Featured
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Letter |
Ultrafast non-local control of spontaneous emission
Non-local moulding of the vacuum field in a photonic cavity structure enables control of the spontaneous emission of quantum dots.
- Chao-Yuan Jin
- , Robert Johne
- & Andrea Fiore
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Article |
Metamaterial mirrors in optoelectronic devices
The use of a metamaterial mirror in a thin-film solar cell enhances light absorption and photocurrent generation by about 20%.
- Majid Esfandyarpour
- , Erik C. Garnett
- & Mark L. Brongersma
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Article |
Electronic control of optical Anderson localization modes
Injecting charge carriers into p–n diodes embedded in an optical waveguide can switch Anderson localization modes on and off.
- Shayan Mookherjea
- , Jun Rong Ong
- & Lo Guo-Qiang
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Letter |
Engineering bright sub-10-nm upconverting nanocrystals for single-molecule imaging
Upconverting nanoparticles smaller than 10 nm are brighter when excited under single-particle conditions than when they are part of an ensemble.
- Daniel J. Gargas
- , Emory M. Chan
- & P. James Schuck
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News & Views |
An alternative 'Sun' for solar cells
Nanophotonic structures can be used to engineer efficient solar thermophotovoltaic systems.
- Shanhui Fan
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Letter |
A nanophotonic solar thermophotovoltaic device
Nanophotonic surfaces are used to fabricate a 1 cm2 solar thermophotovoltaic device that achieves an overall conversion efficiency of 3.2%.
- Andrej Lenert
- , David M. Bierman
- & Evelyn N. Wang
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News & Views |
Diamonds from outer space
Stable fluorescence is observed in nanodiamonds of molecular dimensions extracted from a meteorite.
- Christoph Becher
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Letter |
Efficient solar water-splitting using a nanocrystalline CoO photocatalyst
Cobalt oxide nanoparticles can carry out overall water splitting with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of around 5%.
- Longb Liao
- , Qiuhui Zhang
- & Jiming Bao
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Letter |
Molecular-sized fluorescent nanodiamonds
Diamond nanoparticles containing only about 400 atoms emit bright fluorescence due to silicon vacancy defects.
- Igor I. Vlasov
- , Andrey A. Shiryaev
- & Jörg Wrachtrup
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Research Highlights |
Our choice from the recent literature
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Review Article |
Artificial honeycomb lattices for electrons, atoms and photons
Artificial honeycomb lattices offer a tunable platform for studying massless Dirac quasiparticles, and their topological and correlated phases.
- Marco Polini
- , Francisco Guinea
- & Vittorio Pellegrini
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News & Views |
Plasmons at the surface
Plasmons have been excited on the surface states of the topological insulator Bi2Se3.
- Yoshinori Okada
- & Vidya Madhavan
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Letter |
Luminescence upconversion in colloidal double quantum dots
Double-nanocrystal systems can be used as an alternative to rare earth-doped dielectric quantum dots for upconversion luminescence.
- Zvicka Deutsch
- , Lior Neeman
- & Dan Oron
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Letter |
Observation of Dirac plasmons in a topological insulator
Plasmonic excitation of massless electrons is observed in Bi2Se3.
- P. Di Pietro
- , M. Ortolani
- & S. Lupi
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Letter |
Bright, long-lived and coherent excitons in carbon nanotube quantum dots
Exciton localization in suspended carbon nanotubes leads to bright fluoresence with an ultranarrow linewidth and long lifetime.
- Matthias S. Hofmann
- , Jan T. Glückert
- & Alexander Högele
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Letter |
Lasing action in strongly coupled plasmonic nanocavity arrays
Two-dimensional arrays of plasmonic nanoparticles coupled with a gain medium can behave as a surface-emitting laser with near-zero group velocity and picosecond dynamics.
- Wei Zhou
- , Montacer Dridi
- & Teri W. Odom
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Letter |
A plasmonic ‘antenna-in-box’ platform for enhanced single-molecule analysis at micromolar concentrations
A plasmonic nanoantenna enables a thousand fold-enhanced fluorescence brightness allowing single-molecule analysis to be carried out in a zeptolitre volume at physiological concentrations.
- Deep Punj
- , Mathieu Mivelle
- & Jérôme Wenger
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News & Views |
Trapped by nanostructures
The design of specific nanostructured optical gratings allows the realization of efficient traps for a large number of cold atoms.
- Jérôme Estève
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Letter |
A nanocomposite ultraviolet photodetector based on interfacial trap-controlled charge injection
A solution-processed ultraviolet photodetector with a nanocomposite active layer composed of ZnO nanoparticles blended with semiconducting polymers can significantly outperform inorganic photodetectors.
- Fawen Guo
- , Bin Yang
- & Jinsong Huang
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Letter |
Red, green and blue lasing enabled by single-exciton gain in colloidal quantum dot films
Films of densely packed core–shell quantum dots demonstrate full-colour amplified spontaneous emission with single-exciton gain, and are used to build vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers operating at very low optical pumping thresholds.
