Single-Molecule Protein Analysis by Centrifugal Droplet Immuno-PCR with Magnetic Nanoparticles.

Detecting proteins in ultralow concentrations in complex media is important for many applications but often relies on complicated techniques. Herein, a single-molecule protein analyzer with the potential for high-throughput applications is reported. Gold-coated magnetic nanoparticles with DNA-labeled antibodies were used for target recognition and separation. The immunocomplex was loaded into microdroplets generated with centrifugation. Immuno-PCR amplification of the DNA enabled the quantification of proteins at the level of single molecules. As an example, ultrasensitive detection of α-synuclein, a biomarker for neurodegenerative diseases, is achieved. The limit of detection was determined to be ∼50 aM in buffer and ∼170 aM in serum. The method exhibited high specificity and could be used to analyze post-translational modifications such as protein phosphorylation. This study will inspire wider studies on single-molecule protein detection, especially in disease diagnostics, biomarker discovery, and drug development.

Highly Wavelength-Selective Self-Powered Solar-Blind Ultraviolet Photodetector Based on Colloidal Aluminum Nitride Quantum Dots.

Colloidal quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals endowed with unique optoelectronic properties. A major challenge to the field is the lack of methods for synthesizing quantum dots exhibit strong photo-response in the deep-ultraviolet (DUV) band. Here, a facile solution-processed method is presented for synthesizing ultrawide bandgap aluminium nitride quantum dots (AlN QDs) showing distinguished UV-B photoluminescence. Combined with the strong optical response in solar blind band, a solution-processed, self-powered AlN-QDs/ß-Ga2O3 solar-blind photodetector is demonstrated. The photodetector is characterized with a high responsivity of 1.6 mA W-1 under 0 V bias and specific detectivity 7.60 × 10-11 Jones under 5 V bias voltage with good solar blind selectivity. Given the solution-processed capability of the devices and extraordinary properties of AlN QDs, this study anticipates the utilization of AlN QDs will open up unique opportunities for cost-effective industrial production of high-performance DUV optoelectronics for large-scale applications.

Self Q-switched single-frequency all-fiber laser.

Here, we propose a self Q-switched single-frequency (SF) all-fiber laser. The intra-cavity Er:Yb co-doped fiber serves not only as an active fiber for lasing but also as a fiber-type saturable absorber (SA). The self-Q-switching behavior is induced by the ground-state reabsorption of the unpumped portion of the active fiber. To achieve SF operation, double fiber loops constructed by two 3 dB optical couplers (OCs) form a cascade sub-cavity, which serves as a mode selector with a narrow bandwidth. Taking the advantage of a high damage threshold of the fiber-type SA, microjoule-level self-Q-switched SF pulses are obtained with a narrow linewidth of ∼252k H z. Combed with the measured pulse width of ∼1.766µs, the corresponding time-bandwidth product is ∼0.445, which is very close to the Gaussian transform limit. The maximum output power of the pulsed SF laser can reach ∼100m W. By stretching the fiber Bragg grating (FBG), the wavelength of the pulsed SF laser can be tuned.

Half-spectrum OFDM to quadruple the spectral efficiency of underwater wireless optical communication with digital power division multiplexing.

Improving the spectrum efficiency (SE) is an effective method to further enhance the data rate of bandwidth-limited underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems. Non-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (NOFDM) with a compression factor of 0.5 can save half of the bandwidth without introducing any inter-carrier-interference (ICI) only if the total number of subcarriers is large enough, and we termed it as half-spectrum OFDM (HS-OFDM). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported work on a closed-form HS-OFDM signal in the discrete domain from the perspective of a correlation matrix. Due to the special mathematical property, no extra complex decoding algorithm is required at the HS-OFDM receiver, making it as simple as the conventional OFDM receiver. Compared with traditional OFDM, HS-OFDM can realize the same data rate, but with a larger signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) margin. To fully use the SNR resource of the communication system, we further propose a digital power division multiplexed HS-OFDM (DPDM-HS-OFDM) scheme to quadruple the SE of conventional OFDM for the bandwidth-starved UWOCs. The experimental results show that HS-OFDM can improve the receiver sensitivity by around 4 dB as opposed to conventional 4QAM-OFDM with the same data rate and SE. With the help of the DPDM-HS-OFDM scheme, the data rate of multi-user UWOC can reach up to 4.5 Gbps under the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of a bit error rate (BER) of 3.8×10-3. Although there is some performance degradation in comparison with single-user HS-OFDM, the BER performance of multi-user DPDM-HS-OFDM is still superior to that of conventional single-user 4QAM-OFDM. Both single-user HS-OFDM and multi-user DPDM-HS-OFDM successfully achieve 2 Gbps/75 m data transmission, indicating that the DPDM-HS-OFDM scheme is of great importance in bandwidth-limited UWOC systems and has guiding significance to underwater wireless optical multiple access.

