Photonic crystals: Sustainable sensors from silk

Silk fibers have been processed and used to create fabrics and threads for centuries. However, the solubilizing of silk fibers, thereby turning it into a versatile pre-polymer solution is a much newer technology. Solubilized silk can be processed in many different ways to create a biocompatible material with controllable mechanical properties.
This video introduces the processing of silk from silk worm cocoons, and shows how the silk solution can be used to create a fiber mat via...

We present a protocol for fabricating 1-D photonic crystal cavities on subwavelength diameter silica fibers (optical nanofibers) using femtosecond laser-induced...

Blending is an efficient approach to generate biomaterials with a broad range of properties and combined features. By predicting the molecular interactions between different natural silk proteins, new silk-silk protein alloy platforms with tunable mechanical resiliency, electrical response, optical transparency, chemical processability, biodegradability, or thermal stability can be...

Use of photonic crystal slow light waveguides and cavities has been widely adopted by the photonics community in many differing applications. Therefore fabrication and characterization of these devices are of great interest. This paper outlines our fabrication technique and two optical characterization methods, namely: interferometric (waveguides) and resonant scattering...

Plasmonic tweezers and photonic crystal nanostructures are shown to produce useful enhancements in the efficiency and orientation control of optically trapping micro- and...

As the human population continues to grow and use resources, we must be mindful of our planet’s natural limits. Sustainable development provides a pathway to maintain and improve human life now while also ensuring that future generations will have the resources that they need. The long-term success of sustainability efforts rests on understanding the interplay between human actions and ecological systems.