{"title":"Wear-resistant surface coloring by ultrathin optical coatings","authors":"Geng, Jiao, Shi, Liping, Ni, Junhuan, Jia, Qiannan, Yan, Wei, Qiu, Min","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00061-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00061-5","url":null,"abstract":"We design, fabricate, optically and mechanically characterize wearable ultrathin coatings on various substrates, including sapphire, glass and silicon wafer. Extremely hard ceramic materials titanium nitride (TiN), aluminium nitride (AlN), and titanium aluminium nitride (TiAlN) are employed as reflective, isolated and absorptive coating layer, respectively. Two types of coatings have been demonstrated. First, we deposit TiAlN after TiN on various substrates (TiAlN-TiN, total thicknesses <100 nm), achieving vivid and viewing-angle independent surface colors. The colors can be tuned by varying the thickness of TiAlN layer. The wear resistance of the colorful ultrathin optical coatings is verified by scratch tests. The Mohs hardness of commonly used surface coloring made of Si-/Ge-metals on substrates is <2.5, as soft as fingernail. However, the Mohs hardness of our TiAlN-TiN on substrates is evaulated to be 7-9, harder than quartz. Second, Fano-resonant optical coating (FROC), which can transmit and reflect the same color as a beam split filter is also obtained by successively coating TiAlN-TiN-AlN-TiN (four-layer film with a total thickness of 130 nm) on transparent substrates. The FROC coating is as hard as glass. Such wearable and color-tunable thin-film structural colors and filters may be attractive for many practical applications such as sunglasses.","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"159 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adaptive optical microscopy via virtual-imaging-assisted wavefront sensing for high-resolution tissue imaging","authors":"Zhou, Zhou, Huang, Jiangfeng, Li, Xiang, Gao, Xiujuan, Chen, Zhongyun, Jiao, Zhenfei, Zhang, Zhihong, Luo, Qingming, Fu, Ling","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00060-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00060-6","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive optics (AO) is a powerful tool for optical microscopy to counteract the effects of optical aberrations and improve the imaging performance in biological tissues. The diversity of sample characteristics entails the use of different AO schemes to measure the underlying aberrations. Here, we present an indirect wavefront sensing method leveraging a virtual imaging scheme and a structural-similarity-based shift measurement algorithm to enable aberration measurement using intrinsic structures even with temporally varying signals. We achieved high-resolution two-photon imaging in a variety of biological samples, including fixed biological tissues and living animals, after aberration correction. We present AO-incorporated subtractive imaging to show that our method can be readily integrated with resolution enhancement techniques to obtain higher resolution in biological tissues. The robustness of our method to signal variation is demonstrated by both simulations and aberration measurement on neurons exhibiting spontaneous activity in a living larval zebrafish.","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"160 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tunable narrow-band single-channel add-drop integrated optical filter with ultrawide FSR","authors":"Sun, Chunlei, Yin, Yuexin, Chen, Zequn, Ye, Yuting, Luo, Ye, Ma, Hui, Wang, Lichun, Wei, Maoliang, Jian, Jialing, Tang, Renjie, Dai, Hao, Wu, Jianghong, Li, Junying, Zhang, Daming, Lin, Hongtao, Li, Lan","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00056-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00056-2","url":null,"abstract":"Free-spectral-range (FSR)-free optical filters have always been a critical challenge for photonic integrated circuits. A high-performance FSR-free filter is highly desired for communication, spectroscopy, and sensing applications. Despite significant progress in integrated optical filters, the FSR-free filter with a tunable narrow-band, high out-of-band rejection, and large fabrication tolerance has rarely been demonstrated. In this paper, we propose an exact and robust design method for add-drop filters (ADFs) with an FSR-free operation capability, a sub-nanometer optical bandwidth, and a high out-of-band rejection (OBR) ratio. The achieved filter has a 3-dB bandwidth of < 0.5 nm and an OBR ratio of 21.5 dB within a large waveband of 220 nm, which to the best of our knowledge, is the largest-FSR ADF demonstrated on a silicon photonic platform. The filter exhibits large tunability of 12.3 nm with a heating efficiency of 97 pm/mW and maintains the FSR-free feature in the whole tuning process. In addition, we fabricated a series of ADFs with different periods, which all showed reliable and excellent performances.","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"160 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flexible minimally invasive coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) measurement method with tapered optical fiber probe for single-cell application","authors":"Wang, Tong, Jiang, Junfeng, Liu, Kun, Wang, Shuang, Niu, Panpan, Liu, Yize, Liu, Tiegen","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00058-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00058-0","url":null,"abstract":"We proposed and demonstrated a flexible, endoscopic, and minimally invasive coherent anti-Raman Stokes scattering (CARS) measurement method for single-cell application, employing a tapered optical fiber probe. A few-mode fiber (FMF), whose generated four-wave mixing band is out of CARS signals, was selected to fabricate tapered optical fiber probes, deliver CARS excitation pulses, and collect CARS signals. The adiabatic tapered fiber probe with a diameter of 11.61 μm can focus CARS excitation lights without mismatch at the focal point. The measurements for proof-of-concept were made with methanol, ethanol, cyclohexane, and acetone injected into simulated cells. The experimental results show that the tapered optical fiber probe can detect carbon-hydrogen (C–H) bond-rich substances and their concentration. To our best knowledge, this optical fiber probe provides the minimum size among probes for detecting CARS signals. These results pave the way for minimally invasive live-cell detection in the future.","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"158 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metasurface with dynamic chiral meta-atoms for spin multiplexing hologram and low observable reflection","authors":"Wang, He, Qin, Zhe, Huang, Lingling, Li, Yongfeng, Zhao, Ruizhe, Zhou, Hongqiang, He, Haoyang, Zhang, Jieqiu, Qu, Shaobo","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00057-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00057-1","url":null,"abstract":"Spin light manipulation based on chiral metasurfaces is a striking hotspot that has intrigued huge attention. Circular dichroism, a unique phenomenon of chiral atoms/molecules, has been regarded as another auxiliary dimension for guiding electromagnetic waves, which has been explored in the field of artificial material sciences yet a challenging issue. Here, a generic strategy based on dynamic chiral meta-atom for revealing strong circular dichroism as well as applicable electromagnetic functionality is proposed in microwave regime. We demonstrate a dynamic metasurface that enables the fully independent holograms reconstruction for one circular polarization or the other at the active operating state. On the other hand, the electromagnetic scattering is realized for lowering observable backward reflection at the passive state. Numerical simulation and experimental verification are conducted to manifest the feasibility. It is expected that the proposed strategy can be applied to broaden the horizon for dynamic chiral meta-devices and may find applications in information encryption, anti-counterfeiting, and other dynamic systems.","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"161 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intracavity spherical aberration for selective generation of single-transverse-mode Laguerre-Gaussian output with order up to 95","authors":"Q. Sheng, Aihua Wang, Yuanyuan Ma, Sijia Wang, Meng Wang, Zheng Shi, Junjie Liu, Shijie Fu, W. Shi, Jianquan Yao, T. Omatsu","doi":"10.1186/s43074-022-00050-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-022-00050-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93483,"journal":{"name":"PhotoniX","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65801147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}