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Defect engineering is crucial for realizing all-optical integrated circuits from self-assembled photonic crystals. A two-photon polymerization strategy paves the way towards incorporation of arbitrary defects in silicon inverse opal photonic crystals.
The regeneration of weak and distorted optical signals is vital in long-haul optical communication systems. Now scientists at Cornell University have developed an all-optical scheme that performs the task and is small enough to fit on a chip.
A re-examination of firefly bioluminescence has revealed that the efficiency of light generation in fireflies is actually less than half the widely accepted value. The study also casts doubts over the mechanism that determines the colour of the emission.
