Since the earliest scientific developments, researchers have looked to nature as an inspiration source for designing novel functional devices. The so-called bioinspiration and biomimetic designs enabled the development of multifunctional sensors. Recently, researchers developed an ultrasensitive flexible optical waveguide sensor bioinspired in orb webs. They named it bioinspired multifunctional flexible optical sensor (BioMFOS). The multifunctional [..]

Nanopositioning systems move and arrange stages and samples with incredible precision at nanometer and sub-nanometer scales (motion control). They can position themselves within tens of nanometers and possibly even single-digit nanometers, making them ideal for applications requiring extremely precise measurement, such as space telescopes and microscopes. And the capabilities of nanopositioning systems go beyond that. [..]

Tunable focusing is a desirable property in many optical imaging and sensing technologies. Still, it traditionally requires bulky components that cannot be integrated on-chip and have slow actuation speeds. Integration of metasurfaces into electrostatic micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) architectures have recently shown promise in overcoming these challenges but has limited out-of-plane displacement range while requiring high [..]

The increasing demand for high-resolution and real-time recognition in radar applications has fueled the development of electronic radars with increased bandwidth, high operation frequency, and fast processing capability. However, the generation and processing of wideband radar signals place an additional hardware burden on complex and fast electronics, limiting its capability for high spatial resolution applications. [..]

The most common type of pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), has a five-year survival rate of less than 10%. This deadly cancer is difficult to diagnose and treat in part because the tumors are very dense, preventing imaging dyes and medicines from reaching the cancerous cells packed inside. Now, researchers have demonstrated a nanotheranostic [..]

Spatial neglect damages the neural networks that support spatial attention and related cognitive and motor functions. People’s spatial orientation is altered, which can cause issues with balance, navigation, memory, reading, and other cognitive processes. While progress has been made in detecting post-stroke spatial neglect, treatment strategies have lagged. Researchers have developed a treatment approach based [..]

Contactless fingerprinting enables high scalability by leveraging existing infrastructure, such as smartphones with internet access, that we all have. Adoption and, thus, further development of such technologies only accelerated during the pandemic. A series of advances in fingerprint image acquisition using conducive mobile phone camera systems, image processing techniques resulting in high accuracy matching performance [..]

Some optical sensing chip designs contain nearly as small nanostructures as the biological and chemical molecules they’re searching for. These nanostructures improve the sensor’s ability to detect molecules. But their diminutive dimensions make it difficult to guide the molecules to the correct area of the sensor. Researchers have created a new sensor that aims at [..]

Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind terahertz laser that is compact, operates at room temperature, and can produce 120 individual frequencies spanning the 0.25 – 1.3 THz, far more range than previous terahertz sources. The laser is helpful in various applications, such as skin and breast cancer imaging, drug detection, airport security, and ultrahigh-capacity optical wireless [..]

Scientists have developed the world’s first advanced laser microscope (laser scanning confocal microscope) that can use Circularly Polarized Light (CPL) to distinguish left and right-handed molecules, also known as chiral enantiomers, within live cells. This significant breakthrough will enable researchers to gain new insights into chiral molecules and analyze previously unexplored areas of biology and [..]

Deep neural networks are increasingly used for computer-aided diagnosis, but erroneous diagnoses can be extremely costly for patients. Researchers have developed a learning to defer with uncertainty (LDU) algorithm, which considers the diagnostic network’s predictive uncertainty when learning which patients to diagnose automatically and which patients to defer to human experts. The algorithm minimizes patients’ [..]

The effects of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines on human lung carcinoma cells have been studied by researchers. Scientists could investigate cellular components using Raman imaging without opening the cell. Cytochromes can be classified based on the lowest electronic energy absorption band in their reduced state, allowing them to be distinguished from one another. Laser excitation at [..]

Researchers developed a gear-shaped photonic crystal microring that strengthens light-matter interactions without compromising optical quality. As a result, an on-chip microresonator with an optical quality factor 50 times higher than the previous record in slow light devices has been developed, which could improve microresonators used in various photonics applications such as sensing and metrology, nonlinear [..]

A new imaging technique (holographic camera) could one day allow doctors to peer into human tissue and behind bones, mechanics to inspect moving machinery like airplane turbines for tiny flaws, and automated vehicles to see through dense fog or around blind corners. A new study demonstrates how the process, known as synthetic wavelength holography, can [..]

It is critical to measure and influence the direction of oscillation of a light wave in quantum communication or optical computing. Polarization control of a continuous laser wave is possible for the first time (via a special glass fiber with mirrors attached at both ends). Scientists can now control the polarization of a continuous light [..]

A new experimental platform promises to accelerate understanding how infectious bacteria develop antibiotic resistance. The microfluidic application rapidly encapsulates bacteria with varying antibiotic concentrations to study how they evolve to become resistant. Using microfluidics to encapsulate cells is not novel; numerous lab-on-a-chip devices are already available. The researchers have used it to discover biomarkers for [..]

Optical metamaterials will be in our pockets, kitchens, cars, and offices in the next three to five years. Experts in the field predict this. Because of increased technological maturity and lower production costs, doors to some profitable new markets for materials are opening. Optical metamaterials interact with photons using chemical compositions or surface properties smaller [..]

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has capped off the first seven months of its survey run by smashing through all previous records for three-dimensional galaxy surveys, creating the most extensive and most detailed map of the universe ever. Yet the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is only about 10% of the way through its five-year [..]

Over the last two decades, photonic quantum technologies have reached several significant milestones. However, scalability remains a major challenge when translating lab results into everyday applications. Applications frequently necessitate using over 1,000 optical components, each of which must be individually optimized. On the other hand, photonic quantum technologies can benefit from parallel advances in classical [..]

The wealth of properties in functional materials at the nanoscale has piqued the interest of many researchers in recent decades, fueling the development of ever more precise and inventive characterization techniques. Scanning probe microscopy-based techniques, for example, have been used in conjunction with advanced optical methods to probe the structure and properties of nanoscale domain [..]