Phase Interrogation Sensor Based on All-Dielectric BIC Metasurface.

The low performance of sensors based on an all-dielectric metasurface limits their application compared to metallic counterparts. Here, for the first time, an all-dielectric BIC (bound states in the continuum) metasurface is employed for highly sensitive phase interrogation refractive index sensing. The proposed sensor is well analyzed, fabricated, and characterized. Experimentally, a high-performance BIC-based microfluidic sensing chip with a Q factor of 1200 is achieved by introducing symmetry breaking. A refractive index sensor with high figure of merit of 418 RIU-1 is demonstrated, which is beneficial to the phase interrogation. Notably, we measure a record phase interrogation sensitivity of 2.7 × 104 deg/RIU to the refractive index, thus enabling the all-dielectric BIC to rival the refractive index detection capabilities of metal-based sensors such as surface plasmon resonance. This scheme establishes a pivotal role of the all-dielectric metasurface in the field of ultrahigh sensitivity sensors and opens possibilities for trace detection in biochemical analysis and environment monitoring.

Low-cost, high-speed multispectral imager via spatiotemporal modulation based on a color camera.

Spectral imaging is a powerful tool in industrial processes, medical imaging, and fundamental scientific research. However, for the commonly used spatial/spectral-scanning spectral imager, the slow response time has posed a big challenge for its employment in dynamic scenes. In this paper, we propose a spatiotemporal modulation concept and build a simple, low-cost spectral imager by combining a liquid crystal (LC) cell with a commercial color camera. By the synergic effect of temporal modulation of the LC materials and spatial modulation of the Bayer filter in a color camera, high-quality multispectral imaging is successfully demonstrated with a high rate of 8 Hz, far beyond the counterparts. Experimental results show that even with three tuning states of the LC material, optical signals with a 10-nm band can be resolved in the range between 410 and 700 nm by this method, overcoming the tradeoff between spectral resolution and time resolution. As a proof of demonstration, we present its potential usage for metamerism recognition, showing superiority over traditional color cameras with more spectral details. Considering its low cost, miniaturization and monolithic-integration ability on color sensors, this simple approach may bring the spectral imaging technology closer to the consumer market and even to ubiquitous smartphones for health care, food inspection and other applications.

Polished hollow core Bragg fiber sensor for simultaneous measurement of cortisol concentration and temperature.

Disturbance of surrounding temperature inevitably affects the accuracy of fiber biosensors. To that end, we propose a compact label-free optofluidic sensor based on a polished hollow core Bragg fiber (HCBF) that can simultaneously measure the cortisol concentration and surrounding temperature in real-time. The sensor is comprised of fusion splicing single mode fiber (SMF), multimode fiber (MMF) and HCBF. HCBF is side polished to remove part of the cladding that the suspended inner surface of the fiber can contact the external environment. After the incident light passes through the MMF from the SMF, it enters the hollow area, high refractive index (RI) layers, respectively, where the anti-resonant reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW) guiding mechanism and Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) are simultaneously excited. Taking advantage of the high RI layers of HCBF, compared to the fiber with uniform cladding, the light can be more confined in the cladding and more sensitive to inner surface medium. The inner surface of sensor is immobilized with cortisol aptamer for the sake of achieving high sensitivity and specific sensing of cortisol with the limit of detection (LOD) to be 4.303 pM. The proposed sensor has a compact structure, enables temperature compensation, and can be fabricated at low cost making it highly suitable for in-situ monitoring and high-precision sensing of cortisol and other biological analytes.

Wide-field-of-view auto-coupling optical antenna system for high-speed bidirectional optical wireless communications in C band.

