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An optoelectronic method for sorting nanowires of different compositions and assembling them into reconfigurable arrays could be important for creating future nanodevices.
Chains of coupled resonators are capable of dramatically slowing the speed of light. When all the resonators are identical light can, in principle, be stopped altogether. However, disorder causes light to move at a finite speed and to be localized over a few resonators.
Solar cells take advantage of our most abundant source of energy, the Sun. A technique that improves the conversion of photons to electrons could potentially lead to a dramatic improvement in device efficiency.
Conventional solar cells lose most of the Sun's energy as heat. Nature Photonics spoke to Tom Gregorkiewicz at the University of Amsterdam about his group's latest work, which may lead to cheap and efficient silicon solar cells by harnessing some of the lost energy.
What would you do if you owned the world's most powerful laser? The US government is hoping to use it to achieve the ignition of thermonuclear fusion in the lab for the first time. Nature Photonics spoke to Edward Moses of the National Ignition Facility to find out more.
Defect engineering is crucial for realizing all-optical integrated circuits from self-assembled photonic crystals. A two-photon polymerization strategy paves the way towards incorporation of arbitrary defects in silicon inverse opal photonic crystals.
Fibre-laser technology is enabling the creation of new types of compact light sources with unique ultrabroad or ultranarrow spectral characteristics. These lasers are now finding applications in diverse fields ranging from biotechnology to test and measurement apparatus.
Flexibility, speed of processing and maintenance-free operation are now rapidly making fibre lasers the technology of choice for marking plastics and metals.