Ultrafast evanescently coupled waveguide MUTC-PDs with high responsivity.

Novel evanescently coupled waveguide modified uni-traveling carrier photodiodes (MUTC-PDs) employing a thick multi-layer coupling waveguide are reported. To improve the optical-to-electrical (O/E) conversion efficiency, a thick multi-layer coupling waveguide with a gradually increased refractive index from the bottom layer to the absorption layer is utilized. The refractive index profile facilitates the upward transmission of incident light into the absorption region, thereby enhancing the evanescent coupling efficiency. Meanwhile, the coupling waveguide, with a total thickness of 1.75 µm, expands the mode field diameter, thereby reducing the input coupling loss. Additionally, the top layer of the coupling waveguide also serves as the drift layer. This configuration facilitates efficient light absorption within a short PD length, thus ensuring ultrawide bandwidth and high O/E conversion efficiency simultaneously. Without an additional spot size coupler or anti-reflection coating, the measured responsivity is as high as 0.38 A/W for the PD with an active area of 5 × 6 µm2. Meanwhile, an ultrawide 3-dB bandwidth of 153 GHz has been demonstrated.

Quantum Light Generation Based on GaN Microring toward Fully On-Chip Source.

An integrated quantum light source is increasingly desirable in large-scale quantum information processing. Despite recent remarkable advances, a new material platform is constantly being explored for the fully on-chip integration of quantum light generation, active and passive manipulation, and detection. Here, for the first time, we demonstrate a gallium nitride (GaN) microring based quantum light generation in the telecom C-band, which has potential toward the monolithic integration of quantum light source. In our demonstration, the GaN microring has a free spectral range of 330 GHz and a near-zero anomalous dispersion region of over 100 nm. The generation of energy-time entangled photon pair is demonstrated with a typical raw two-photon interference visibility of 95.5±6.5%, which is further configured to generate a heralded single photon with a typical heralded second-order autocorrelation g_{H}^{(2)}(0) of 0.045±0.001. Our results pave the way for developing a chip-scale quantum photonic circuit.

Ultrafast MUTC photodiodes over 200†GHz with high saturation power.

Novel back-illuminated modified uni-traveling-carrier photodiodes (MUTC-PDs) with wide bandwidth and high saturation power are demonstrated. The effect of cliff layer doping on the electric field distribution is investigated to achieve fast carrier transport. MUTC-PDs with miniaturized device diameter and low contact resistance are fabricated to improve the RC-limited bandwidth. Meanwhile, inductive peaking is implemented to further extend the bandwidth. PDs with 3-µm and 3.6-µm-diameter exhibit a ultrawide bandwidth of 230 GHz and 200 GHz, together with -4.94 dBm and -2.14 dBm saturation power at 220 GHz and 200 GHz, respectively.

Extended ray-mapping method based on differentiable ray-tracing for non-paraxial and off-axis freeform illumination lens design.

The ray-mapping method has been widely used for designing freeform illumination lenses. However, in non-paraxial or off-axis situations, it remains challenging to obtain an integrable ray-mapping, often requiring a complex iterative correction process for the initial mapping. To address this challenge, we propose an extended ray-mapping method that incorporates differentiable ray-tracing into the design pipeline of the ray-mapping method. This enables accurate surface construction according to ray-mapping and efficient shape correction based on irradiance distribution. The proposed method involves two optimization stages. In the first stage, the freeform surface is preliminarily optimized to closely match the optimal transport mapping. The obtained freeform surface is then further optimized in the second stage to minimize the divergence between the target and simulated irradiance distributions. Additionally, the mean curvature of the freeform surface is also constrained in the second stage to facilitate the fabrication of the final freeform surface. Non-paraxial illumination lenses and off-axis illumination lenses have been designed using the proposed method within ten minutes, and simulations demonstrate that the approach is effective and robust.

Simple and accurate dispersion measurement of GaN microresonators with a fiber ring.

