Exploiting collective effects of multiple optoelectronic devices integrated in a single fiber

The opportunities and challenges of realizing sophisticated functionality by assembling many nanoscale devices, while covering large areas, remain for the most part unrealized and unresolved. In this work, we demonstrate the successful fabrication of an eight-device cascaded optoelectronic fiber structure in which components down to 100 nm are individually electrically addressed and can operate collectively to deliver novel functionality over large area coverage. We show that a tandem arrangement of subwavelength photodetecting devices integrated in a single fiber enables the extraction of information on the direction, wavelength, and potentially even color of incident radiation over a wide spectral range in the visible regime. Finally, we fabricated a 0.1 square meter single plane fiber assembly which uses polychromatic illumination to extract images without the use of a lens, representing an important step toward ambient light imaging fabrics.