Recent Progress in Improving the Performance of Infrared Photodetectors via Optical Field Manipulations

Benefiting from the inherent capacity for detecting longer wavelengths inaccessible to human eyes, infrared photodetectors have found numerous applications in both military and daily life, such as individual combat weapons, automatic driving sensors and night-vision devices. However, the imperfect material growth and incomplete device manufacturing impose an inevitable restriction on the further improvement of infrared photodetectors. The advent of artificial microstructures, especially metasurfaces, featuring with strong light field enhancement and multifunctional properties in manipulating the light–matter interactions on subwavelength scale, have promised great potential in overcoming the bottlenecks faced by conventional infrared detectors. Additionally, metasurfaces exhibit versatile and flexible integration with existing detection semiconductors. In this paper, we start with a review of conventionally bulky and recently emerging two-dimensional material-based infrared photodetectors, i.e., InGaAs, HgCdTe, graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides and black phosphorus devices. As to the challenges the detectors are facing, we further discuss the recent progress on the metasurfaces integrated on the photodetectors and demonstrate their role in improving device performance. All information provided in this paper aims to open a new way to boost high-performance infrared photodetectors.

Significant Near Field Enhancement Over Large Volumes Around Metal Nanorods via Strong Coupling of Surface Lattice Resonances and Fabry-Pérot Resonance

Metal nanoparticles supporting plasmons are widely used to enhance electromagnetic fields, resulting in strong light-matter interactions at the nanoscale in a diverse range of applications. Recently, it has been shown that when metal nanorods are periodically arranged with proper lattice periods, surface lattice resonances (SLRs) can be excited and near fields can be greatly enhanced over extended volumes. In this work, we report significant near field enhancement over even larger volumes by placing the metal nanorod array within a Fabry-Pérot (F-P) microcavity. Results show that taking advantage of strong coupling between the SLR and the photonic F-P resonances, the electric field intensity of the bonding split mode can be enhanced by up to 1935 times, which is about three times of the enhancement of the SLR, and the greatly enhanced field can extend over most of the F-P microcavity. We further show that the F-P resonances of both odd and even orders can strongly couple to the SLR by varying the nanorods position from the middle of the microcavity. We expect that the proposed plasmonic-photonic coupling system will find promising applications in nanolasers, nonlinear optics and sensing.

Photodynamic Inactivation of Human Coronaviruses

Photodynamic inactivation (PDI) employs a photosensitizer, light, and oxygen to create a local burst of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that can inactivate microorganisms. The botanical extract PhytoQuinTM is a powerful photosensitizer with antimicrobial properties. We previously demonstrated that photoactivated PhytoQuin also has antiviral properties against herpes simplex viruses and adenoviruses in a dose-dependent manner across a broad range of sub-cytotoxic concentrations. Here, we report that human coronaviruses (HCoVs) are also susceptible to photodynamic inactivation. Photoactivated-PhytoQuin inhibited the replication of the alphacoronavirus HCoV-229E and the betacoronavirus HCoV-OC43 in cultured cells across a range of sub-cytotoxic doses. This antiviral effect was light-dependent, as we observed minimal antiviral effect of PhytoQuin in the absence of photoactivation. Using RNase protection assays, we observed that PDI disrupted HCoV particle integrity allowing for the digestion of viral RNA by exogenous ribonucleases. Using lentiviruses pseudotyped with the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) protein, we once again observed a strong, light-dependent antiviral effect of PhytoQuin, which prevented S-mediated entry into human cells. We also observed that PhytoQuin PDI altered S protein electrophoretic mobility. The PhytoQuin constituent emodin displayed equivalent light-dependent antiviral activity to PhytoQuin in matched-dose experiments, indicating that it plays a central role in PhytoQuin PDI against CoVs. Together, these findings demonstrate that HCoV lipid envelopes and proteins are damaged by PhytoQuin PDI and expands the list of susceptible viruses.

Strong coupling in two-dimensional materials-based nanostructures: a review

Strong interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter leads to the formation of hybrid light-matter states, making the absorption and emission behavior different from those of the uncoupled states. Strong coupling effect results in the famous Rabi splitting and the emergence of new polaritonic eigenmodes, exhibiting spectral anticrossing behavior and unique energy-transfer properties. In recent years, there has been a rapidly increasing number of works focusing on strong coupling between nanostructures and two-dimensional materials (2DMs), because of the exceptional properties and applications they demonstrate. Here, we review the significant recent advances and important developments of strong light-matter interactions in 2DMs-based nanostructures. We adopt the coupled oscillator model to describe the strong coupling and give an overview of various hybrid nanostructures to realize this regime, including graphene-based nanostructures, black phosphorus-based nanostructures, transition-metal dichalcogenides-based nanostructures, etc. In addition, we discuss potential applications that can benefit from these effects and conclude our review with a perspective on the future of this rapidly emerging field.

