The polarization-sensitivity of an optical array - a periodic assembly of subwavelength resonators - has been hypothesized to be correlated to the degree of asymmetry of its individual resonators. However, the lack of a global quantifying measure of asymmetry makes the purposeful design of asymmetric structures intractable. This work takes a bottom-up approach to investigate how the controlled violation of two-dimensional symmetry in regular polygon-shaped nanoscale resonators affects the polarization sensitivity of lattice resonant silicon nitride nano-optical arrays. By focusing on visible light, these arrays serve as color sensors for diverse polarized light domains. While rectangle-shaped resonators lack chirality for sensing varying chiral light orientations, removing corners enables the selective enhancement of near-field electric and magnetic moments in response to clockwise- and counterclockwise-orientations of circularly polarized light. This selective enhancement of near-field electric and magnetic moments leads to unique far-field spectra and enables the development of a chiral light orientation color sensor.
We leverage the Morpho and Papilio Blumei butterfly wings and the Chalcothea Smaragdina beetle shell, as a novel imaging platform to elucidate the fibrous properties of biological tissue. Unstained and fixed murine breast cancer tissue sections are studied with high and low collagen content. By interfacing histological tissue sections with the studied nature-derived structural color system, we achieve selective structural coloration of the tissue based on its fibrous properties in a contact-free and label-free manner. Using Jones calculus and color theory, we define key figures of merit which quantify the anisotropic optical properties of the fibrous tissue for the tissue-structural color system and for the tissue on its own. The enhancement of the tissue optical anisotropy with the nature-derived metasurfaces will then be assessed, showcasing the potential of this technique in various diagnostic applications.
Metasurfaces are composed of sub-wavelength periodically arranged resonant structures that can manipulate wave-matter interactions in manners not observed in nature. All-optical and all-acoustic metasurfaces have separately demonstrated versatile capabilities such as lensing, beam steering or wavefront control. Here, we study a new class of acoustoplasmonic metasurfaces. By combining the physics of light and sound in previously unexplored ways, this platform enables entirely new avenues to harness the power of wave-matter interactions. This work paves the way toward versatile societal imaging applications ranging from environmental science to biomedical devices or industrial imaging.
Iridescent structural color is abundant in nature, arising in the saturated blues of the Morpho butterfly wing or the greens of jeweled beetle shells. At the micrometer scale and smaller, these naturally occurring, three-dimensionally (3D)-architected photonic crystals are composed of ordered, geometrically anisotropic features which exhibit distinct interactions with light at varying angles of incidence or polarization state. Due to their 3D hierarchical architecture, these nature-derived systems are unique sources of polarization-sensitive structural color with high color purity and brightness. Here, we explore the exemplary polarization-sensitive properties of nature-derived photonic crystals and identify their key photonic and optically anisotropic features. We then leverage this knowledge to develop a new class of nature-inspired, 3D-architected colorimetric metasurfaces to enhance polarization-sensitive structural color response beyond what is observed in nature.
Optical and acoustic metasurfaces have been extensively studied for wavefront shaping, including lensing, beam steering, and holography. This work aims to explore a new field of acoustoplasmonic metasurfaces that utilize the photoacoustic effect in gold nanoparticles to generate high-frequency acoustic waves via optical excitation. We leverage the extreme polarization-dependence of absorption efficiency in nanoellipsoids to introduce acoustic wavefront tunability, which opens the door to applications in super-resolution acoustic imaging.
Recent research has shown that the arrangement and density of extracellular fibers within the tumor microenvironment can signify breast cancer stage. However, most biological fibers possess inherently weak birefringence. This means visualizing these structures requires expensive and complex nonlinear optics or stains that necessitate laborious preparation and risk false diagnosis due to potential artifacts. Access to both options can be especially challenging in underserved settings, where marginalized groups are more susceptible to aggressive variants of breast cancer.
We leverage the polarization-sensitive structural color in Morpho butterfly wings for stain-free imaging of extracellular fibers in breast cancer tissue biopsies. We quantitatively assessed the anisotropic colorimetric response of histological tissue sections interfaced with these nanophotonic materials. The promising diagnostic properties of this stain-free imaging platform introduces a new method of diagnostic imaging for rapid, precise, and low-cost tissue diagnostics.