- Cuong Dang
- , Joonhee Lee
- & Arto Nurmikko
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Research Highlights |
Diffusive light made simple
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Letter |
Direct visualization of large-area graphene domains and boundaries by optical birefringency
The domain structure of macroscopic graphene samples can be simply observed by covering them with liquid-crystal molecules.
- Dae Woo Kim
- , Yun Ho Kim
- & Hee-Tae Jung
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Article |
One- and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities in single crystal diamond
Optical microcavities have been fabricated in single-crystal diamond and tuned into resonance with the zero phonon line of an ensemble of silicon-vacancy colour centres, which results in an enhancement of spontaneous emission.
- Janine Riedrich-Möller
- , Laura Kipfstuhl
- & Christoph Becher
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Research Highlights |
A better shot in the dark
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Article |
Single-walled carbon nanotubes as excitonic optical wires
Experiments have shown that carbon nanotubes are ideal optical wires, with properties affected by excitonic and other intrinsic properties, as well as by shape.
- Daniel Y. Joh
- , Jesse Kinder
- & Jiwoong Park
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News & Views |
Moving into the red
Can silicon ever be a true direct-bandgap semiconductor? The first observation of a new, short-lived photoluminescence band from silicon nanocrystals offers fresh hope.
- Dmitry Kovalev
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Letter |
Electroluminescence from a single nanotube–molecule–nanotube junction
Voltage-induced light emission has been observed from a molecule attached to two carbon-nanotube electrodes.
- Christoph W. Marquardt
- , Sergio Grunder
- & Ralph Krupke
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Article |
Red spectral shift and enhanced quantum efficiency in phonon-free photoluminescence from silicon nanocrystals
An ultrafast visible band in the photoluminescence spectrum of silicon nanocrystals increases in intensity and shifts to longer wavelengths as the size of the nanocrystals decreases.
- W. D. A. M. de Boer
- , D. Timmerman
- & T. Gregorkiewicz
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Research Highlights |
Quantum dots beat the limit
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News & Views |
Plasmons offer a helping hand
Arrays of metallic nanostructures allow chiral biomolecules to be detected and characterized with increased sensitivity.
- Romain Quidant
- & Mark Kreuzer
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Research Highlights |
LEDs learn to relax
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Letter |
Optical rectification and field enhancement in a plasmonic nanogap
Optical rectification and electric-field enhancements in excess of 1,000 are observed when a subnanometre gap between gold electrodes is illuminated with infrared radiation.
- Daniel R. Ward
- , Falco Hüser
- & Douglas Natelson
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Research Highlights |
In hot pursuit
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News & Views |
New twist on nanoscale motors
Linearly polarized light that does not possess any angular momentum can be used to rotate a gold nanostructure that can, in turn, rotate a much larger silica microdisk.
- Erez Hasman
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Research Highlights |
Electric entanglement
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Letter |
Light-driven nanoscale plasmonic motors
Linearly polarized light can be used to generate a rotational force in a plasmonic nanostructure that is capable of rotating a much larger microdisk.
- Ming Liu
- , Thomas Zentgraf
- & Xiang Zhang
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News & Views |
The third plasmonic revolution
Combining nanostructured magnetic media with nanoplasmonic antennas has propelled commercially viable data-storage densities beyond one terabit per square inch.
- Daniel O'Connor
- & Anatoly V. Zayats
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Research Highlights |
To the limit and beyond
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Editorial |
The many aspects of quantum dots
From fundamental physics and chemistry to digital cameras, improved displays and more natural lighting, nanoscale semiconductor structures called quantum dots are having an impact on many areas of science and technology.
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Letter |
Mimicking the colourful wing scale structure of the Papilio blumei butterfly
Colour mixing and other optical effects displayed by the wings of the Papilio blumei butterfly have now been replicated by a combination of colloid self-assembly and other standard layer-deposition techniques.
- Mathias Kolle
- , Pedro M. Salgard-Cunha
- & Ullrich Steiner
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News & Views |
Switching blinking on and off
Diamonds with a diameter of just 5 nm are capable of supporting colour centres and emitting fluorescence, and encapsulating these nanodiamonds in a polymer stops them blinking.
- Joerg Wrachtrup
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News & Views |
Focusing on the objective
Placing colloidal spheres in the immediate proximity of fluorescent molecules makes it possible to achieve single-molecule imaging at high temperatures with a low-cost system.
- Yuval Ebenstein
- & Laurent A. Bentolila
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Article |
Above-bandgap voltages from ferroelectric photovoltaic devices
Steps in the electrostatic potential at domain walls in a ferroelectric material give rise to a new kind of photovoltaic effect that produces voltages significantly higher than the bandgap of the material.
- S. Y. Yang
- , J. Seidel
- & R. Ramesh