Optics and photonics articles within Nature Materials

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    The success of silicon photonics is a product of two decades of innovations. This photonic platform is enabling novel research fields and novel applications ranging from remote sensing to ultrahigh-bandwidth communications. The future of silicon photonics depends on our ability to ensure scalability in bandwidth, size and power.

    • Michal Lipson

  • News & Views |

    Structuring surfaces coated with nanoparticles in the subwavelength range allows almost complete control over the optical appearance of an object.

    • Frank Scheffold

  • Letter |

    Desired for optical sensing or visual communications, structural colour-changing materials are hindered by the lack of scalable manufacturing. Here, by adapting Lippmann photography, large-area manufacturing of colour patterns in photosensitive elastomers is realized.

    • Benjamin Harvey Miller
    • , Helen Liu
    •  & Mathias Kolle

  • News & Views |

    Understanding, at the atomic level, the effect of the stacking and twisting of different layered two-dimensional materials is a major challenge for the future of twistronics. Optical excitations evidence twist-angle-dependent whirlpool-shaped distortions in such materials.

    • Ado Jorio

  • News & Views |

    Giant exciton–polaritons come to the scene from a thin Cu2O crystal sandwiched by a microcavity. Their anticipated strong interactions may facilitate the development of a promising Rydberg solid-state platform for quantum technologies.

    • HeeBong Yang
    •  & Na Young Kim

  • Article |

    The realization of large-scale exciton–polariton platforms operating at room temperature and exhibiting long-lived, strongly interacting excitons has been elusive. Here, the authors demonstrate a room-temperature perovskite-based polaritonic platform with a polariton lattice size of up to 10 × 10.

    • Renjie Tao
    • , Kai Peng
    •  & Wei Bao

  • News & Views |

    A temporal modulation protocol enriches topological Floquet physics by enabling the realization of bimorphic Floquet systems where Chern and anomalous Floquet phases coexist in a single platform of laser-written waveguides.

    • Alexander B. Khanikaev

  • Article |

    A multiscale modelling platform combining nanoscale resonant scattering, mesoscale multiple scattering and macroscale light transport effectively predicts the macroscopic visual effects created by optical metamaterials with disordered nanostructures.

    • Kevin Vynck
    • , Romain Pacanowski
    •  & Philippe Lalanne

  • News & Views |

    Early time transient absorption microscopy in quantum dot solids reveals anomalous exciton transport with multiple different temporal regimes within hundreds of femtoseconds after photoexcitation.

    • Naomi S. Ginsberg
    •  & William A. Tisdale

  • Article |

    Departing from common approaches to designing Floquet topological insulators, here the authors present a photonic realization of Floquet topological insulators revealing topological phases that simultaneously support Chern and anomalous topological states.

    • Georgios G. Pyrialakos
    • , Julius Beck
    •  & Demetrios N. Christodoulides

  • Article |

    Cu2O is a promising platform to host Rydberg exciton–polaritons, where excitons strongly couple to cavity photons, however their realization has been elusive. Here, the authors report Rydberg exciton–polaritons with principal quantum numbers up to n = 6.

    • Konstantinos Orfanakis
    • , Sai Kiran Rajendran
    •  & Hamid Ohadi

  • News & Views |

    Revealing the molecular orientations of anisotropic materials is desired in materials science and soft-matter physics. Now, an optical diffraction tomographic approach enables the direct reconstruction of dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures in three dimensions.

    • Anne Sentenac
    • , Guillaume Maire
    •  & Patrick C. Chaumet

  • Article |

    Measuring three-dimensional dielectric tensors is desired for applications in material and soft matter physics. Here, the authors use a tomographic approach and inversely solve the vectorial wave equation to directly reconstruct dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures.

    • Seungwoo Shin
    • , Jonghee Eun
    •  & YongKeun Park

  • News & Views |

    Controlled nanophotonic fabrication in silicon carbide enables the quantum manipulation of nuclear spins with optical and spin coherence comparable to the pristine material, setting the ground for scalable integrated quantum networks.

    • S. Castelletto

  • Article |

    Controlled synthesis of heterostructured III-V–II-VI nanocrystals shows that dipole moments formed at the core–shell interface can tune the optoelectronic properties of these nanomaterials and their performance in light-emitting devices.

    • Byeong Guk Jeong
    • , Jun Hyuk Chang
    •  & Wan Ki Bae

  • Article |

    The large-scale fabrication of cellulose nanocrystal photonic films in a roll-to-roll device is achieved by careful optimization of the cellulose nanocrystal formulation and its controlled deposition and drying on a substrate. Once dry, these photonic films can be peeled and milled into effect pigments, highlighting the potential of cellulose nanocrystals as a sustainable material for industrial photonic applications.