The dispersion characteristics of a microresonator are important for applications in nonlinear optics, and precise measurement of the dispersion profile is crucial to device design and optimization. Here we demonstrate the dispersion measurement of high-quality-factor gallium nitride (GaN) microrings by a single-mode fiber ring, which is simple and convenient to access. Once the dispersion parameters of the fiber ring have been determined by the opto-electric modulation method, the dispersion can be obtained from the microresonator dispersion profile by polynomial fitting. To further verify the accuracy of the proposed method, the dispersion of the GaN microrings is also evaluated with frequency comb-based spectroscopy. Dispersion profiles obtained with both methods are in good agreement with simulations based on the finite element method.

Nano hydrogel-based oxygen-releasing stem cell transplantation system for treating diabetic foot.

The employment of stem cells and hydrogel is widespread in contemporary clinical approaches to treating diabetic foot ulcers. However, the hypoxic conditions in the surrounding lesion tissue lead to a low stem cell survival rate following transplantation. This research introduces a novel hydrogel with superior oxygen permeability and biocompatibility, serving as a vehicle for developing a stem cell transplantation system incorporating oxygen-releasing microspheres and cardiosphere-derived stem cells (CDCs). By optimizing the peroxidase fixation quantity on the microsphere surface and the oxygen-releasing microsphere content within the transplantation system, intracellular oxygen levels were assessed using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) under simulated low-oxygen conditions in vitro. The expression of vascularization and repair-related indexes were evaluated via RT-PCR and ELISA. The microspheres were found to continuously release oxygen for three weeks within the transplantation system, promoting growth factor expression to maintain intracellular oxygen levels and support the survival and proliferation of CDCs. Moreover, the effect of this stem cell transplantation system on wound healing in a diabetic foot mice model was examined through an in vivo animal experiment. The oxygen-releasing microspheres within the transplantation system preserved the intracellular oxygen levels of CDCs in the hypoxic environment of injured tissues. By inhibiting the expression of inflammatory factors and stimulating the upregulation of pertinent growth factors, it improved the vascularization of ulcer tissue on the mice's back and expedited the healing of the wound site. Overall, the stem cell transplantation system in this study, based on hydrogels containing CDCs and oxygen-releasing microspheres, offers a promising strategy for the clinical implementation of localized stem cell delivery to improve diabetic foot wound healing.

Membrane multiple quantum well electro-optical modulator employing low loss high-k radio-frequency slot waveguides.

A membrane multiple quantum well (MQW) electro-optical (EO) modulator exploiting low loss high-k radio-frequency (RF) slot waveguides is proposed for sub-terahertz bandwidth. By employing high-k barium titanate (BTO) claddings in place of doped InP cladding layers in traditional InP-based MQW modulators, the proposed modulator exhibits enhanced modulation efficiency and bandwidth as well as reduced insertion loss. A low half-wave voltage-length product of 0.24 V·cm is estimated, together with over 240 GHz bandwidth for a 2-mm-long modulation region, thus allowing sub-terahertz operation.

A single-chip multi-beam steering optical phased array: design rules and simulations.

A waveguide-based multi-beam steering device is proposed for light detection and ranging (LIDAR). The device integrates binary gratings with an optical phased array (OPA), thus enabling a single-chip LIDAR system. The device can provide an N×M beam array that covers a wide angular range while phase shifters help realize steering over a narrow angle range between the beams. The antenna structure for 1D beam splitting is realized by combining the design of a grating coupler and a beam splitter grating, and a uniform beam splitting is achieved along the other dimension using non-uniformly distributed antennas. To illustrate the design, an OPA with an 11×11 beam array is designed at a wavelength of 905 nm. The OPA achieves a wide total field of view (FOV) of 68.8° × 77° with a narrow beam-array-steering angle of 6.5°, enabling a wide-FOV 3D sensing with a high frame rate.

Inhibition of TGFß-activated protein kinase 1 ameliorates myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion injury via endoplasmic reticulum stress suppression.

