Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-21DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01633-0
Stuart Daudlin, Anthony Rizzo, Sunwoo Lee, Devesh Khilwani, Christine Ou, Songli Wang, Asher Novick, Vignesh Gopal, Michael Cullen, Robert Parsons, Kaylx Jang, Alyosha Molnar, Keren Bergman
{"title":"Three-dimensional photonic integration for ultra-low-energy, high-bandwidth interchip data links","authors":"Stuart Daudlin, Anthony Rizzo, Sunwoo Lee, Devesh Khilwani, Christine Ou, Songli Wang, Asher Novick, Vignesh Gopal, Michael Cullen, Robert Parsons, Kaylx Jang, Alyosha Molnar, Keren Bergman","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01633-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01633-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) hardware is positioned to unlock revolutionary computational abilities by leveraging vast distributed networks of advanced semiconductor chips. However, a barrier for AI scaling is the disproportionately high energy and chip area required to transmit data between the chips. Here we present a solution to this long-standing overhead through dense three-dimensional (3D) integration of photonics and electronics. With 80 photonic transmitters and receivers occupying a combined chip footprint of only 0.3 mm<sup>2</sup>, our platform achieves an order-of-magnitude-greater number of 3D-integrated channels than prior demonstrations. This enables both high-bandwidth (800 Gb s<sup>−1</sup>) and highly efficient, dense (5.3 Tb s<sup>−1</sup> mm<sup>−2</sup>) 3D channels. The transceiver energy efficiency is showcased by a state-of-the-art 50 fJ and 70 fJ per communicated bit from the transmitter and receiver front ends, respectively, operating at 10 Gb s<sup>−1</sup>per channel. Furthermore, the design is compatible with commercial complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor foundries fabrication on 300-mm-sized wafers, providing a route to mass production. Such ultra-energy-efficient, high-bandwidth data communication links promise to eliminate the bandwidth bottleneck between spatially distinct compute nodes and support the scaling of future AI computing hardware.</p>","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143672430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-21DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01644-x
Han Xu, Jianhua Han, Maxime Babics, Luis Huerta Hernandez, Diego Rosas Villalva, Matteo Sanviti, Jules Bertrandie, Yongcao Zhang, Ye Liu, Hu Chen, Lingyun Zhao, Joel Troughton, Jaime Martin, Frédéric Laquai, Stefaan De Wolf, Derya Baran
{"title":"Elucidating the photodegradation pathways of polymer donors for organic solar cells with seven months of outdoor operational stability","authors":"Han Xu, Jianhua Han, Maxime Babics, Luis Huerta Hernandez, Diego Rosas Villalva, Matteo Sanviti, Jules Bertrandie, Yongcao Zhang, Ye Liu, Hu Chen, Lingyun Zhao, Joel Troughton, Jaime Martin, Frédéric Laquai, Stefaan De Wolf, Derya Baran","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01644-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01644-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The operating lifetime under real-world climates is a critical metric to evaluate the commercial potential of any photovoltaic technology. Organic solar cells (OSCs) have experienced rapid breakthroughs in performance over the past decade owing to advances in device and materials engineering, including interfaces, electron acceptors, and donors. However, the intrinsic photodegradation of polymer donors remains poorly understood, and a path to stable OSCs is yet to be demonstrated under outdoor testing conditions. Herein we elucidate the side-chain-induced degradation mechanism in polymer donors and present an outdoor stability database covering 15 representative non-fullerene-based OSCs, supported by in-lab photostability and thermostability analysis. By understanding the performance losses induced by several photoactive layers and interfaces, we demonstrate that encapsulated non-fullerene-based OSCs can retain 91% of the initial efficiency after seven months of operation under hot and sunny Saudi Arabian climates. These findings reveal encouraging prospects of non-fullerene-based OSCs for outdoor applications.</p>","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143665879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-14DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01642-z
Chaitanya K. Mididoddi, Robert J. Kilpatrick, Christina Sharp, Philipp del Hougne, Simon A. R. Horsley, David B. Phillips
{"title":"Threading light through dynamic complex media","authors":"Chaitanya K. Mididoddi, Robert J. Kilpatrick, Christina Sharp, Philipp del Hougne, Simon A. R. Horsley, David B. Phillips","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01642-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01642-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The dynamic scattering of light impacts sensing and communication technologies throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Here we introduce a new way to control the propagation of light through time-varying complex media. Our strategy is based on the observation that in many dynamic scattering systems, some parts of the medium will change configuration more slowly than others. We experimentally demonstrate a suite of new techniques to identify and guide light through the more temporally stable channels within dynamic scattering media—threading optical fields around multiple highly dynamic pockets hidden at unknown locations inside. We first show how the temporal fluctuations in scattered light can be suppressed by optimizing the wavefront of the incident field. Next, we demonstrate how to accelerate this procedure by two orders of magnitude using a physically realized form of adjoint gradient descent optimization. Finally, we show how the time-averaged transmission matrix reveals a basis of temporal fluctuation eigenchannels that can be used to increase the stability of beam shaping through time-varying complex media such as bending multimode fibres. Our work has potential future applications to a variety of technologies reliant on general wave phenomena subject to dynamic conditions, from optics to microwaves and acoustics.</p>","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143618573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01640-1
Wallace Jaffray, Sven Stengel, Fabio Biancalana, Colton Bradley Fruhling, Mustafa Ozlu, Michael Scalora, Alexandra Boltasseva, Vladimir M. Shalaev, Marcello Ferrera