The divergent physical properties of light and sound waves result in tradeoffs between resolution and penetration depth with respect to their imaging capabilities. An ideal imaging system should combine the strengths of optical and acoustic imaging. Here, we demonstrate that via the use of designed metal nanoparticle based plasmonic metasurfaces, we can enable photoacoustic imaging with resolution better than optical imaging and penetration depths as deep as acoustic imaging, without any destruction of media, and with reduced power requirements (via plasmonic focusing). Moreover, the application to photoacoustic structured illumination microscopy would lead to new avenues in miniaturized, on-chip super-resolution imaging.
The origin and progression of a variety of leading health challenges, encompassing Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, fibrosis and cancer, are directly linked to changes in the presence and orientation of fibrous matter in biological tissue. Fibrous biological tissue exhibits distinct anisotropic optical properties, which can be leveraged for selective imaging. However, these naturally occurring light-matter interactions are inherently weak, posing barriers to their visualization. Here, we leverage anisotropic, colorimetric metasurfaces to selectively visualize disease-relevant fiber density and orientation in biological tissue. We then investigate versatile fiber-affecting diseases where metasurfaces hold great potential to achieve rapid, precise and low-cost tissue diagnostics.
The polarization sensitivity of a nano-optical array is hypothesized to correlate with the degree of asymmetry of its individual nanostructures. This work takes a top-down approach to investigate how controlled violations of two-dimensional symmetry in regular polygon-shaped nanostructures affect the polarization sensitivity of lattice resonant, dielectric nano-arrays. Such nanoarrays dampen higher-order Mie resonances while maintaining the fundamental Mie resonance. Isolating a fundamental Mie resonance in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum permits the mapping of a spectrum to a high-purity color. Through this, it becomes possible to build a colorimetric sensor of domains of rotations of linearly polarized light.
Iridescent structural color is abundant in nature, arising in the saturated blues of the Morpho butterfly wing or the greens of jewelled beetle shells. At the micrometer scale and smaller, these naturally occurring, three-dimensionally (3D)-architected photonic crystals are composed of ordered, geometrically anisotropic features which exhibit distinct interactions with polarized light.
Here, we design artificial 3D-architected colorimetric metasurfaces. We use two-photon lithography to fabricate multilayer grating structures which surpass the polarization-sensitive colorimetric response attainable in nature. Bringing additive manufacturing to the regime of visible light-matter interactions, our metasurfaces hold promise for versatile imaging, display and sensing technologies.
Fibrotic diseases account for one-third of deaths worldwide, making it essential to investigate the accompanying tissue microstructural changes that are critical to disease progression. This research focuses on the fibrotic extracellular matrices present in histological tissue sections, which can characterize disease progression. We demonstrate how bioinspired structural color can be utilized as a label-free technology to determine disease progression on a single nanostructured surface. This nanophotonic imaging platform characterizes the organization of fibrous biological tissues with distinct stain-free color responses. The colorimetric response of histological tissue sections interfaced with these nanostructured slides was quantitatively assessed.
Imaging techniques with subdiffraction-limited spatial resolutions are highly desired for a deeper understanding of subcellular systems. Optical imaging enables high resolution under 200 nm while the visible light penetration depth is limited to merely 2 mm. Ultrasound images achieve two orders of magnitude lower resolutions but can penetrate two orders of magnitude deeper into a medium than optical images. This work combines the strengths of optical and acoustic imaging techniques through AuNP-based metasurfaces utilizing the photoacoustic effect that gold exhibits. Our novel imaging technique can simultaneously achieve high resolution and deep penetration depths without any destruction of media.
We present an all-optical, label-free technology for quantitative, real-time cancer tissue diagnostics on a single, clinically-compatible chip. Periodically-arranged sub-wavelength dielectric nanostructures, known as metasurfaces, are patterned into dielectric layers on glass microscope coverslips, where biopsied tumor tissue sections can be deposited following routine clinical procedure. We numerically and experimentally map the anisotropy and orientation of collagen fibers, a quantitative marker of cancer stage in tissue, onto metasurface structural color. Working at the interface of nanoscale optics and medicine, our colorimetric metasurface platform has the potential to set a new benchmark for rapid, quantitative and cost-effective cancer tissue diagnostics.
Optical chirality has been recently suggested to complement the physically relevant conserved quantities of the well-known Maxwell's equations. This time-even pseudoscalar is expected to provide further insight in polarization phenomena of electrodynamics such as spectroscopy of chiral molecules. Previously, the corresponding continuity equation was stated for homogeneous lossless media only. We extend the underlying theory to arbitrary setups and analyse piecewise-constant material distributions in particular. Our implementation in a Finite Element Method framework is applied to illustrative examples in order to introduce this novel tool for the analysis of time-harmonic simulations of nano-optical devices.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.