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Flexible electronics and optoelectronics have potential applications in energy generation, biomedicine, robotics and displays. Two recent demonstrations of highly stretchable polymer LEDs suggest that commercial devices may soon become viable.
Silicon-waveguide-integrated graphene photodetectors offer high responsivities, high speeds and broad spectral bandwidths, paving the way for graphene-based optical interconnects.
The abundance of unique effects found at the nanoscale offers advantages for electronics. Now, complex heterostructures of metal clusters grown on a carbon-dot support exhibit interactive plasmonic activity that enhances the performances of LEDs and solar cells.
The generation of light pulses with programmable waveforms opens up exciting new avenues for coherent control. Researchers in Japan have now introduced a way to tailor the polarization state of custom-shaped terahertz pulses at the push of a button.
Further sensitivity improvements are required before advanced optical interferometers will be able to measure gravitational waves. A team has now shown that introducing quantum squeezing of light may help to detect these elusive waves.
Caging pairs of propagating solitons in a fibre ring resonator allows scientists to observe the solitons travelling astronomical distances, revealing the effects of extremely tiny forces exerted by the leading soliton on the trailing one.
Two independent groups have concurrently reported the first bosonic lasers driven by electrical injection. Although the devices operate only at low temperatures and in a strong magnetic field, they represent an important step forward in the evolution of polariton-based optoelectronics.
By using propagation in a nonlinear medium, several spatial modes and photons can be simultaneously interacted spatially. This enables the conventional laws of imaging, which are based on linear propagation theory, to be bent.
New themes such as quantum effects and nonlocality presented at the Sixth International Conference on Surface Plasmon Photonics along with new work in traditional fields indicate that plasmonics is not slowing down yet.
Cavity-enhanced high-harmonic generation has been extended to the ∼10 nm wavelength range by using a pierced cavity mirror for outcoupling. This light source has the potential to realize further advances in precision extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopy and attosecond physics.
The web of optical fibre networks deployed across Europe is proving useful for experiments in optical metrology and sensing in addition to their primary use of carrying Internet data and telephone calls.
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy is normally associated with the enhanced electric fields that arise near metal nanoparticle surfaces. The contribution of field gradients has been unclear, but new research provides insights into their effect.
Co-propagating a signal with its phase conjugate along an optical fibre link makes it possible to mitigate unwanted nonlinear distortions and improve the signal-to-noise ratio in long-haul optical communication systems.
The spin of the nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond is a powerful resource for quantum control. However, control over its charge state lags far behind. Appropriating electrical gating techniques used in quantum-dot devices could bridge this gap.
Scientists experimentally demonstrate a scheme that allows the number of qubits encoded per photon to be varied while keeping the overall quantum information constant. They also propose the inverse 'splitting' process.
Small-scale quantum computers made from an array of interconnected waveguides on a glass chip can now perform a task that is considered hard to undertake on a large scale by classical means.