Due to a great many superior features of infrared light communication (ILC), like high capacity and strong privacy, ILC is considered a potential candidate for serving the high demands of beyond fifth-generation/sixth-generation (B5G/6 G) communication systems. However, the terminal's limited field-of-view (FOV) induces great difficulty in establishing line-of-sight (LoS) link between the transceiver and the terminal. In this paper, we propose a wide-FOV auto-coupling optical antenna system that utilizes a wide-FOV telecentric lens to collect incident infrared beams and automatically couple them into a specific single-mode-fiber (SMF) channel of fiber array and optical switch. The performance of this optical antenna system is assessed through simulation and manual alignment operation, and validated by automatic alignment results. A coupling loss of less than 10.6 dB within a FOV of 100° for both downstream and upstream beams in C band is demonstrated by the designed system. Furthermore, we establish a bidirectional optical wireless communications (OWC) system employing this antenna and a fiber-type modulating retro-reflector (MRR) system in the terminal. Both 10-Gbps on-off keying (OOK) downstream and upstream transmissions are successfully realized with the FOV of up to 100° in C band where the measured bit-error-rate (BER) is lower than 3.8 × 10-3. To the best of our knowledge, this is a brand-new auto-coupling optical antenna system with the largest FOV in ILC automatic alignment works in terminals that have ever been reported.

4D hyperspectral surface topography measurement system based on the Scheimpflug principle and hyperspectral imaging.

A four-dimensional (4D) hyperspectral surface topography measurement (HSTM) system that can acquire uniform inelastic signals [three-dimensional (3D) spatial data] and reflection/fluorescence spectra of an object is proposed. The key components of the system are a light-sheet profilometer based on the Scheimpflug principle and a hyperspectral imager. Based on the mapping relationships among the image coordinate systems of the two imaging subsystems and the coordinate system of the real space, the spectral data can be assigned to the corresponding 3D point cloud, forming a 4D model. The spectral resolution is better than 4 nm. 700 nm, 546 nm, and 436 nm are selected as the three primary colors of red, green, and blue to restore the color. The 4D hyperspectral surface reconstruction experiments of philodendron and chlorophytum have shown the good performance of the proposed HSTM system and the great application potential for plant phenotype and growth analysis in agriculture.

Low-cross-talk and thermo-insensitive CWDM (de)multiplexer assisted with compact MZIs and slot waveguides.

A low-cross-talk and thermo-insensitive 1×4 coarse wavelength-division multiplexing device is proposed on the silicon-on-insulator platform with the help of compact Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) and slot waveguides. The compact MZIs are used to achieve wavelength-insensitive power splitting. In the phase shifters, the trade-off between the opposite thermo-optical coefficients of the Si core and SU8 cladding in the slot waveguide is used to overcome the strong thermo-optic effect of silicon. The simulated results show that the cross talk is less than -20d B at central wavelengths and the temperature-dependent wavelength shift is reduced to ∼4.7p m/∘ C. For the four channels, the 1-dB and 3-dB bandwidths are ∼14n m and ∼18n m, respectively.

Line laser scanning microscopy based on the Scheimpflug principle for high-resolution topography restoration and quantitative measurement.

A line laser scanning microscopy system with a larger depth of field based on the Scheimpflug principle is proposed for high-resolution surface topography restoration and quantitative measurement on miniature non-transparent samples. An imaging model based on the Scheimpflug principle is established, and a calibration method without system parameters is derived, which is further extended to a microscopic system. The measuring range of the system is 5m m×4m m×x m m, where x is the movement distance of the displacement stage. In the z-axis direction, the relative error of measurement is about 1% when z is of the millimeter level and less than 7% when z is of the micron level, and the spatial resolution is better than 3.8 µm. In the y-axis direction, the relative error of measurement is less than 5%. Finally, three-dimensional scanning of two samples with different surfaces is carried out to verify the feasibility of the system. The experimental results show that our system has the capability of high-resolution topography restoration and can be applied in industrial production scenarios such as automatic measurement and intelligent identification.

Elimination of the fundamental mode hybridization on an x-cut lithium-niobate-on-insulator by using a densely packed bent waveguide array.

Lithium niobate (L i N b O 3, LN) is a promising material for integrated photonics due to its natural advantages. The commercialization of thin-film LN technology has revitalized this platform, enabling low-loss waveguides, micro-rings, and compact electro-optical modulators. However, the anisotropic birefringent nature of X-cut LN leads to mode hybridization of TE and TM modes, which is detrimental to most polarization-sensitive integrated optical waveguide devices. A novel structure, to the best of our knowldege, utilizing a densely packed bent waveguide array is presented in this paper to eliminate mode hybridization. The refractive index is modulated in a manner that eliminates the avoided crossing of the refractive index curves of the TE and TM fundamental modes; thus, mode hybridization is prevented. The structures are readily accessible in the full range of commercially available LN film thicknesses from 400 to 720 nm and in any etching depth. The proposed structures give a polarization extinction ratio of -30d B across all bend radii, while simultaneously maintaining low excess loss of less than -1d B after reaching a 100 µm bend radius.

