Optical materials and structures articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Group-IV nanowires hold great promise for building ideal light sources for photonic integrated circuits. This study presents an observation of cavity resonances in a single GeSn nanowire, laying the foundation for realizing group-IV nanowire lasers.

    • Youngmin Kim
    • , Simone Assali
    •  & Oussama Moutanabbir

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrodynamically coupled rotors can be used to describe interactions ranging from molecular machines to atmospheric dynamics. Modin et al. show that optically-driven rotors in a non-tweezing beam can freely diffuse while spinning asynchronously and develop an analytical hydrodynamic model to explain.

    • Alvin Modin
    • , Matan Yah Ben Zion
    •  & Paul M. Chaikin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fano resonant optical coatings (FROCs) present an ideal platform for structural coloring from thin-film metamaterials. This platform provides full-color gamut coverage at greater than 61% of the CIE gamut, with exceptionally high purity (up to 99%) and high brightness. FROCs exhibit tunable iridescence, cost-effective and scalable manufacturing, and significant advantages over existing structural coloring schemes.

    • Mohamed ElKabbash
    • , Nathaniel Hoffman
    •  & Chunlei Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report the scalable integration of electroluminescent semiconducting carbon nanotubes between nanographene electrical contacts in photonic crystal cavities, showing high coupling efficiency and dynamic electrical control of the enhanced electroluminescent light emission intensity in the telecom range.

    • Anna P. Ovvyan
    • , Min-Ken Li
    •  & Wolfram H. P. Pernice

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A metasurface is used to generate a hybrid grafted perfect vector vortex beam, which can be dynamically controlled with a half waveplate. The beam has spatially variant rates of polarization change due to the involvement of more topological charges.

    • Hammad Ahmed
    • , Muhammad Afnan Ansari
    •  & Xianzhong Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The easy preparation of high efractive index transparent polymers is highly desirable owing to their interesting optoelectronic applications. Here, the authors apply an organobase catalyzed polymerization of bromoalkynes and dithiophenols to produce sulfur-containing all organic high refractive index polymers with excellent optical transparency.

    • Jie Zhang
    • , Tianwen Bai
    •  & Ben Zhong Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithium niobate plays an important role in integrated photonics, but its widespread application requires a reliable solution. Here, the authors present a wafer-scale approach to LNOI integration via wafer bonding to silicon nitride PICs.

    • Mikhail Churaev
    • , Rui Ning Wang
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bound-states-in-the-continuum (BICs) display unique features like symmetry protection from dissipation, long lifetimes and topological charges. Here the authors demonstrate anisotropic Bogoliubov excitation spectrum of polariton condensate from a BIC using a patterned semiconductor GaAs/AlGaAs waveguide.

    • Anna Grudinina
    • , Maria Efthymiou-Tsironi
    •  & Nina Voronova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase change materials (PCMs) are promising for low-power programmable photonic circuits. Here, authors show electrically controlled wide-bandgap PCM antimony sulfide achieving low loss, high cyclability and up to 32 levels, and post-fabrication trimming is also demonstrated.

    • Rui Chen
    • , Zhuoran Fang
    •  & Arka Majumdar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Infrared polarization-sensitive photodetectors are attractive owing to their widespread applications. Here, the authors report a long-wave infrared photodetector with an ultrahigh polarization sensitivity by leveraging the 1D geometry of Tellurium nanoribbon and the finite-size effect of a perfect plasmonic absorber.

    • Mingjin Dai
    • , Chongwu Wang
    •  & Qi Jie Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors propose for the first time the concept of supervised-evolving learning (SEL) and a corresponding SEL-driven adaptive focusing (SELAF) system. This metasurface can adaptively realize focusing at any specified position for waves incident from any direction. This work demonstrates unprecedented potential for tasks involving real-time, fast and complex electromagnetic wave manipulation.

    • Huan Lu
    • , Jiwei Zhao
    •  & Hongsheng Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical singularities are typically 1D structures like vortices. This study used metasurfaces to position ten identical point singularities with tight confinement. This could miniaturize optical systems for super-resolution microscopy and dark traps.

    • Soon Wei Daniel Lim
    • , Joon-Suh Park
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Topological semimetals can host coexisting higher-order topological nodes that may enable unique physical properties. Here, based on these topological principles, authors design and experimentally realise simultaneous massive and massless chiral quasiparticles in a photonic microring lattice.

    • Zihe Gao
    • , Haoqi Zhao
    •  & Liang Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Creating compact, lightweight and powerful optics that work well under visible light has been challenging. Here, the authors 3D print optically transparent polymers inside nanoporous glass in order to densely integrate refractive and diffractive elements, forming thin, high-performance hybrid achromatic imaging micro-optics.

    • Corey A. Richards
    • , Christian R. Ocier
    •  & Paul V. Braun

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Optical materials and structures across other nature.com journals