • News & Views |

    Giant Rydberg excitons reveal signatures of quantum chaotic behaviour in the presence of time-reversal symmetry breaking enforced by the background solid-state lattice, and they provide a new mesoscopic platform for fundamental studies of quantum chaos.

    • Elena A. Ostrovskaya
    •  & Franco Nori

  • Article |

    Applying an external magnetic field to cuprous oxide causes the energy spacings in the exciton spectrum to transition from a Poissonian distribution to one governed by the Gaussian unitary ensemble statistics, revealing a signature of quantum chaos.

    • Marc Aßmann
    • , Johannes Thewes
    •  & Manfred Bayer

  • Article |

    A renally cleared, water-soluble dye emitting in the near-infrared-imaging (NIR)-II window outperforms a clinically approved NIR-I dye in the in vivo imaging of tumours and their nearby blood and lymphatic vasculatures.

    • Alexander L. Antaris
    • , Hao Chen
    •  & Hongjie Dai

  • News & Views |

    The confinement and scattering lifetimes of graphene plasmons are improved when graphene is sandwiched between layers of thin hexagonal boron nitride. This finding should pave the way for nanophotonic applications in the low-loss regime.

    • Joshua D. Caldwell
    •  & Kostya S. Novoselov

  • Letter |

    A highly selective and efficient approach to covalently bond complementary DNA strands in solution and on surfaces on demand is shown. The approach involves the substitution of a pair of complementary bases by cinnamate-based crosslinks, which can be activated on exposure to ultraviolet light, and allows chemical patterning of flat and curved surfaces down to micrometre and potentially submicrometre resolutions.

    • Lang Feng
    • , Joy Romulus
    •  & Paul Chaikin

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