Transforming growth factor ß-activated protein kinase 1 (TAK1) involves in various biological responses and is a key regulator of cell death. However, the role of TAK1 on acute myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury is unknown. We observed that TAK1 activation increased significantly after MI/R and hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R), and we hypothesized that TAK1 has an important role in MI/R injury. Mice (TAK1 inhibiting by 5Z-7-oxozeaenol or silencing by AAV9 vector) were exposed to MI/R injury. Primary cardiomyocytes (TAK1 silencing by siRNA; and overexpressing TAK1 by adenovirus vector) were used to induce H/R injury model in vitro. Inhibition of TAK1 significantly decreased MI/R-induced myocardial infarction area, reduced cell death and improved cardiac function. Mechanistically, TAK1 silencing suppressed MI/R-induced myocardial oxidative stress and attenuated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress both in vitro and in vivo. In addition, the inhibition of ROS by NAC partially reversed the damage of TAK1 in vitro. Our study presents the first direct evidence that inhibition of TAK1 mitigated MI/R injury, and TAK1 mediated ROS/ER stress/apoptosis signal pathway is important for the pathogenesis of MI/R injury.

Laser frequency noise characterization by self-heterodyne with both long and short delay.

We propose a novel approach to laser frequency noise characterization by delayed self-heterodyne. Compared with the traditional treatment, our method applies to both long and short delay, corresponding to uncorrelated and correlated self-heterodyne. In the case of long delay, it overcomes the influence of 1/f noise on the intrinsic linewidth extraction from a broadened spectrum, and the results are more accurate than Voigt profile fitting. For short delayed correlated heterodyne, it eliminates artifact peaks at multiples of the reciprocal of delay time introduced by transferring measured RF phase noise to laser phase noise, thus extending the measurement range. In addition, it calibrates the frequency noise overestimation caused by a finite noise floor. This method remains valid when the delay and the coherence time are comparable. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in characterizing lasers with intrinsic linewidth ranging from sub-100 Hz to megahertz.

Improving modulation bandwidth of c-plane GaN-based light-emitting diodes by an ultra-thin quantum wells design.

The GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) have a great potential for visible light communication (VLC) due to their ubiquitous application in general lighting, but the modulation bandwidth of conventional c-plane LEDs is limited by carrier recombination rate in InGaN quantum wells (QWs) due to the polarization-field-induced quantum confined Stark effect (QCSE). Furthermore, the high modulation bandwidth on c-plane sapphire substrates can only be achieved at high current densities. Here, blue LEDs with ultra-thin InGaN QWs (1nm) and GaN barriers (3nm) are grown on c-plane sapphire substrate to suppress QCSE and extend the cut-off frequency from 214 MHz for conventional LEDs to 536 MHz at a current density of 2.5 kA/cm2, which is comparable to devices grown on semi-polar substrates.

Aluminum nitride-on-sapphire platform for integrated high-Q microresonators.

We demonstrate aluminum nitride (AlN) on sapphire as a novel platform for integrated optics. High-confinement AlN microring resonators are realized by adopting a partially etched (pedestal) waveguide to relax the required etching selectivity for exact pattern transfer. A wide taper is employed at the chip end facets to ensure a low fiber-to-chip coupling loss of ~2.8 dB/facet for both transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) modes. Furthermore, the intrinsic quality factors (Qint) recorded with a high-resolution linewidth measurement are up to ~2.5 and 1.9 million at telecom band for fundamental TE00 and TM00 modes, corresponding to a low intracavity propagation loss of ~0.14 and 0.2 dB/cm as well as high resonant buildup of 473 and 327, respectively. Such high-Q AlN-on-sapphire microresonators are believed to be very promising for on-chip nonlinear optics.

Light extraction efficiency enhancement of GaN-based blue LEDs based on ITO/ InxO ohmic contacts with microstructure formed by annealing in oxygen.