Ppb-level methane detection sensitivity based on a homemade Raman fiber amplifier and differential photoacoustic technology.

A high-power near-infrared wavelength-modulated differential photoacoustic spectroscopy sensor for parts-per-billion (ppb) level methane detection is reported by using a homemade Raman fiber optical amplifier. A commercial 1653.7 nm continuous wave distributed feedback laser is employed as a seed source to excite a high light power of ∼550m W, which greatly improves sensor performance. Wavelength modulation spectroscopy and differential techniques are applied to further improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the photoacoustic signal. A 1σ minimum detection limit of ∼10p p b for methane detection is achieved with an integration time of 10 s.

Experimental demonstration of real-time optical DFT-S DMT signal transmission for a blue-LED-based UWOC system using spatial diversity reception.

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has broad prospects in underwater real-time applications. We design and experimentally demonstrate a real-time discrete Fourier transform spread discrete multi-tone (DFT-S DMT) signal transmission based on a field programmable gate array for a blue-LED-based UWOC system with a data rate of up to 30 Mbps over a 15-m underwater channel. The architecture and usage of an on-chip resource as well as power consumption are analyzed and discussed. To reduce the impacts of multipath fading and received intensity fluctuation, spatial diversity reception is also introduced. Furthermore, the receiver sensitivity at a specified bit error rate (BER) threshold and the quality of the images are evaluated using three types of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. At the BER threshold of 10-4, over 2.8-dB receiver sensitivity improvement is obtained by the DFT-S DMT scheme with the RS (64, 56) code as compared to the uncoded one at the data rate of 30 Mbps. The performance of BER, color difference, and structural similarity in the image transmission of DFT-S DMT is superior to that of the conventional hard clipping quadrature amplitude modulation DMT in a high-data-rate region because of the low peak-to-average-power ratio and ability to mitigate high-frequency fading in a band-limited UWOC system. With schemes of the RS code, DFT-S, and diversity reception, error-free transmission of images is achieved over a 15-m water channel. The proposed UWOC system has the advantages of low power consumption and portability, which foresees a bright future in underwater applications over short to moderate distances.

Optical Fiber Fabry-Pérot Microfluidic Sensor Based on Capillary Fiber and Side Illumination Method.

In this paper, an optical fiber Fabry-Pérot (FP) microfluidic sensor based on the capillary fiber (CF) and side illumination method is designed. The hybrid FP cavity (HFP) is naturally formed by the inner air hole and silica wall of CF which is side illuminated by another single mode fiber (SMF). The CF acts as a naturally microfluidic channel, which can be served as a potential microfluidic solution concentration sensor. Moreover, the FP cavity formed by silica wall is insensitive to ambient solution refractive index but sensitive to the temperature. Thus, the HFP sensor can simultaneously measure microfluidic refractive index (RI) and temperature by cross-sensitivity matrix method. Three sensors with different inner air hole diameters were selected to fabricate and characterize the sensing performance. The interference spectra corresponding to each cavity length can be separated from each amplitude peak in the FFT spectra with a proper bandpass filter. Experimental results indicate that the proposed sensor with excellent sensing performance of temperature compensation is low-cost and easy to build, which is suitable for in situ monitoring and high-precision sensing of drug concentration and the optical constants of micro-specimens in the biomedical and biochemical fields.

Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer Modulation with an Ultrahigh Dynamic Range through Mode Mismatching.

Modulating near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) with a high dynamic range is challenging in nanoscale thermal science and engineering. Modulation depths [(maximum value - minimum value)/(maximum value + minimum value) × 100%] of ≈2% to ≈15.7% have been reported with matched modes, but breaking the constraint of mode matching theoretically allows for higher modulation depth. We demonstrate a modulation depth of ≈32.2% by a pair of graphene-covered SU8 heterostructures at a gap distance of ≈80 nm. Dissimilar Fermi levels tuned by bias voltages enable mismatched surface plasmon polaritons which improves the modulation. The modulation depth when switching from a matched mode to a mismatched mode is ≈4.4-fold compared to that when switching between matched modes. This work shows the importance of symmetry in polariton-mediated NFRHT and represents the largest modulation depth to date in a two-body system with fixed gap distance and temperature.

Super-Large-Scale Hierarchically Porous Films Based on Self-Assembled Eye-Like Air Pores for High-Performance Daytime Radiative Cooling.

