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Alternative electrode materials and device geometries that avoid the use indium tin oxide — an expensive and brittle material widely used for making transparent electrodes in organic solar cells — are now coming to fruition.
The successful integration of a single-photon source with a slow-light medium creates important opportunities for photon synchronization and marks a step towards the development of distributed networks for quantum information processing.
Metals are widely used throughout the fields of plasmonics and metamaterials owing to their unique focusing capabilities. Research has now shown that doped, low-loss semiconductors compatible with standard nanoelectronic fabrication processes could outperform metals in certain applications.
Using a bottom-up integration approach and exploiting helical-mode resonance in a nanopillar, scientists have now demonstrated that it is possible to grow nanolasers directly on silicon substrates.
Combining ultrasonic modulation and optical phase conjugation allows light to be tightly focused in a scattering medium, providing benefits for studies of photophysical, photochemical and photobiological processes.
The laser acceleration of ion beams usually relies on the use of strong electric fields generated by short, intense laser pulses. Scientists have now experimentally demonstrated that radiation pressure can also play a valuable role in this process.
Scientists have realized a Fourier-transform spectroscopy scheme based on a wavefront-division scanning interferometer that operates down to wavelengths as short as 40 nm, benefitting studies of gas-phase atomic and molecular electronic structures over the entire vacuum-ultraviolet range.
By tailoring the electronic band structure of highly mismatched alloys, researchers have shown clear evidence of the existence of three electronically isolated energy bands, bringing the intermediate-band solar cell one step closer to realization.
It has long been thought that the detection of individual molecules in ambient conditions via their absorption signature was out of reach. Now, three independent research groups have developed three different methods that allow such a feat.
A high-resolution scheme for converting two-dimensional infrared images to the visible region has exciting consequences for applications such as night-vision technology and chemical sensing.
The discrimination of chemical species with overlapping Raman bands is now possible in real time using a stimulated Raman scattering microscope with a fast, bipolar spectral correlator.
A new woodpile-type photonic crystal nanocavity with a three-dimensional bandgap that supports lasing from embedded quantum dots paves the way for three-dimensional integrated photonic circuits and highly efficient nanolasers.
A simple molecular gas sample can be used to achieve ultrafast optical buffering in two-dimensional optical imaging, thus serving as a promising extension of the well-developed liquid-crystal display technology.