    • Benjamin E. Droguet
    • , Hsin-Ling Liang
    •  & Silvia Vignolini

  • News & Views |

    Tamm plasmon thermal emitters can provide efficient infrared emission, but are limited by design complexity. Now, the inverse design of Tamm modes facilitated by CdO films on aperiodic dielectric reflectors enables emission with an on-demand spectrum.

    • Juerg Leuthold
    •  & Alexander Dorodnyy

  • Article |

    A strategy to confine phosphorescent organic chromophores within ionic crystals proves effective in suppressing non-radiative recombination channels and increasing the phosphorescence efficiency of blue-emitting heavy-atom-free emitters.

    • Wenpeng Ye
    • , Huili Ma
    •  & Wei Huang

  • Review Article |

    This Review discusses the photophysical properties and nonlinear behaviour of single molecules, and their use as single-photon sources and in single-molecule sensing and quantum-sensing applications.

    • C. Toninelli
    • , I. Gerhardt
    •  & M. Orrit

  • Article |

    Stacked elastomeric arrays containing plasmonic nanoparticles show efficient chiral responses that can be fully controlled by mechanical compression and stack rotation. These simple layered materials may be useful modulators for photonic applications.

    • Patrick T. Probst
    • , Martin Mayer
    •  & Andreas Fery

  • News & Views |

    Bright hot plasmon emission is observed in graphene due to the ultrafast relaxation of hot carriers that were excited by femtosecond laser pulses of visible light.

    • Frank H. L. Koppens
    •  & Klaas-Jan Tielrooij

  • Article |

    A second-order topological Weyl semimetal based on a 3D-printed acoustic crystal, exhibiting Weyl points, Fermi arc surface states, and hinge states, has been experimentally demonstrated.

    • Qiang Wei
    • , Xuewei Zhang
    •  & Suotang Jia

  • News & Views |

    Correlated real-space imaging and optical measurements of twisted MoSe2/WSe2 bilayers reveal strain-induced modulations of the moiré potential landscape, tuning arrays of 0D traps into 1D stripes and leading to substantial changes in the optical response of the heterostructures.

    • Long Zhang
    •  & Hui Deng

  • Review Article |

    The development of perovskite emitters, their use in light-emitting devices, and the challenges in enhancing the efficiency and stability, as well as reducing the potential toxicity of this technology are discussed in this Review.

    • Xiao-Ke Liu
    • , Weidong Xu
    •  & Feng Gao

  • Review Article |

    Thermoplasmonics is based on the use of plasmonic nanoparticles as sources of heat remotely controlled by light. This Review discusses its current applications and challenges in a broad range of scientific fields, from nanomedicine to hot-electron chemistry and nanofluidics.

    • Guillaume Baffou
    • , Frank Cichos
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • News & Views |

    The integration of silicon-based waveguides with barium titanate thin films enables the realization of efficient electro-optic switches and modulators operating at cryogenic temperatures, offering promising opportunities for quantum technologies.

    • Goran Z. Mashanovich

  • Letter |

    The integration of barium titanate thin films with silicon-based waveguides enables the operation of efficient electro-optic switches and modulators at temperatures as low as 4 K, with potential applications in quantum computing and cryogenic computing technologies.

    • Felix Eltes
    • , Gerardo E. Villarreal-Garcia
    •  & Stefan Abel

  • Article |

    Electric-field tunable plasmonic excitations in semiconducting carbon nanotubes are shown to behave consistently with the nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory, providing a platform to study non-conventional one-dimensional electron dynamics and realize integrated nanophotonic devices.

    • Sheng Wang
    • , Sihan Zhao
    •  & Feng Wang

  • Article |

    Counter-propagating chiral edge states are demonstrated in a photonic structure able to effectively incorporate fermionic time-reversal symmetry, thus providing the photonic implementation of an electronic topological insulator.

    • Lukas J. Maczewsky
    • , Bastian Höckendorf
    •  & Alexander Szameit

  • Article |

    Vectorial electromagnetic modes in coupled metallic nanolasers are used to emulate the behaviour of complex magnetic materials, providing an integrated nanophotonic platform to study spin exchange interactions and map large-scale optimization problems.

    • Midya Parto
    • , William Hayenga
    •  & Mercedeh Khajavikhan

  • Article |

    Type-II van der Waals interfaces formed by different two-dimensional materials enable robust interlayer optical transitions, regardless of common issues such as lattice constant mismatch, layer misalignment or whether the constituent compounds are direct or indirect band semiconductors.

    • Nicolas Ubrig
    • , Evgeniy Ponomarev
    •  & Alberto F. Morpurgo

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