Structural coloration generates colors by the interaction between incident light and micro- or nano-scale structures. It has received tremendous interest for decades, due to advantages including robustness against bleaching and environmentally friendly properties (compared with conventional pigments and dyes). As a versatile coloration strategy, the tuning of structural colors based on micro- and nanoscale photonic structures has been extensively explored and can enable a broad range of applications including displays, anti-counterfeiting, and coating. However, scholarly research on structural colors has had limited impact on commercial products because of their disadvantages in cost, scalability, and fabrication. In this review, we analyze the key challenges and opportunities in the development of structural colors. We first summarize the fundamental mechanisms and design strategies for structural colors while reviewing the recent progress in realizing dynamic structural coloration. The promising potential applications including optical information processing and displays are also discussed while elucidating the most prominent challenges that prevent them from translating into technologies on the market. Finally, we address the new opportunities that are underexplored by the structural coloration community but can be achieved through multidisciplinary research within the emerging research areas.

Chiral sum-frequency generation (SFG) has proven to be a versatile spectroscopic and imaging tool for probing chirality. However, due to polarization restriction, the conventional chiral SFG microscopes have mostly adopted noncollinear beam configurations, which only partially cover the aperture of microscope and strongly spoil the spatial resolution. In this study, we report the first experimental demonstration of collinear chiral SFG microscopy, which fundamentally supports diffraction-limited resolution. This advancement is attributed to the collinear focus of a radially polarized vectorial beam and a linearly polarized (LP) beam. The tightly focused vectorial beam has a very strong longitudinal component, which interacts with the LP beam and produces the chiral SFG. The collinear configuration can utilize the full aperture and thus push the spatial resolution close to the diffraction limit. This technique can potentially boost the understanding of chiral systems.

Recently, the emerging 2 μm waveband has gained increasing interest due to its great potential for a wide scope of applications. Compared with the existing optical communication windows at shorter wavelengths, it also offers distinct advantages of lower nonlinear absorption, better fabrication tolerance, and larger free carrier plasma effects for silicon photonics, which has been a proven device technology. While much progress has been witnessed for silicon photonics at the 2 μm waveband, the primary challenge still exists for on-chip detectors. Despite the maturity and compatibility of the waveguide coupled photodetectors made of germanium, the 2 μm regime is far beyond its cutoff wavelength. In this work, we demonstrate an efficient and high-speed on-chip waveguide-coupled germanium photodetector operating at the 2 μm waveband. The weak sub-bandgap absorption of epitaxial germanium is greatly enhanced by a lateral separation absorption charge multiplication structure. The detector is fabricated by the standard process offered by a commercial foundry. The device has a benchmark performance with responsivity of 1.05 A/W and 3 dB bandwidth of 7.12 GHz, which is able to receive high-speed signals with up to 20 Gbit/s data rate. The availability of such an efficient and fast on-chip detector circumvents the barriers between silicon photonic integrated circuits and the potential applications at the 2 μm waveband.

Backward stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is widely exploited for various applications in optics and optoelectronics. It typically features a narrow gain bandwidth of a few tens of megahertz in fluoride crystals. Here we report a hundredfold increase of SBS bandwidth in whispering-gallery mode resonators. The crystalline orientation results in a large variation of the acoustic phase velocity upon propagation along the periphery, from which a broad Brillouin gain is formed. Over 2.5 GHz wide Brillouin gain profile is theoretically found and experimentally validated. SBS phenomena with Brillouin shift frequencies ranging from 11.73 to 14.47 GHz in ultrahigh QZ-cut magnesium fluoride cavities pumped at the telecommunication wavelength are demonstrated. Furthermore, the Brillouin–Kerr comb in this device is demonstrated. Over 400 comb lines spanning across a spectral window of 120 nm are observed. Our finding paves a new way for tailoring and harnessing the Brillouin gain in crystals.

The plentiful energy states of lanthanide (Ln3+)-doped nanomaterials make them very promising for on-chip integrated white-light lasers. Despite the rapid progresses, the Ln3+-based white upconversion emissions are strongly restricted by their low upconversion quantum efficiency and the color stability. Herein, we combine the CaF2:Yb35Tm1.5Er0.5 nanocrystals and the high-Q microtoroids, and experimentally demonstrate the chip-integrated stable white-light laser. By optimizing the sizes, density, and distributions of Ln3+-doped nanocrystals, the Q factors of Ln3+-doped microtoroids are maintained as high as 5×105. The strong light matter interaction in high-Q microtoroids greatly enhances the upconversion emission and dramatically reduces the laser thresholds at 652 nm, 545 nm, and 475 nm to similarly low values (1.89–2.10mJcm-2). Consequently, robust white-light microlaser has been experimentally achieved from a single microtoroid. This research has paved a solid step toward the chip-scale integrated broadband microlasers.

