/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A collaborative research team led by Interim Head of Â鶹ÒùÔºics Professor Shuang Zhang from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), along with National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Imperial College London and University of California, Berkeley, has proposed a new synthetic complex frequency wave (CFW) approach to address optical loss in superimaging demonstration. The research findings were recently published in the journal Science. /news/2023-08-physicists-employ-synthetic-complex-frequency.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 21 Aug 2023 09:28:29 EDT news611828905 Robots and autonomous cars will have eyes that see much more than the human eye is capable of, a review of the growing field of meta-optics has found. /news/2022-12-meta-optics-disruptive-technology-didnt.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 22 Dec 2022 11:00:16 EST news590925791 Researchers from Northwestern University have made a significant advance in the way they produce exotic open-framework superlattices made of hollow metal nanoparticles. /news/2022-10-class-porous-metal-nanoparticles-yield.html Nanomaterials Wed, 26 Oct 2022 15:14:03 EDT news586016041 We all look in the mirror at least once a day to see our reflection. Mirrors are used not only in daily life but also in cutting-edge technologies such as semiconductor processing and high-resolution displays. Recently, a powerful Bragg reflection mirror based on high-index metamaterials has been developed that only reflects desired light. /news/2022-09-team-powerful-bragg-reflector-ultrahigh.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:48:36 EDT news583505312 University of Oregon physicists have developed a new method to manipulate sound—stop it, reverse it, store it and even use it later—in synthetic composite structures known as metamaterials. /news/2021-04-scientists-mechanism-precisely-soundwaves-metamaterials.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Fri, 16 Apr 2021 10:43:18 EDT news537788595 One of the challenges of optical microscopy is to continually increase the imaging power, or resolution. In the past three hundred odd years, scientists have been building ever-better microscopes. The limit, for a long time, was determined by only two factors: the contrast of the object being viewed, and the resolving power of the optics in the microscope. The last 50 years, in particular, have led to an explosion in techniques to improve both the contrast of object and the quality of the optics. /news/2020-05-waveguide-array-distortion.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 14 May 2020 02:39:57 EDT news508642782 Transparent electrodes are a critical component of solar cells and electronic displays. To collect electricity in a solar cell or inject electricity for a display, you need a conductive contact, like a metal, but you also need to be able to let light in (for solar cells) or out (for displays). /news/2019-08-nanowire-arrays-solar-cells.html Nanomaterials Fri, 09 Aug 2019 07:33:50 EDT news484554812 In materials science, achromatic optical components can be designed with high transparency and low dispersion. Materials scientists have shown that although metals are highly opaque, densely packed arrays of metallic nanoparticles with more than 75 percent metal by volume can become more transparent to infrared radiation than dielectrics such as germanium. Such arrays can form effective dielectrics that are virtually dispersion-free across ultra-broadband ranges of wavelengths to engineer a variety of next-generation metamaterial-based optical devices. /news/2019-05-extraordinarily-transparent-compact-metallic-metamaterials.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Fri, 17 May 2019 09:30:05 EDT news477211786 Nanostructures and natural patterns have long fascinated researchers in bioinspired materials engineering. Biological samples can be imaged and observed at the nanoscale using sophisticated analytical tools in materials science, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). While imaging methods contribute to the understanding of structures by revealing material properties for biomimetic materials synthesis, they have often done so with the loss of photonic properties inherent to the materials. /news/2019-01-biophotonics-situ-liquid-superlenses-image.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:40:04 EST news468147188 To enable negative refraction and related optical illusions, metamaterials are artificially engineered with unique properties that result from their internal physical structures, rather than their chemical composition. The concept is credited to an experiment conducted by the Soviet scientist Victor Veselago in 1968 to show that negatively refracting materials (as opposed to the typically observed positive refractive index) to create a negative index 'superlens' could be achieved when both electric permittivity (ε) and magnetic permeability (µ) of a material were negative. Thirty-three years after the conceptual proposal, the pioneering work of physicist John Pendry enabled the development of metamaterials as Veselago imagined—a composite material with negative refractive index providing greatly improved resolution. /news/2018-08-programmable-guidance-current-fields-laplacian.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 29 Aug 2018 09:40:01 EDT news454668008 A new reconfigurable device that emits patterns of thermal infrared light in a fully controllable manner could one day make it possible to collect waste heat at infrared wavelengths and turn it into usable energy. /news/2017-04-infrared-emitting-device-energy-harvesting.