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Optical materials and structures are substances used to manipulate the flow of light. This can include reflecting, absorbing, focusing or splitting an optical beam. The efficiency of a specific material at each task is strongly wavelength dependent, thus a full understanding of the interaction between light and matter is vital.
Achieving acoustic waveguides with low loss, tailorability, and easy fabrication is a considerable challenge. Here, the authors introduce suspended anti-resonant acoustic waveguides with superior confinement and high selectivity of acoustic modes, supporting both forward and backward SBS on chip.
Enhanced light–molecule interactions in high-finesse fibre-based Fabry–Pérot microcavities are used to detect and profile individual unlabelled solution-phase biomolecules, leading to potential applications in the life and chemical sciences.
Electro-optical photonic integrated circuits based on lithium tantalate perform as well as current state-of-the-art ones using lithium niobate but the material has the advantage of existing commercial uses in consumer electronics, easing the problem of scalability.
L-shaped silicon metamaterials are realized exhibiting broadband and enhanced chirality. The current work sets new benchmarks in the assembly of ultrathin dielectric chiral metamaterials that can efficiently control chiral light-matter interactions.
Properly maintaining the skin temperature is critical for wound healing, especially outdoors. Now, a lightweight and skin-friendly wound dressing is reported that can continuously cool the skin without energy input.