Optical techniques articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current preclinical imaging of intestine in animal models cannot reveal intestinal dynamics in awake condition. Here the authors report a Transillumination Intestine Projection (TIP) imaging system for free-moving mice, and showed the intestine dynamics in conscious animal in natural physiological states.

    • Depeng Wang
    • , Huijuan Zhang
    •  & Jun Xia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors use a nanoscale probe to study the photoresponse within a single moiré unit cell of minimally twisted bilayer graphene, and observe an intricate photo-thermoelectric response attributed to the Seebeck coefficient variation at AB-BA domain boundaries.

    • Niels C. H. Hesp
    • , Iacopo Torre
    •  & Frank H. L. Koppens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Structured illumination microscopy is usually limited to 2 times spatial resolution improvement over the diffraction limit. Here, the authors introduce a metamaterial structure to generate speckle-like sub-diffraction limit illumination patterns in the near field, and achieve a 7-fold resolution improvement down to 40 nm.

    • Yeon Ui Lee
    • , Junxiang Zhao
    •  & Zhaowei Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Health status transitions are reflected as characteristic changes in molecular composition of biofluids. Here, the authors apply infrared molecular fingerprinting and reveal that blood-based phenotypes are sufficiently stable over time, providing the basis for time- and cost-effective health monitoring.

    • Marinus Huber
    • , Kosmas V. Kepesidis
    •  & Mihaela Žigman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Raman-based imaging of biomarkers is often challenging due to low sensitivity. Here, the authors use a swelling-diffusion approach to develop a series of Raman probes that are both ultra-bright and compact in size, and demonstrate multiplexed imaging of specific protein targets in cells and tissue slices.

    • Zhilun Zhao
    • , Chen Chen
    •  & Wei Min

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is currently challenging to identify protein structures at low concentrations. Here the authors report optical tweezers-coupled Raman spectroscopy to generate tunable and reproducible SERS enhancements with single-molecule level sensitivity and use the method to detect protein structural features.

    • Xin Dai
    • , Wenhao Fu
    •  & Jinqing Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acoustic graphene plasmons are superior to the graphene surface plasmons in field confinement and normalized propagation length, thus promising for applications. Here, the authors report near-field imaging of acoustic plasmons in high-quality CVD graphene, measure the AGP dispersion and propagation loss, and investigate their behavior in a periodic structure.

    • Sergey G. Menabde
    • , In-Ho Lee
    •  & Min Seok Jang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here Arndt et al. establish rotating-crystal magneto-optical detection (RMOD) as a near-point-of-care diagnostic tool for malaria detection and report a sensitivity and specificity of 82% and 84%, respectively, as validated by analyzing a clinical population in a high transmission setting in Papua New Guinea.

    • L. Arndt
    • , T. Koleala
    •  & S. Karl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving high axial resolution is challenging in single-molecule localization microscopy. Here, the authors present a photometric method to decode the axial position of single molecules in a total internal reflection fluorescence microscope without hardware modification, and show nearly isotropic nanometric resolution.

    • Alan M. Szalai
    • , Bruno Siarry
    •  & Fernando D. Stefani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fano resonances occur in many platforms that have auto-ionizing states. Here the authors show that auto-ionizing states are not required for multi-photon Fano resonance in a Si:P system with significant screening by using a pump-probe method.

    • K. L. Litvinenko
    • , Nguyen H. Le
    •  & B. N. Murdin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Superluminescent diodes, that provide a broadband spectrum are typically used in spectral domain coherence tomography. Here, the authors use chipscale silicon nitride resonators to generate soliton microcombs with a lower noise flor that could substitute the diode sources.

    • Paul J. Marchand
    • , Johann Riemensberger
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Implementing metal nanowires in photonic circuits is challenging due to lack of suitable manipulation techniques. Here, the authors present an earthworm-like peristaltic crawling motion mechanism, based on surface plasmons and surface acoustic waves, and show on-chip manipulations of single nanowires.

    • Shuangyi Linghu
    • , Zhaoqi Gu
    •  & Fuxing Gu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reaching the strong coupling regime is a crucial step towards room-temperature quantum control with mesoscopic objects. Here, the authors use coherent scattering to demonstrate room temperature strong coupling between a levitated silica particle and a high-finesse optical cavity.

