Optical materials and structures articles within Nature Materials

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  • Article |

    Lack of local phase patterning in liquid crystal elastomers has hindered their broad implementation. The authors report a laser-induced dynamic crosslinking approach with allyl sulfide groups to achieve reconfigurable high-resolution patterning of multiple liquid crystalline phases in a single film.

    • Seok Hwan Choi
    • , Ju Hee Kim
    •  & Seung Hwan Ko

  • Article |

    Employing light-transformable polymers, multiple physical unclonable functions are demonstrated within a single device with all-optical reversible reconfigurability. Such devices may enable quantum secure authentication and nonlinear cryptographic key generation applications.

    • Sara Nocentini
    • , Ulrich Rührmair
    •  & Francesco Riboli

  • News & Views |

    Hybridized electron or hole states across semiconducting van der Waals monolayers in heterotrilayer systems enable the emergence of quadrupolar excitons. Quadrupolar excitons, unlike their dipolar counterparts, have a tunable static dipole moment that responds nonlinearly under an applied electric field.

    • Elyse Barré
    • , Medha Dandu
    •  & Archana Raja

  • 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 couple to form artificial molecules that allow for variable colour emission in response to an electric field.

    • James Cassidy
    • , Justin Ondry
    •  & Dmitri V. Talapin

  • Research Briefing |

    Inspired by valley pseudospins in two-dimensional materials, high-quality-factor (high-Q) spin–valley states were created through the photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum. This approach enabled the construction of a coherent and controllable spin-optical laser using monolayer-integrated spin–valley microcavities without requiring magnetic fields or cryogenic temperatures.

  • Article |

    The authors introduce a spin-optical laser based on a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide coupled to a heterostructure microcavity supporting high-Q spin-valley resonances originating from photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum.

    • Kexiu Rong
    • , Xiaoyang Duan
    •  & Erez Hasman

  • Research Briefing |

    A scalar scheme has been proposed to design photonic crystals that possess bulk dispersions resembling scalar waves and surface modes that support skyrmion-like textures. This approach addresses the challenges of realizing three-dimensional topological photonic crystals, which usually have complicated dispersions and leaky surface modes inside the light cone.

  • News & Views |

    Above-bandgap, nanosecond laser pulses enable the localized in situ writing of spin defects in prefabricated nanophotonic cavities. The approach preserves defect and cavity mode properties, key requirements towards cavity–emitter coupling in quantum networks.

    • Sridhar Majety
    •  & Marina Radulaski

  • Letter |

    Employing an oxidation-activated charge transfer strategy to oxidize transition-metal dichalcogenides into transition-metal oxides, the authors imprint plasmonic cavities with laterally abrupt doping profiles and nanoscale precision demonstrating plasmonic whispering-gallery resonators.

    • Brian S. Y. Kim
    • , Aaron J. Sternbach
    •  & D. N. Basov

  • Article |

    Liquid crystal (LC) applications typically rely on defining the non-topological spatial patterns of the optical axis. Here, the authors demonstrate the topological steering of light by LC nematic vortices, futher establishing an analogy between topological light steering by LC vortices and cosmic strings.

    • Cuiling Meng
    • , Jin-Sheng Wu
    •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Triplet-fusion-based photon upconversion is promising for photovoltaic or bioimaging applications, but its efficiency is limited by triplet fusion spin dependence. Here, the authors tailor spin dynamics by engineering the crystal structure with metal–organic frameworks to enable effective spin mixing between singlet and quintet triplet–triplet pair states.

    • Dong-Gwang Ha
    • , Ruomeng Wan
    •  & Mircea Dincă

  • News & Views |

    Structuring surfaces coated with nanoparticles in the subwavelength range allows almost complete control over the optical appearance of an object.

    • Frank Scheffold

  • Letter |

    Desired for optical sensing or visual communications, structural colour-changing materials are hindered by the lack of scalable manufacturing. Here, by adapting Lippmann photography, large-area manufacturing of colour patterns in photosensitive elastomers is realized.

    • Benjamin Harvey Miller
    • , Helen Liu
    •  & Mathias Kolle

  • News & Views |

    Giant exciton–polaritons come to the scene from a thin Cu2O crystal sandwiched by a microcavity. Their anticipated strong interactions may facilitate the development of a promising Rydberg solid-state platform for quantum technologies.

    • HeeBong Yang
    •  & Na Young Kim

  • Article |

    A multiscale modelling platform combining nanoscale resonant scattering, mesoscale multiple scattering and macroscale light transport effectively predicts the macroscopic visual effects created by optical metamaterials with disordered nanostructures.