Indium tin oxide (ITO)/ indium oxide (InxO) double layer structure was adopted as the transparent conduction and light scattering function layer to improve the light extraction efficiency of the GaN-based blue LEDs. The double layer structure was first deposited in one run by electron beam evaporation using ITO and Indium as the source respectively, and then annealed in an oxygen environment. This method can fabricate transparent electrode with microstructure and low specific contact resistivity one time free from lithography and etching, which makes the fabrication process simple and at a ower cost. For the 220 nm ITO/ 170 nm InxO double layer sample annealed at 600°C for 15 min in oxygen, measurement results show that its root mean square of roughness of the surface microstructure can be as high as 85.2 nm which introduces the strongest light scattering. Its light transmittance at 450 nm can maintain 92.4%. At the same time, it can realize lower specific contact resistivity with p-InGaN. Compared with the GaN-based blue LEDs with only 220 nm ITO electrode, the light output power of the LEDs with 220 nm ITO/ 170 nm InxO double layer structure can be increased about 58.8%, and working voltage at 20 mA injection current is decreased about 0.23 V due to the enhanced current spreading capability. The light output power improvement is also theoretically convinced by finite difference time domain simulations.

Design of high-compactness freeform optical surfaces via energy accumulating optimization.

Energy accumulating optimization based on dynamic programming is proposed to design non-rotational 3D high-compactness freeform optical surface for extended source. Each small piece which constructs the freeform optical surface is treated as a stage, and the normal vectors of the small pieces are treated as the decision variables. Then each small piece with a normal-vector-selection-range is calculated stage-by-stage, which is different to the common used loop-iterations-optimization-strategy. The state of the accumulated light distribution on the target plane is varied with the evolvement of the calculations. The optimal decisions are ascertained in a retrospective way only after all the calculations are finished, which are ensured by the principle of optimality. Moreover, several treatments are proposed to confine the normal vector selection range, and the feedback adjustment is developed as well. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by designing the 20 mm height freeform optical surfaces for 10 mm diameter Lambertian sources to achieve uniform illuminance distributions with dual-axial symmetry and single-axial symmetry, respectively. The energy utilization ratios are above 82% with Fresnel loss, while the relative standard deviation of the illuminance distribution can be less than 0.2.

Ultrafast dual-drifting layer uni-traveling carrier photodiode with high saturation current.

A novel backside-illuminated mesa-structure dual-drifting layer (DDL) uni-traveling-carrier photodiode (UTC-PD) is reported to demonstrate high-power performance at sub-THz frequencies. The DDL structure consists of a velocity overshoot layer and a velocity saturation layer, formed by inserting a 20 nm p-type cliff layer into the thick depletion region. In the overshoot layer, photo-generated electrons drift at overshoot velocity under the carefully designed electric field profile, thus resulting in a short electron transit time. The saturation layer serves as a voltage sacrificing layer to enable high bias voltage operation, which leads to alleviated load voltage swing effect, as well as improved saturation performance. Our DDL UTC-PD exhibits a 3-dB bandwidth of 106 GHz with a responsivity of 0.17 A/W under a wide bias voltage range from 4 to 8 V. The photocurrent reaches up to 28 mA, corresponding to an output power of 7.3 dBm at 105 GHz.

Broadband tunable microwave photonic phase shifter with low RF power variation in a high-Q AlN microring.

An all-optically tunable microwave photonic phase shifter is demonstrated based on an epitaxial aluminum nitride (AlN) microring with an intrinsic quality factor of 3.2×106. The microring adopts a pedestal structure, which allows overcoupling with 700 nm gap size and facilitates the fabrication process. A phase shift for broadband signals from 4 to 25 GHz is demonstrated by employing the thermo-optic effect and the separate carrier tuning technique. A phase tuning range of 0°-332° is recorded with a 3 dB radio frequency (RF) power variation and 48 mW optical power consumption. In addition, AlN exhibits intrinsic second-order optical nonlinearity. Thus, our work presents a novel platform with a low propagation loss and the capability of electro-optic modulation for applications in integrated microwave photonics.

MicroRNA-451 sensitizes lung cancer cells to cisplatin through regulation of Mcl-1.