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 13 Apr 2017 10:00:02 EDT news411276619 Â鶹ÒùÔºicists from MIPT have predicted the existence of transparent composite media with unusual optical properties. Using graphics card-based simulations, scientists studied regular volume structures composed of two dielectrics with close parameters, and found that the optical properties of these structures differ from both those of natural crystals and artificial periodic composites, which are currently attracting a lot of interest. /news/2017-03-physicists-unusual-optical-composites.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 10 Mar 2017 07:28:38 EST news408353292 The field of metamaterials, an intersection of materials science, physics, nanotechnology and electrical engineering, aims to produce structures with unusual electromagnetic properties. Through the careful combination of multiple materials in a precise periodic arrangement, the resulting metamaterials exhibit properties that otherwise couldn't exist, such as a negative index of refraction. Some metamaterials can even channel electromagnetic waves around their surfaces, rendering them invisible for certain wavelengths of light. /news/2017-03-photonic-doping-class-metamaterials-easier.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 09 Mar 2017 14:00:06 EST news408273739 When John Crocker, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science was a graduate student, his advisor gathered together everyone in his lab to "throw down the gauntlet" on a new challenge in the field. /news/2017-02-hurdle-revolutionary-optical-metamaterial.html Condensed Matter Tue, 21 Feb 2017 12:53:51 EST news406904025 A team led by Cory Dean, assistant professor of physics at Columbia University, Avik Ghosh, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, and James Hone, Wang Fong-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering, has directly observed—for the first time—negative refraction for electrons passing across a boundary between two regions in a conducting material. First predicted in 2007, this effect has been difficult to confirm experimentally. The researchers were able to observe the effect in graphene, demonstrating that electrons in the atomically thin material behave like light rays, which can be manipulated by such optical devices as lenses and prisms. The findings, which are published in the September 30 edition of Science, could lead to the development of new types of electron switches, based on the principles of optics rather than electronics. /news/2016-10-electrons-graphene.html Nanophysics Wed, 05 Oct 2016 11:29:06 EDT news394885735 Scientists have demonstrated the effect of all-optical switching between streams of photons, born during the third harmonic generation process, using non-linear metamaterials. Researchers at Lomonosov Moscow State University planned the study and conducted calculations and experiments, while their German colleagues made samples of metamaterials. The results are published in Scientific Reports. According to Maxim Scherbakov, researcher at MSU's Laboratory of Nanophotonic metamaterials, the work will make it possible to use the metamaterials to create high-speed communication technologies in future. /news/2016-06-ultrasensitive-nonlinear-metamaterials.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 24 Jun 2016 06:30:02 EDT news385967638 Since ancient times, people have experimented with light, cherishing shiny metals like gold and cutting gemstones to brighten their sparkles. Today we are far more advanced in how we work with this ubiquitous energy. /news/2016-02-invisibilityengineering-metamaterials.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 26 Feb 2016 09:40:02 EST news375696606 A team of physicists from ITMO University, Ioffe Â鶹ÒùÔºical-Technical Institute and Australian National University have researched the phenomenon of phase transition between photonic crystals and metamaterials - two types of periodic structures capable of manipulating light in intricate ways. The study helps to gain an insight into the fundamental properties of periodic structures and opens new possibilities for the design and creation of new electromagnetic materials. The results of the study were published in Nature Communications. /news/2015-12-unconventional-phase-transition-photonic.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 23 Dec 2015 12:35:22 EST news370096511 A single drop of blood is teeming with microorganisms—imagine if we could see them, and even nanometer-sized viruses, with the naked eye. That's a real possibility with what scientists call a "perfect lens." The lens hasn't been created yet, but it is a theoretical perfected optical lens made out of metamaterials, which are engineered to change the way the materials interact with light. /news/2015-07-magic-metamaterials.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 17 Jul 2015 06:14:34 EDT news356332466 A research team has realized one of the long-standing theoretical predictions in nonlinear optical metamaterials: creation of a nonlinear material that has opposite refractive indices at the fundamental and harmonic frequencies of light. Such a material, which doesn't exist naturally, had been predicted for nearly a decade. /news/2015-06-theory-reality-nonlinear-optical-metamaterials.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 16 Jun 2015 08:00:01 EDT news353658347 Metamaterials - artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature - offer tantalizing future prospects such as high resolution optical microscopes and superfast optical computers. To realize the vast potential of metamaterials, however, scientists will need to hone their understanding of the fundamental physics behind them. This will require accurately predicting nonlinear optical properties - meaning that interaction with light changes a material's properties, for example, light emerges from the material with a different frequency than when it entered. Help has arrived. /news/2015-02-tool-metamaterials-nonlinear-optical-properties.