We investigate the optical properties of gold nanoring (NR) dimers in both simulation and experiment. The resonance peak wavelength of gold NR dimers is strongly dependent on the polarization direction and gap distance. As the gold NR particles approach each other, exponential red shift and slight blue shift of coupled bonding (CB) mode in gold NR dimers for longitudinal and transverse polarizations are obtained. In finite element method analysis, a very strong surface plasmon coupling in the gap region of gold NR dimers is observed, whose field intensity at the gap distance of 10 nm is enhanced 23% compared to that for gold nanodisk (ND) dimers with the same diameter. In addition, plasmonic dimer system exhibits a great improvement in the sensing performance. Near-field coupling in gold NR dimers causes exponential increase in sensitivity to refractive index of surrounding medium with decreasing the gap distance. Compared with coupled dipole mode in gold ND dimers, CB mode in gold NR dimers shows higher index sensitivity. This better index sensing performance is resulted form the additional electric field in inside region of NR and the larger field enhancement in the gap region owing to the stronger coupling of collective dipole plasmon resonances for CB mode. These results pave the way to design plasmonic nanostructures for practical applications that require coupled metallic nanoparticles with enhanced electric fields.

Polarizers play a key role in generating polarized light for display, imaging, and data communication, but adoption often suffers from high optical loss. Recently, due to superior optoelectronic properties, halide perovskites have been widely developed for lighting applications; however, highly polarized emission (polarization degree >0.8) has not yet been realized with perovskites. Herein, by incorporating inkjet printing and an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) confinement strategy, highly ordered perovskite nanowire (NW) arrays are demonstrated for anisotropic optical applications. The optical device based on perovskite NW arrays reveals a high photoluminescence external quantum efficiency of 21.6% and emits highly polarized light with polarization degree up to 0.84. The highly polarized emission from perovskite NW arrays has potential to considerably reduce the optical loss of polarizers, which may attract great interest in developing polarized light sources for next‐generation optoelectronic applications.

We propose and demonstrate a trapping configuration integrating coupled waveguides and gold bowtie structures to form near-field plasmonic tweezers. Compared with excitation from the top, waves coupled through the waveguide can excite specific bowties on the waveguide and trap particles precisely. Thus this scheme is more efficient and compact, and will assist the circuit design on a chip. With lightning rod and gap effects, the gold bowtie structures can generate highly concentrated resonant fields and induce trapping forces as strong as 652 pN W(-1) on particles with diameters as small as 20 nm. This trapping capability is investigated numerically and verified experimentally with observations of the transport, trapping, and release of particles in the system.

In this report, we present the design principles to achieve a highly sensitive optical stress sensor. The structure we use is a double-layered (DL) photonic molecule with optical bonding and anti-bonding states based on whispering-gallery mode in photonic crystal microcavity. By applying finite-difference time-domain and finite-element methods, we simulate the change of optical properties (including wavelength and quality (Q) factor) of bonding mode caused by the DL structural variation due to the applied stress in two DL geometries. In the end, we summarize an optical stress sensor design with high Q factor, large structural response due to the applied stress, and large optical spectrum change due to the DL structural variation. The minimum detectable stress variation is estimated to be as small as 0.95 nN.

The photonic band gap ͑PBG͒ effect and its isotropy of sunflower-type circular photonic crystal ͑CPC͒ are obtained and investigated from the transmission spectra performed by finite-difference time-domain ͑FDTD͒ method. The PBG directional width variation is found to be only 6.7%. A well-confined whispering gallery mode ͑WGM͒ with azimuthal number of 6 is obtained by FDTD simulation from the CPC microcavity formed by seven missing air holes ͑C2͒. Ascribed to the deep and isotropic PBG confinement, the WGM lasing with very-low threshold ͑ϳ0.13 mW͒ and very-high-quality ͑Q͒ factor ͑Ͼ10 000͒ is obtained from well-fabricated CPC C2 microcavity lasers.