Image polaritons in van der Waals crystals

Polaritonic modes in low-dimensional materials enable strong light–matter interactions and the manipulation of light on nanometer length scales. Very recently, a new class of polaritons has attracted considerable interest in nanophotonics: image polaritons in van der Waals crystals, manifesting when a polaritonic material is in close proximity to a highly conductive metal, so that the polaritonic mode couples with its mirror image. Image modes constitute an appealing nanophotonic platform, providing an unparalleled degree of optical field compression into nanometric volumes while exhibiting lower normalized propagation loss compared to conventional polariton modes in van der Waals crystals on nonmetallic substrates. Moreover, the ultra-compressed image modes provide access to the nonlocal regime of light–matter interaction. In this review, we systematically overview the young, yet rapidly growing, field of image polaritons. More specifically, we discuss the dispersion properties of image modes, showcase the diversity of the available polaritons in various van der Waals materials, and highlight experimental breakthroughs owing to the unique properties of image polaritons.

Covalent organic framework as photocatalyst for window ledge cross-dehydrogenative coupling reactions

A benzothiadiazole-involved donor-acceptor (D-A) covalent organic framework (COF), which possesses high crystallinity and strong light-harvesting capability (ranging from 300 to 800 nm), can serve as a highly effective photocatalyst for...

COMMERCIALIZATION OF ART IN THE CONTEXT OF CONSUMPTION CULTURE

The Enlightenment philosophy, inspired by the intellectual movements of the Renaissance and Reformation, emerging from the scholastic darkness of the Middle Ages, led to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution with its strong light; With the great acceleration given by the production, it has become the dominant ideology of science, culture and art by spreading first to Europe and then to the whole world. Modernism, which was shaped by the idea of Enlightenment, transformed into capitalism in a short time and caused the formation of a consumption culture. The enlightenment ideology brought the understanding of "objective reason" and "progressive history" to humanity, which transformed it into a consumer society shaped by capitalism instead of the "promised paradise". This is why the 'Age of Modernity' is called the age of capitalist transformation. The spread of capitalism to the whole world has been achieved through mass communication and production techniques. TVs, which are the broadcasting organs of capitalism, have become the main tool of capital transformation and have ensured the spread of consumption culture with advertising and marketing techniques. Modernism has carried the material, thinking and comprehension stages of art to a materialistic dimension within a structure that is far from emotional, formed by a technocentric and mechanical mentality. Art integrated with technology has become commodified with capitalist regulation and institutionalization; has gained a commercial dimension. Pop Art, which emerged in the 1960s, has become the symbol of commercialized art; It has emerged as an art movement that deals with the consumption society and its values. Andy Warhol, the famous representative of Pop Art, is one of the artists known to play a role in the commodification of works of art. Warhol's art has made serious contributions to the process of transforming today's art into commodity aesthetics. Meta art/aesthetics is a tradeable world of copies. This artificial world has turned into the real world in the consumer society, which can be reproduced in line with the possibilities of art production technologies; They have become objects of consumption whose uniqueness has been lost. Keywords: Art, Consumption Culture, Commercialization, Kitsch, Andy Warhol

GUN4 Affects the Circadian Clock and Seedlings Adaptation to Changing Light Conditions

The chloroplast is a key organelle for photosynthesis and perceiving environmental information. GENOME UNCOUPLED 4 (GUN4) has been shown to be required for the regulation of both chlorophyll synthesis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis and plastid retrograde signaling. In this study, we found that growth of the gun4 mutant was significantly improved under medium strong light (200 μmol photons m−2s−1) compared to normal light (100 μmol photons m−2s−1), in marked contrast to wild-type (WT). Further analysis revealed that GUN4 interacts with SIGNAL RECOGNITION PARTICLE 54 KDA SUBUNIT (SRP43) and SRP54. RNA-seq analysis indicated that the expression of genes for light signaling and the circadian clock is altered in gun4 compared with (WT). qPCR analysis confirmed that the expression of the clock genes CLOCK-RELATED 1 (CCA1), LATE ELONGATION HYPOCOTYL (LHY), TIMING OF CAB EXPRESSION 1 (TOC1) and PSEUDO RESPONSE REGULATOR 7 (PRR7) is significantly changed in the gun4 and srp54 mutants under normal and medium strong light conditions. These results suggest that GUN4 may coordinate the adaptation of plants to changing light conditions by regulating the biological clock, although it is not clear whether the effect is direct or indirect.