    • Kevin Vynck
    • , Romain Pacanowski
    •  & Philippe Lalanne

  • Article |

    Cu2O is a promising platform to host Rydberg exciton–polaritons, where excitons strongly couple to cavity photons, however their realization has been elusive. Here, the authors report Rydberg exciton–polaritons with principal quantum numbers up to n = 6.

    • Konstantinos Orfanakis
    • , Sai Kiran Rajendran
    •  & Hamid Ohadi

  • Article |

    Controlled synthesis of heterostructured III-V–II-VI nanocrystals shows that dipole moments formed at the core–shell interface can tune the optoelectronic properties of these nanomaterials and their performance in light-emitting devices.

    • Byeong Guk Jeong
    • , Jun Hyuk Chang
    •  & Wan Ki Bae

  • News & Views |

    Tamm plasmon thermal emitters can provide efficient infrared emission, but are limited by design complexity. Now, the inverse design of Tamm modes facilitated by CdO films on aperiodic dielectric reflectors enables emission with an on-demand spectrum.

    • Juerg Leuthold
    •  & Alexander Dorodnyy

  • Article |

    A strategy to confine phosphorescent organic chromophores within ionic crystals proves effective in suppressing non-radiative recombination channels and increasing the phosphorescence efficiency of blue-emitting heavy-atom-free emitters.

    • Wenpeng Ye
    • , Huili Ma
    •  & Wei Huang

  • Review Article |

    This Review discusses the photophysical properties and nonlinear behaviour of single molecules, and their use as single-photon sources and in single-molecule sensing and quantum-sensing applications.

    • C. Toninelli
    • , I. Gerhardt
    •  & M. Orrit

  • Article |

    Stacked elastomeric arrays containing plasmonic nanoparticles show efficient chiral responses that can be fully controlled by mechanical compression and stack rotation. These simple layered materials may be useful modulators for photonic applications.

    • Patrick T. Probst
    • , Martin Mayer
    •  & Andreas Fery

  • Article |

    A second-order topological Weyl semimetal based on a 3D-printed acoustic crystal, exhibiting Weyl points, Fermi arc surface states, and hinge states, has been experimentally demonstrated.

    • Qiang Wei
    • , Xuewei Zhang
    •  & Suotang Jia

  • News & Views |

    Correlated real-space imaging and optical measurements of twisted MoSe2/WSe2 bilayers reveal strain-induced modulations of the moiré potential landscape, tuning arrays of 0D traps into 1D stripes and leading to substantial changes in the optical response of the heterostructures.

    • Long Zhang
    •  & Hui Deng

  • News & Views |

    The integration of silicon-based waveguides with barium titanate thin films enables the realization of efficient electro-optic switches and modulators operating at cryogenic temperatures, offering promising opportunities for quantum technologies.

    • Goran Z. Mashanovich

  • Letter |

    The integration of barium titanate thin films with silicon-based waveguides enables the operation of efficient electro-optic switches and modulators at temperatures as low as 4 K, with potential applications in quantum computing and cryogenic computing technologies.

    • Felix Eltes
    • , Gerardo E. Villarreal-Garcia
    •  & Stefan Abel

  • Article |

    Type-II van der Waals interfaces formed by different two-dimensional materials enable robust interlayer optical transitions, regardless of common issues such as lattice constant mismatch, layer misalignment or whether the constituent compounds are direct or indirect band semiconductors.

    • Nicolas Ubrig
    • , Evgeniy Ponomarev
    •  & Alberto F. Morpurgo

  • News & Views |

    Photonic crystals with optical bandgaps across the entire visible spectrum are generated by reconfiguring three-dimensional blue phase liquid crystalline lattices into long-lived metastable non-cubic structures using sequences of electric pulses.

    • Slobodan Žumer

  • Review Article |

    This Review covers the basic physics of thermal emission, ways to engineer the thermal field radiated by hot objects in the far field and applications, such as thermophotovoltaics, radiative cooling, camouflage and privacy.

    • Denis G. Baranov
    • , Yuzhe Xiao
    •  & Mikhail A. Kats

  • Review Article |

    The droplet epitaxy technique has emerged as an alternative to the most commonly used Stranski–Krastanov for fabricating semiconductor nanostructures. This Review discusses the important aspects of droplet epitaxy quantum dots, from the growth mechanism to device application.

    • Massimo Gurioli
    • , Zhiming Wang
    •  & Stefano Sanguinetti

  • News & Views |

    Electro-optic modulators based on epitaxial barium titanate integrated on silicon can reach speeds up to 50 Gbit s–1.

    • Mo Li
    •  & Hong X. Tang

  • Article |

    In this type of thermal cloak, when a fluid circulates around the object of interest, the temperature perturbation is minimized as the effective thermal conductivity of the fluid becomes very high due to convective effects.

    • Ying Li
    • , Ke-Jia Zhu
    •  & C.-W. Qiu

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