    • Andrés de los Ríos Sommer
    • , Nadine Meyer
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors report spectroscopy and dynamics of cavity coupled NO band of sodium nitroprusside using 2D infrared and transient spectroscopy employing pump-probe technique. They find signatures of third-order nonlinearity, incoherent and strong coupling effects of vibrational polaritons.

    • Andrea B. Grafton
    • , Adam D. Dunkelberger
    •  & Jeffrey C. Owrutsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantized circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) is predicted in chiral topological semimetals, but the experimental observation remains challenging. Here, Ni et al. observe a large topological longitudinal photocurrent in CoSi, which is much larger than the photocurrent in any other chiral crystals, indicating quantized CPGE within reach upon doping and increase of the hot-carrier lifetime.

    • Zhuoliang Ni
    • , K. Wang
    •  & Liang Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identification of neurotransmitters remains challenging for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) due to presence of noise. Here, the authors present spread spectrum SERS, which by encoding excited light and decoding SERS signals enables detection of unlabelled neurotransmitters at attomolar concentrations.

    • Wonkyoung Lee
    • , Byoung-Hoon Kang
    •  & Ki-Hun Jeong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient light-emitting components without utilizing intricate back-end circuits remains a challenge. Here the authors present three-phase electric power driven electroluminescent devices capable to realize pixel units, interactive rewritable displays and to drive organic light-emitting devices with red, green and blue-emitting pixels.

    • Junpeng Ji
    • , Igor F. Perepichka
    •  & Wei Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High resolution imaging of large biological volumes typically takes a long time from hours to days. Here the authors use a Bessel light-sheet approach combined with a content-aware compressed sensing computational pipeline to image whole mouse organs at subcellular resolution in a few minutes.

    • Chunyu Fang
    • , Tingting Yu
    •  & Peng Fei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Standard benchmarking of single-molecule localization microscopy cannot quantify nanoscale accuracy of arbitrary datasets. Here, the authors present Wasserstein-induced flux, a method using a chosen perturbation and knowledge of the imaging system to measure confidence of individual localizations.

    • Hesam Mazidi
    • , Tianben Ding
    •  & Matthew D. Lew

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantitative phase imaging suffers from a lack of specificity in label-free imaging. Here, the authors introduce Phase Imaging with Computational Specificity (PICS), a method that combines phase imaging with machine learning techniques to provide specificity in unlabeled live cells with automatic training.

    • Mikhail E. Kandel
    • , Yuchen R. He
    •  & Gabriel Popescu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light scattering represents the main limitation to image at depth in biological microscopy. The authors present a strategy to characterize light propagation in and out of a scattering medium based on linear fluorescence feedback and from the same measurements exploit memory effect correlations to image and reconstruct extended objects.

    • Antoine Boniface
    • , Jonathan Dong
    •  & Sylvain Gigan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polymer thin films that emit and absorb circularly polarised light are promising in achieving important technological advances, but the origin of the large chiroptical effects in such films has remained elusive. Here the authors demonstrate that in non-aligned polymer thin films, large chiroptical effects are caused by magneto-electric coupling, not structural chirality as previously assumed.

    • Jessica Wade
    • , James N. Hilfiker
    •  & Matthew J. Fuchter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing neural interfaces are limited in accessing one, small brain region. Here, the authors introduce a scaffold with helix hollow channels, which direct multisite multifunctional fibre probes into the brain at different angles, allowing for simultaneous recording and stimulation across distant regions.

    • Shan Jiang
    • , Dipan C. Patel
    •  & Xiaoting Jia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing tools to study hearing are limited. Here the authors report Bio-OptoAcoustic (BOA) stimulation wherein they use optical forces to generate localised sound and activate the auditory system of zebrafish larvae.

    • Itia A. Favre-Bulle
    • , Michael A. Taylor
    •  & Ethan K. Scott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing human-interactive displays enabling the simultaneous sensing, visualization, and memorization of a magnetic field remains a challenge. Here, the authors present a skin-patchable magneto-interactive electroluminescent display by employing a magnetic field-dependent conductive gate, thereby enabling 3D motion tracking.

    • Seung Won Lee
    • , Soyeon Baek
    •  & Cheolmin Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Open standard microscopy is urgently needed to give low-cost solutions to researchers and to overcome the reproducibility crisis in science. Here the authors present a 3D-printed, open-source modular microscopy toolbox UC2 (You. See. Too.) for a few hundred Euros.