Metal-free polymer daytime radiative cooling coatings with hierarchical eye-like air pores are proposed and fabricated with a super-large-scale film-stretching method. The hierarchically porous film (HPF) can be further coated with polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) micro-hemispheres, forming coated HPF (cHPF), which do not dramatically change the optical or thermal properties. The cHPF is slightly better with a lower solar absorptivity (2.4%) and a higher thermal emissivity over the atmospheric transparency window (90.1%). The low solar absorptivity is due to the strong scattering of the hierarchical eye-like air pores, while the molecular vibrations and the focusing effect of the PMMA micro-hemispheres contribute to the high emissivity. An average mid-day temperature reduction of 7.92 °C is achieved relative to the air temperature, and the average cooling power reaches 116.0 W m-2 , which are much better than the cooling performances of the commercial cooling cushion. During the day, the cHPF-covered simulated building is up to 6.47 and 4.84 °C cooler than the ambient and the white painted counterpart, respectively. The film is durable and resistant to chemical etching, and very promising to use globally, especially in warm and tropical regions.

Compact photoacoustic spectrophone for simultaneously monitoring the concentrations of dichloromethane and trichloromethane with a single acoustic resonator.

Chlorinated hydrocarbons are frequently used as reagents and organic solvents in different industrial processes. Real-time detection of chlorinated hydrocarbons, as toxic air pollutants and carcinogenic species, is an important requirement for various environmental and industrial applications. In this study, a compact photoacoustic (PA) spectrophone based on a single acoustic resonator for simultaneous detection of trichloromethane (CHCl3) and dichloromethane (CH2Cl2) is first reported by employing a low-cost distributed feedback (DFB) laser emitting at 1684 nm. In consideration of the significant overlapping of absorption spectral from trichloromethane and dichloromethane, the multi-linear regression method was used to calculate the concentrations of CHCl3 and CH2Cl2 with special characterization of the absorption profile. The current modulation amplitude and detection phase in the developed PA spectrophone was optimized for high sensitivity of individual components. The measurement interference of CHCl3 and CH2Cl2 on each other was investigated for accurate detection, respectively. For field measurements, all optical elements were integrated into a 40 cm × 40 cm × 20 cm chassis. This paper provides an experimental verification which strongly recommends this sensor as a compact photoacoustic field sensor system for chlorinated hydrocarbon detection in different applications.

High-performance silicon TE-pass polarizer assisted by anisotropic metamaterials.

The polarizer is a key component for integrated photonics to deal with the strong waveguide birefringence, especially for silicon photonics. A high-performance silicon TE-pass polarizer covering all optical communication bands with low insertion loss (IL) and high polarization extinction ratio (PER) is proposed here. This polarizer is based on anisotropic subwavelength grating (SWG) metamaterials, which maintain the fundamental TE mode as a guided mode but make the fundamental TM mode leaky. Furthermore, based on this working mechanism, the proposed polarizer can work well for any upper cladding material, including air and silicon dioxide (SiO2). The numerical results show that our proposed TE-pass polarizer has a remarkable performance with IL < 0.34 dB over 420 nm (PER > 23.5 dB) or 380 nm (PER > 30 dB) for the air cladding, and IL < 0.3 dB over 420 nm (PER > 25 dB) or 320 nm (PER > 30 dB) for the SiO2 cladding. The fabricated polarizer shows IL < 0.8 dB and PER > 23 dB for the bandwidths of 1.26-1.36 µm and 1.52-1.58 µm (other bandwidths were not measured due to the limited instrument in our research center, but it still covers the most important O-band and C-band).

1.7 µm - 1.73 µm tunable ultrafast Raman fiber laser pumped by 1.6 µm dissipative soliton pulses.

Here, we report an all-fiber tunable ultrafast Raman laser synchronously pumped by a home-made 1.6 µm dissipative soliton (DS) picosecond (ps) laser, which produces Stokes light beyond 1.7 µm. The Raman gain medium is a segment of highly germanium-doped (Ge-doped) fiber offering a high Raman gain coefficient at the target wavelength. Once the Raman conversion cavity is synchronized with the pump light, a stable 1.7 µm Raman laser (the first Stokes light) can be obtained at a low pump threshold. The maximum output power of the 1.7 µm Raman laser can reach ∼ 22.62 mW. The wavelength tuning operation is independent of tunable pump source and intra-cavity filter. By adjusting the intra-cavity delay line simply, the different spectral component within the broad Raman gain bandwidth can be selectively synchronized with the pump light so that the Raman laser wavelength can be tuned continuously from 1702.6 nm ∼ 1728.84 nm. This tunable 1.7 µm waveband ultrafast laser will have potential applications in multiphoton microscopy for e.g. deep bio-imaging.