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 09 Feb 2015 15:39:20 EST news342718747 Since the beginning of recorded time, humans have used materials found in nature to improve their lot. Since the turn of this century, scientists have studied metamaterials, artificial materials engineered to bend electromagnetic, acoustic and other types of waves in ways not possible in nature. /news/2015-01-discovery-invisibility-closer-reality.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 26 Jan 2015 07:33:13 EST news341479982 (Â鶹ÒùÔº)—In a normal rainbow, red is always on "top" while violet is on the "bottom." This is true whether the rainbow is created by a glass prism or by water droplets in the sky, and is due to the way that these materials refract light of different wavelengths: colors with longer wavelengths (red) are less refracted/bent than colors with shorter wavelengths (violet). Now in a new study, scientists have designed a prism that does the opposite: it refracts longer wavelengths more strongly than shorter wavelengths. The result is a reverse rainbow. /news/2015-01-metamaterial-prism-reverse-rainbow.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 09 Jan 2015 09:20:01 EST news340006094 Metamaterials have extraordinary properties when it comes to diverting and controlling waves, especially sound and light: for instance, they can make an object invisible, or increase the resolving power of a lens. Now, researchers at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (CNRS) and the Institut de Mécanique et d'Ingénierie de Bordeaux (CNRS/Université de Bordeaux/Bordeaux INP/Arts et Métiers ParisTech) have developed the first three-dimensional metamaterials by combining physico-chemical formulation and microfluidics technology. This is a new generation of soft metamaterials that are easier to shape. In their experiment, the researchers got ultrasonic oscillations to move backwards while the energy carried by the wave moved forwards. Their work opens up new prospects, especially for high-resolution imaging (ultrasonography). It is published on 15 December 2014 in the journal Nature Materials. /news/2014-12-ultrasounds-moonwalk-metamaterial.html Condensed Matter Tue, 23 Dec 2014 06:37:15 EST news338539022 (Â鶹ÒùÔº) —Traditional three-dimensional (3-D) plasmonic metamaterials with metallic structures – artificial materials that exploit coherent delocalized electron oscillations known as surface plasmons produced from the interaction of light with metal-dielectric materials – exhibit unique electromagnetic properties not found in natural materials, such as extraordinary transmission beyond the diffraction limit, efficient light-harvesting ability, plasmonic color filtering, and the ability to control the reflection or transmission direction of a light beam. However, they are difficult to fabricate, have a narrow usable bandwidth due to their resonant character, and exhibit low optical efficiency due to the inherent metal absorption. While two-dimensional metasurface structures have been proposed in an attempt to address these functional limitations, they still require complex designs and sophisticated fabrication procedures. /news/2014-10-flatland-knew-ye-unique-d.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:20:01 EDT news333345980 A wireless power transfer technique that uses miniaturised receivers suitable for real-world use has been demonstrated by researchers in Korea. Hyoungjun Kim and Chulhun Seo from Soongsil University used a metamaterial slab in a resonant coupling method to significantly improve the efficiency of the power transfer, and retain this efficiency over greater distances than previously possible. /news/2014-08-wireless-power-technique.html Engineering Mon, 04 Aug 2014 08:00:05 EDT news326356034 Electromagnetic metamaterials boast special properties not found in nature and are rapidly emerging as a hot research topic for reasons extending far beyond "invisibility cloaks." /news/2014-07-flexible-metamaterial-absorbers-suppress-electromagnetic.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 31 Jul 2014 06:37:55 EDT news326007444 The days of self-assembling nanoparticles taking hours to form a film over a microscopic-sized wafer are over. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have devised a technique whereby self-assembling nanoparticle arrays can form a highly ordered thin film over macroscopic distances in one minute. /news/2014-06-nanoparticle-thin-self-assemble-minute.html Nanophysics Mon, 09 Jun 2014 14:24:47 EDT news321542673 (Â鶹ÒùÔº) —Â鶹ÒùÔºicists from FOM institute AMOLF have for the first time simultaneously measured the electrical and magnetic fields of light. With such a measurement scientists can better understand the behaviour of light in nanostructured metamaterials – for example the material from which invisibility cloaks can be made. The AMOLF researchers published their findings on 15 December 2013 in Nature Photonics. /news/2013-12-peek-forgotten-component.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:19:30 EST news306577159 (Â鶹ÒùÔº) —The Information Age will get a major upgrade with the arrival of quantum processors many times faster and more powerful than today's supercomputers. For the benefits of this new Information Age 2.0 to be fully realized, however, quantum computers will need fast and efficient multi-directional light sources. While quantum technologies remain grist for science fiction, a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have taken an important step towards efficient light generation, the foundation for future quantum networks. /news/2013-12-nonlinear-light-generating-zero-index-metamaterial.html Condensed Matter Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:54:59 EST news305477683