    • Benedict Diederich
    • , René Lachmann
    •  & Rainer Heintzmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magneto-optic Kerr effect microscopy is useful for dynamic magnetic studies, but is limited by the weak magneto-optical activity. Here, the authors show that extreme anti-reflection result in a Kerr amplitude as large as 20° and enables real-time detection of sub-wavelength magnetic domain reversals.

    • Dongha Kim
    • , Young-Wan Oh
    •  & Min-Kyo Seo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-line-of-sight imaging is typically limited by loss of directional information due to diffuse reflections scattering light in all directions. Here, the authors see around corners by using vertical edges and temporal response to pulsed light to obtain angular and longitudinal resolution, respectively.

    • Joshua Rapp
    • , Charles Saunders
    •  & Vivek K. Goyal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report on an imaging method based on localized surface plasmon resonance excitation, employing gold nanodisk arrays as substrates that enable imaging of transparent dielectric particles of several sizes. They demonstrate the ability to detect and image particles smaller than the diffraction limit at 25 nm with standard bright-field imaging.

    • Nareg Ohannesian
    • , Ibrahim Misbah
    •  & Wei-Chuan Shih

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Performance of distributed optical fiber sensing is partially limited by the need for hardware changes. Here, the authors introduce a coding algorithm that enables enhanced performance through faster processing using only software-based methods.

    • Xizi Sun
    • , Zhisheng Yang
    •  & Luc Thévenaz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing high-dimensional optical imaging techniques that record space and polarization cannot detect the photon’s time of arrival due to the limited speeds of electronic sensors. Here, the authors develop a single-shot ultrafast imaging modality to record light-speed high-dimensional events with picosecond resolution.

    • Mohammad A. Almajhadi
    • , Syed Mohammad Ashab Uddin
    •  & H. Kumar Wickramasinghe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Broad uptake of smFRET has been hindered by high instrument costs and a lack of open-source hardware and acquisition software. Here, the authors present the smfBox, a cost-effective open-source platform capable of measuring precise FRET efficiencies between dyes on freely diffusing single molecules.

    • Benjamin Ambrose
    • , James M. Baxter
    •  & Timothy D. Craggs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multidimensional photography has traditionally been restricted by their static optical architectures and measurement schemes. Here, the authors present a tunable multidimensional photography approach employing active optical mapping, which allows them to adapt the acquisition schemes to the scene.

    • Jongchan Park
    • , Xiaohua Feng
    •  & Liang Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the correlation between molecular structure and properties of 2D hybrid perovskites is crucial for material design and device performance. Here, the authors reveal that conformation of organic cations in the inorganic cages has strong effects on charge mobility and broadband emission behaviour.

    • Chuanzhao Li
    • , Jin Yang
    •  & Shuji Ye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantifying lipid and water content in tissues non-invasively is difficult, and no method exists to quantify lipids in blood non-invasively. Here the authors develop an imaging approach called shortwave infrared meso-patterned imaging (SWIR-MPI) to detect and spatially map tissue water and lipids in preclinical models.

    • Yanyu Zhao
    • , Anahita Pilvar
    •  & Darren Roblyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complexity and harsh working conditions pose limitations for fabrication of patterned materials. Here the authors report a single-step method for in situ deposition of materials that is based on semiconductor nanoparticle assisted photon-induced chemical reduction and optical trapping.

    • Yifan Chen
    • , Siu Fai Hung
    •  & Sen Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Control of electrical discharge paths would allow several technological applications, but it usually requires air photoionisation with high-peak-power pulsed lasers. Here, instead, the authors exploit the trapping and heating of light-absorbing particles to guide discharge along the desired path.

    • V. Shvedov
    • , E. Pivnev
    •  & A. E. Miroshnichenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining the orientation of single molecules in super resolution imaging is challenging. Here, by adding polarization control to phase control in the Fourier plane of the imaging path, parameters such as 3D spatial position, 3D orientation and wobbling or dithering angle can be determined from single molecules.

    • Valentina Curcio
    • , Luis A. Alemán-Castañeda
    •  & Miguel A. Alonso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The formation dynamics of excitons in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides are challenging to probe directly because of their inherently fast timescales. Here, the authors use extremely short optical pulses to excite an electron-hole plasma, and show the formation of 2D excitons in MoS2 on the timescale of 30 fs.

    • Chiara Trovatello
    • , Florian Katsch
    •  & Stefano Dal Conte

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