随着大数据业务的迅速发展，为应对持续增长的带宽需求，光纤通信窗口逐渐从传统C波段向C+L波段拓展。探索新波段也成为了光通信领域迫切需要解决的关键问题。位于近红外与中红外之间的2 μm波段具有低传输损耗和宽增益谱范围等优势，有望成为下一个光纤通信和空间激光通信的窗口。在商用光电子器件尚不成熟的情况下，实验室条件下已实现单波100 Gbit/s光传输记录。与此同时，2 μm波段功能性器件的研究也成为备受关注的热点。文中重点介绍了2 μm波段硅光子器件的研究进展，以及基于III-V族、铌酸锂薄膜、氮化硅、硫系玻璃等其他材料的一系列功能性器件，最后对2 μm波段片上光子集成器的发展前景进行了展望。

Dispersion engineering and measurement are significant for nonlinear photonic applications using whispering gallery mode microresonators. Specifically, the Kerr microresonator frequency comb as an important example has attracted a great amount of interest in research fields due to the potential capability of full integration on a chip. A simple and cost-efficient way for dispersion measurements is thereby in high demand for designing such a microcomb device. Here, we report a dispersion measurement approach using a fiber ring etalon reference. The free spectral range of the etalon is first measured through sideband modulation, and the dispersion of the etalon is inferred by binary function fitting during the dispersion measurement. This method is demonstrated on two MgF2 disk resonators. Experimental results show good agreement with numerical simulations using the finite element method. Dispersion engineering on such resonators is also numerically investigated.

Recently, 2-μm wave band has gained increasing interest due to its potential application for next-generation optical communication. But the development of 2-μm optical communications is substantially hampered by the modulation speed due to the device bandwidth constraints. Thus, a high-speed modulator is highly demanded at 2 μm. Motivated by this prospect, we demonstrate a high-speed silicon Mach–Zehnder modulator for a 2-μm wave band. The device is configured as a single-ended push–pull structure with waveguide electrorefraction via the free carrier plasma effect. The modulator was fabricated via a multiproject wafer shuttle run at a commercial silicon photonic foundry. The modulation efficiency of a single arm is measured to be 1.6V·cm. The high-speed characterization is also performed, and the modulation speed can reach 80 Gbit/s with 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) formats.

Chaotic dynamics in optical microcavities, governed dominantly by manifolds, is of great importance for both fundamental studies and photonic applications. Here, we report the experimental observation of a stable manifold characterized by energy and momentum evolution in the nearly chaotic phase space of an asymmetric optical microcavity. By controlling the radius of a fiber coupler and the coupling azimuth of the cavity, corresponding to the momentum and position of the input light, the injected light can in principle excite the system from a desired position in phase space. It is found that once the input light approaches the stable manifold, the angular momentum of the light experiences a rapid increase, and the energy is confined in the cavity for a long time. Consequently, the distribution of the stable manifold is visualized by the output power and the coupling depth to high-Q modes extracted from the transmission spectra, which is consistent with theoretical predictions by the ray model. This work opens a new path to understand the chaotic dynamics and reconstruct the complex structure in phase space, providing a new paradigm of manipulating photons in wave chaos.

Magnetic dipole (MD) transitions are important for a range of technologies from quantum light sources and displays to lasers and bio-probes. However, the typical MD transitions are much weaker than their electric counterparts and are usually neglected in practical applications. Herein, we experimentally demonstrate that the MD transitions can be significantly enhanced by the well-developed magnetic metamaterials in the visible optical range. The magnetic metamaterials consist of silver nanostrips and a thick silver film, which are separated with an Eu3+:polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) film. By controlling the thickness of the Eu3+:PMMA film, the magnetic resonance has been tuned to match the emission wavelength of MDs. Consequently, the intensity of MD emission has been significantly increased by around 30 times at the magnetic resonance wavelength, whereas the intensity of electric dipole emission is well-preserved. The corresponding numerical calculations reveal that the enhancement is directly generated by the magnetic resonance, which strongly increases the magnetic local density of states around the MD emitter and can efficiently radiate the MD emission into the far field. This is the first demonstration, to the best of our knowledge, that MD transitions can be improved by an additional degree of magnetic freedom, and we believe this research shall pave a new route towards bright magnetic emitters and their potential applications.