As one of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs for lung cancer, chemoresistance of cisplatin (DPP) is one of the major hindrances in treatment of this malignancy. The microRNAs (miRNAs) have been identified to mediate chemotherapy drug resistance. MiR-451 as a tumor suppressor has been evaluated its potential effect on the sensitivity of cancer cells to DDP. However, the role of miR-451 in regulatory mechanism of chemosensitivity in lung cancer cells is still largely unknown. In this study, we first constructed a cisplatin-resistant A549 cell line (A549/DPP) accompanied with a decreased expression of miR-451 and an increased expression of Mcl-1in the drug resistant cells compared with the parental cells. Exogenous expression of miR-451 level in A549/DPP was found to sensitize their reaction to the treatment of cisplatin, which coincides with reduced expression of Mcl-1. Interestingly, Mcl-1 knockdown in A549/DPP cells increased the chemosensitivity to DPP, suggesting the dependence of Mcl-1 regulation in miR-451 activity. Moreover, miR-451 can restore cisplatin treatment response in cisplatin-resistant xenografts in vivo, while Mcl-1 protein levels were decreased. Thus, these findings provided that in lung cancer cells, tumor suppressor miR-451 enhanced DPP sensitivity via regulation of Mcl-1 expression, which could be served as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of chemotherapy resistant in lung cancer.

UNC119 mediates gambogic acid-induced cell-cycle dysregulation through the Gsk3ß/ß-catenin pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

UNC119 (uncoordinated 119 or retinal protein 4), specifically expressed in the photoreceptors in the retina, has recently been found to be upregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues, predicting a poor prognosis. However, the biological role of UNC119 in cancer treatment is still poorly understood. Gambogic acid (GA), a major component of gambogic resin, has been shown to possess anticancer activity against multiple human cancer cell lines. In the present study, we discovered that GA was more effective in inhibiting cell proliferation in HCC cells with a higher level of UNC119. In addition, GA inhibited UNC119 expression and induced Hep3B cells G0/G1 arrest. Cell-cycle-related proteins, such as cyclin A, E, D1, and p-cyclin-dependent kinase 2, 4, 6 were downregulated in GA-treated cells. Glycogen synthase kinase 3ß (Gsk3ß)/ß-catenin signaling, the downstream of UNC119, was also found to be suppressed after GA treatment. UNC119 knockdown or over expression experiment further proved that UNC119 mediated the effect of GA on the HCC cell cycle and Gsk3ß/ß-catenin signaling. In BALB/c mice bearing xenotransplanted tumors, the growth of the Hep3B tumor was inhibited by GA treatment. Immunohistochemistry results of tumor tissues suggested that GA might also exert its anticancer effect by inhibiting UNC119 and regulating cell cycle in vivo. Thus, GA could be a potential therapeutic agent in the treatment of human HCC.

Analysis of frequency response of high power MUTC photodiodes based on photocurrent-dependent equivalent circuit model.

A back-illuminated mesa-structure InGaAs/InP modified uni-traveling-carrier photodiode (MUTC-PD) is fabricated and its frequency response is investigated. A bandwidth of 40 GHz and a saturation photocurrent up to 33 mA are demonstrated. A photocurrent-dependent equivalent circuit model is proposed to analyze the frequency response of the high power MUTC-PDs. The influences of the space-charge screening, self-induced electric field and over-shoot effects are discussed in detail based on the model. Fitted curves obtained from the simple equivalent circuit model are found to be in good agreement with the data measured under different bias voltages and photocurrents.

Nonlinear dynamics in integrated coupled DFB lasers with ultra-short delay.

We report rich nonlinear dynamics in integrated coupled lasers with ultra-short coupling delay. Mutually stable locking, period-1 oscillation, frequency locking, quasi-periodicity and chaos are observed experimentally. The dynamic behaviors are reproduced numerically by solving coupled delay differential equations that take the variation of both frequency detuning and coupling phase into account. Moreover, it is pointed out that the round-trip frequency is not involved in the above nonlinear dynamical behaviors. Instead, the relationship between the frequency detuning Δν and the relaxation oscillation frequency νr under mutual injection are found to be critical for the various observed dynamics in mutually coupled lasers with very short delay.