To recent developments in photonic structures, some structural colors can be reversibly changed in response to external stimuli. Based on a lesson from natural photonic structure, specific examples of photonic crystal‐based structural coloring schemes show unprecedented possibilities in colorimetric sensor applications, such as temperature, pH, ion species, solvents, water vapor, humidity, pressure, and biomolecule detection. [..]

What causes vanadium dioxide films to conduct electricity has been discovered by researchers (insulator-metal transition). Their discoveries will enable thermal imaging devices with higher sensitivity and reaction rates than currently available analogs. While 100-nanometer thin vanadium dioxide (VO2) films do not normally conduct electricity, their resistance drops to 100,000 times when slightly heated. It could [..]

Conducting or semiconducting materials embedded in insulating polymeric substrates can be useful in bioelectronics applications; however, attainment of this composite configuration by direct chemical processes is challenging. Laser-assisted synthesis has evolved as a fast and inexpensive technique to prepare various materials, but its utility in the construction of biophysical tools or biomedical devices is less [..]

Researchers employed Nafion as a solid medium for the fabrication of transparent luminescent materials with tunable emissions. These membranes are quite famous for their ability to conduct protons and exchange cations. Nafion is composed of hydrophobic main chains and pendant hydrophilic side chains. The side chains are especially important. When Nafion is introduced to a [..]

Researchers attempt to use a deep learning framework to understand better how mental illness and other disorders affect the brain. The team is combining various types of brain imaging data to identify patterns indicative of brain disorders. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering funds their research with a $2.4 million, four-year grant. Due [..]

Scientists have demonstrated tunable red, green, and blue single-mode microlasers in optimized heterogeneously coupled cavities constructed with three spherical microcavities incorporated with different gain media. The microcavities with perfect circle boundaries and smooth surfaces were applied as high-quality WGM resonators. Benefiting from the outstanding flexibilities, RGB lasing was obtained by doping the corresponding dyes into [..]

Tuberculosis (TB) disease affects 10 million people worldwide every year and is the leading cause of death from an infectious disease. New TB biomarkers are required for a variety of applications, including detection of sub-clinical disease for early intervention to prevent disease progression; detection of new active TB cases; and for monitoring of treatment response [..]

Artificial light is essential in information technologies such as optical telecommunications, data storage, security features, and information display. In this paper, researchers present a chiral lanthanide lumino-glass with extra-large circularly polarized light (luminescence) (CPL) for advanced photonic security device applications. A europium complex with the chiral (+)-3-(trifluoroacetyl) camphor ligand and the achiral glass promoter tris [..]

The explosive rise of silicon photonics has led to renewed interest in the electro-optic (EO) or Pockels effect due to its potential uses in many next-generation device applications. To find materials with a strong EO response in thin-film form, which are essential for low power and small footprint devices, one needs to find a general [..]

Over the last decade or so, a group of scientists has begun to transform the field of optics by engineering flat optics metasurfaces, which use an array of millions of tiny, microscopically thin, and transparent quartz pillars to diffract and mold the flow of light in much the same way that a glass lens does, [..]

For some applications, such as microprojection and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), researchers continue to chase ever-smaller pixel sizes (nanopixels) and higher pixel densities. And these efforts eventually run up against some practical limitations, particularly on pixel brightness, imposed by the 2D-patterning approaches commonly used to create display pixels. Now, researchers have proposed a novel [..]

Unlike conventional solar panels, which convert sunlight into energy by absorption, researchers’ novel radiative cooling technology works in the opposite direction. Even though there isn’t any heat for solar panels to collect at night, heat still leaves the system that can be converted into electricity. This radiating heat spreads outward as infrared light when a [..]

A new project pushes system-in-package designs past the terabit-per-second threshold through extremely sophisticated electronics, CMOS, and optical physics management. The three main system blocks—processor, memory, and interconnects (I/O)—are constantly being reevaluated and are currently the “choke point” in enhancing overall efficiency. Each component strives to improve so as not to receive unfair criticism. Interconnects must [..]

Researchers have developed a laser test for measuring the effectiveness of a facemask. The mask-testing setup is much simpler than those commonly seen in typical laser labs: it consists only of a laser, a lens, and a camera. Specifically, a laser is shone through a cylindrical lens to create an elliptical beam profile, which then [..]

While your skeleton helps your body to move, fine skeleton-like filaments within your cells likewise help cellular structures to move. Now, researchers have developed a new imaging method that lets them monitor a small subset of these filaments, called actin. Actin is the most abundant protein in the cell, so when you image it, it’s [..]

Researchers have developed a brand-new strategy (optical metasurface) that will allow quantum sensors to get much smaller than they are right now. Currently used in sensing devices, quantum technology engineers and manipulates atoms at extremely low temperatures by carefully regulating laser beams. To handle this, the atoms must be kept in a vacuum-sealed container where [..]

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is humans’ third most impactful example of potentially lethal coronavirus infection within the last 20 years. Coronaviruses are positive-stranded RNA (+RNA) viruses that replicate their unusually large genomes in the host cell’s cytoplasm. This process is supported by an elaborate virus-induced network of transformed endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membranes [..]

In the past ten years, there has been a lot of research into on-chip spectrometers with customized spectral ranges and small sizes. When splitting various frequencies, there is a trade-off between resolution and size because the propagation length usually scales inversely with the frequency resolution. On-chip compressive spectrometers can be used with scattering media in [..]

Integrating a light source inside a Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) platform has always been as challenging as much as an appealing task. Besides the manufacturing issues, one of the most limiting aspects is due to the need for an energy source to feed the light emission (battery free). A solution independent of external energy sources can be [..]

Researchers have shown that quantum particles can carry an unlimited amount of information about things they have interacted with. The results could enable far more precise measurements and power new technologies, such as super-precise microscopes and quantum computers. Metrology is the science of estimations and measurements. If you weighed yourself this morning, you’ve done metrology. [..]