Optofluidics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors experimentally realize the electrical tuning of branched flow of light in nematic liquid crystals. The statistical properties and the polarization effect of the branched flow of light in the film are systematically studied adding fundamental insights on branched flow of light.

    • Shan-shan Chang
    • , Ke-Hui Wu
    •  & Jin-hui Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exciton-polariton condensates are hybrid systems with nonlinear interactions. Here the authors demonstrate metamaterials with inter-site polariton coupling and asynchronous locking of light fluids from neighbor sites at the energy detuning.

    • D. L. Chafatinos
    • , A. S. Kuznetsov
    •  & A. Fainstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors introduce an accurate, fast and efficient technique to analyze sensory data. They use a continuous wavelet transform concept to look for certain patterns in noisy raw data. The superiority of this approach is demonstrated with fluorescence signals from a chip-based, optofluidic single particle sensor.

    • Vahid Ganjalizadeh
    • , Gopikrishnan G. Meena
    •  & Holger Schmidt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineered stop bands to sense an ambient environment can enable many applications. Here, the authors demonstrate well-controlled processes to open high-aspect ratio nanoholes through optical fibre for Bragg gratings in the telecomm spectrum and to enable high-resolution refractive index sensing

    • Keivan Mahmoud Aghdami
    • , Abdullah Rahnama
    •  & Peter R. Herman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light-driven micromotors can convert energy to motion in sub-millimeter dimensions. Here, the authors extend this concept and introduce reconfigurable micromachines with multiple components, driven by optoelectronic tweezers, and demonstrate new functionalities.

    • Shuailong Zhang
    • , Mohamed Elsayed
    •  & Aaron R. Wheeler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors combine digital holographic microscopy with thermoplasmonics in order to identify different contributions of thermally driven fluid dynamic phenomena. They find that local thermal perturbation leads to long-range changes in the dynamics of the system, and demonstrate an all-optical control strategy for microfluidic devices.

    • B. Ciraulo
    • , J. Garcia-Guirado
    •  & R. Quidant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compact spectrometers can be useful in many applications and many sophisticated architectures have been proposed. In this work, the authors show that with an evaporating droplet on a fiber tip, spectrometry can be robustly and accurately performed with a simple and passive microfluidic system.

    • P. Malara
    • , A. Giorgini
    •  & G. Gagliardi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical tweezing with intense lasers can be harmful to biological specimens and limits the types of materials that can be trapped. Here, the authors demonstrate an indirect optical trapping approach which uses hydrodynamic forces to exert nanoscale-precision control over aqueous particles, without directly illuminating them.

    • Unė G. Būtaitė
    • , Graham M. Gibson
    •  & David B. Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, Chemnitz et al. report experimental evidence for hybrid solitons – a type of solitary wave, which emerges as a result of a strong non-instantaneous nonlinear response in CS2-filled liquid-core optical fibres, demonstrating efficient soliton-driven supercontinuum generation.

    • Mario Chemnitz
    • , Martin Gebhardt
    •  & Markus A. Schmidt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The current methods of fabricating three-dimensional particles include photolithography, layer-by-layer printing and several others. Here, Paulsen et al. demonstrate an optofluidic approach, whereby masked ultraviolet light is illuminated on photosensitive fluids whose cross-sections are shaped by fluid inertia.

    • Kevin S. Paulsen
    • , Dino Di Carlo
    •  & Aram J. Chung

  • Article |

    The shape of red blood cells is highly sensitive to surrounding liquid environment. Here, Miccio et al. make red blood cells into optofluidic lenses with fully controllable focal length at the microscale, which can be used for imaging and optical magnification in addition to blood diseases detection.

    • L. Miccio
    • , P. Memmolo
    •  & P. Ferraro

  • Article |

    Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays are common biological analyses, but they can be hindered by non-specific binding and background interference. Here, the authors present an optofluidic laser-based ELISA technique with low detection limits and in the presence of significant non-specific binding.

    • Xiang Wu
    • , Maung Kyaw Khaing Oo
    •  & Xudong Fan

  • Article |

    Sorting of material chirality is demanded in many industries, and conventional strategies are limited to the usage of chiral shape of the entity to be sorted. Tkachenko and Brasselet present a passive optical sorting method to achieve the same goal, which relies on the chirality–light interaction.

    • Georgiy Tkachenko
    •  & Etienne Brasselet

  • Article |

    Plasmonic systems are a useful platform for many nanoscale applications, and plasmonic tweezers offer a method for trapping and manipulating biological particles. Roxworthy et al. study fluid convection in a nanoantenna optical trapping system and characterise the heat flow due to optical absorption.

    • Brian J. Roxworthy
    • , Abdul M. Bhuiya
    •  & Kimani C. Toussaint Jr

  • Article |

    Plasmonics offers sub-diffraction limit optical devices, but multiple functionalities are difficult to build in the solid state. By combining it with fluidics, Zhao et al. present a tunable and reconfigurable plasmonic lens using laser-controllable bubble formation in a microfluidic environment.

    • Chenglong Zhao
    • , Yongmin Liu
    •  & Tony Jun Huang

  • Article |

    Light–sound interactions in microcavities are used for optomechanical excitation and cooling, but have previously only been shown in solid-state devices. Here, Bahl et al. generate acoustic oscillations in microfluidic resonators to enable novel optomechanical interactions with liquid-phase materials.

    • Gaurav Bahl
    • , Kyu Hyun Kim
    •  & Tal Carmon

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