Nanowerk October 16, 2023 An international team of researchers (Japan, Spain) demonstrated electromagnetic waves following a gravitational field using a photonic crystal. They introduced spatially distorted photonic crystals (DPCs) capable of deflecting light waves owing to their pseudo gravity caused by lattice distortion. They experimentally verified the phenomenon in the terahertz range using a silicon DPC. Pseudo gravity caused by lattice distortion revealed alternative approaches to achieve on-chip trajectory control of light propagation in PCs. Their work has far-reaching implications for the world of optics and materials science, and bear significance for the development of 6G communications… read more. TECHNICAL […]
Tag Archives: Photonic crystals
Nano-architected material refracts light backward – an important step toward one day creating photonic circuits
Nanowerk January 28, 2022 Negative refraction has not been observed in nature but was theorized to occur in artificially periodic materials. Researchers at Caltech designed, fabricated 3D photonic crystals (PhCs) capable of negative refraction in the mid-infrared. Band structure and equifrequency contours were calculated to inform the design of 3D polymer–germanium core–shell PhCs. They successfully characterized a polymer–Ge core–shell lattice and mapped its band structure, which were used to calculate the PhC refraction behavior. An analysis of wave propagation revealed that this 3D core–shell PhC refracts light negatively and possesses an effective negative index of refraction in the experimentally observed […]
Communications device offers huge bandwidth potential
EurekAlert December 10, 2019 Researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated that the device they developed can rapidly switch functionality to perform the varied tasks needed to support a network with carrier frequencies of over 100 gigahertz. They developed a 3D-printed scaffold, which served as a negative of the desired network. A polymer was poured in and, once set, microcapillaries 0.3 millimeters in diameter were filled with plasma, metal or a dielectric gas. Using this replica-molding technique they perfected the dimensions and spacings of the microcapillaries in the lattice. They showed that rapid changes in the electromagnetic characteristics of […]
Trapping light using Tetris-like clusters of crystals
Nanowerk July 10, 2018 Lack of precision and control often produced photonic crystals that have inconsistent defects that jeopardise their commercial performance. Working under a project funded by the EU Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme, an international team of researchers (France, Sweden, Israel) has developed a new microfluidic set-up, where researchers can ‘bend matter’, enabling them to re-organise the colloidal droplet clusters used to fabricate the crystals into Tetris-like blocks. The clusters have sizes ranging between two to five monodispersed droplets with an average size of 400nm and are highly replicable. Using this technique allows researchers to easily construct […]