{"title":"Spatio-spectral optical fission in time-varying subwavelength layers","authors":"Wallace Jaffray, Sven Stengel, Fabio Biancalana, Colton Bradley Fruhling, Mustafa Ozlu, Michael Scalora, Alexandra Boltasseva, Vladimir M. Shalaev, Marcello Ferrera","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01640-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01640-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Transparent conducting oxides are highly doped semiconductors that exhibit favourable optical features compared with metals, including reduced material losses, tuneable electronic and optical properties, and enhanced damage thresholds. Recently, the photonic community has renewed its attention towards these materials, recognizing their remarkable nonlinear optical properties in the near-infrared spectrum. The exceptionally large and ultrafast change in the refractive index, which can be optically induced in these compounds, extends beyond the boundaries of conventional perturbative analysis and makes this class of materials the closest approximation to a time-varying system. Here we report the spatio-spectral fission of an ultrafast pulse trespassing a thin film of aluminium zinc oxide with a non-stationary refractive index. By applying phase conservation to this time-varying layer, our model can account for both space and time refraction and explain, in quantitative terms, the spatial separation of both spectrum and energy. Our findings represent an example of extreme nonlinear phenomena on subwavelength propagation distances, which provides new insights into transparent conducting oxides‚Äô transient optical properties. This can be critical for the ongoing research on photonic time crystals, on-chip generation of non-classical states of light, integrated optical neural networks, ultrafast beam steering and frequency-division multiplexing.</p>","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143569966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01629-w
Zhen Shen, Chun-Hua Dong
{"title":"Femtosecond laser writes a broadband miniaturized isolator","authors":"Zhen Shen, Chun-Hua Dong","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01629-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-025-01629-w","url":null,"abstract":"The challenges of fabricating low-loss waveguides and the reliance on bulky external magnets hinder the miniaturization of Faraday isolators. Now, researchers have overcome this limitation by femtosecond laser writing of waveguides within latched garnet.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"19 3","pages":"224-225"},"PeriodicalIF":32.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143565473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01636-x
Giampaolo Pitruzzello
{"title":"Pushing super-resolution microscopy with MINFLUX","authors":"Giampaolo Pitruzzello","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01636-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-025-01636-x","url":null,"abstract":"The performance of super-resolution microscopy is continuously improving. Nature Photonics interviewed Stefan Hell, from the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, about key milestones in the field, current capabilities of MINFLUX and what remains to be excited about.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"19 3","pages":"220-221"},"PeriodicalIF":32.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143565460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01634-z
Junqiu Liu
{"title":"Building atomic clock lasers with integrated photonics","authors":"Junqiu Liu","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01634-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-025-01634-z","url":null,"abstract":"By combining an ultralow-loss silicon nitride reference cavity with a diode laser, the interrogation of a strontium-ion optical clock is possible with excellent accuracy. The development is a step towards miniature, integrated optical clocks.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"19 3","pages":"226-227"},"PeriodicalIF":32.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143565475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01625-0
Lukas Scheiderer, Zach Marin, Jonas Ries
{"title":"MINFLUX achieves molecular resolution with minimal photons","authors":"Lukas Scheiderer, Zach Marin, Jonas Ries","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01625-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-025-01625-0","url":null,"abstract":"Optical super-resolution microscopy is a key technology for structural biology that offers high imaging contrast and live-cell compatibility. Minimal (fluorescence) photon flux microscopy, or MINFLUX, is an emerging super-resolution technique that localizes single fluorophores with high spatiotemporal precision by targeted scanning of a patterned excitation beam featuring a minimum. MINFLUX offers super-resolution imaging with nanometre resolution. When tracking single fluorophores, MINFLUX can achieve nanometre spatial and submillisecond temporal resolution over long tracks, greatly outperforming camera-based techniques. In this Review, we present the basic working principle of MINFLUX and explain how it can reach high photon efficiencies. We then outline the advantages and limitations of MINFLUX, describe recent extensions and variations of MINFLUX and, finally, provide an outlook for future developments. The authors review MINFLUX super-resolution microscopy, outlining its advantages and limitations, recent progress, and an outlook for future developments.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"19 3","pages":"238-247"},"PeriodicalIF":32.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143565471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2025-03-06DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01635-y
Giampaolo Pitruzzello
{"title":"Super-resolution microscopy for the life sciences","authors":"Giampaolo Pitruzzello","doi":"10.1038/s41566-025-01635-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-025-01635-y","url":null,"abstract":"Super-resolution microscopy offers valuable tools to tackle biological questions. Nature Photonics spoke with Markus Sauer, from the University of Würzburg, about the advantages and outstanding challenges of super-resolution microscopy for biological applications.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"19 3","pages":"222-223"},"PeriodicalIF":32.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143565458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}