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The development of silicon photonics provides a method of implementing high reliability and high precision for new micro-nano optical functional devices and system-on-chips. The asymmetric Fano resonance phenomenon caused by the mutual coupling of optical resonant cavities is extensively studied. The spectrum of Fano resonance has an asymmetric and sharp slope near the resonance wavelength. The wavelength range for tuning the transmission from zero to one is much narrow in Fano lineshape, therefore improving the figure of merits of power consumption, sensing sensitivity, and extinction ratio. The mechanism can significantly improve silicon-based optical switches, detectors, sensors, and optical non-reciprocal all-optical signal processing. Therefore, the mechanism and method of generating the Fano resonance, the applications of silicon-based photonic technology, and the physical meaning of the Fano formula’s parameters are discussed in detail. It can be concluded that the primary condition for creating the Fano resonance is that the dual-cavity coupling is a weak coupling, and the detuning of resonance frequency of the two cavities partly determines Fano resonance lineshapes. Furthermore, the electromagnetically induced transparency is generated when the frequency detuning is zero. The methods of generating Fano resonance by using different types of devices in silicon photonics (besides the two-dimensional photonic crystals) and the corresponding evolutions of Fano resonance are introduced and categorized, including simple photonic crystal nanobeam, micro-ring resonator cavity without sacrificing the compact footprint, micro-ring resonator coupling with other structures (mainly double micro-ring resonators), adjustable Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and others such as slit waveguide and self-coupling waveguide. Then, we explain the all-optical signal processing based on the Fano resonance phenomenon, and also discuss the differences among the design concepts of Fano resonance in optimizing optical switches, modulators, optical sensing, and optical non-reciprocity. Finally, the future development direction is discussed from the perspective of improving Fano resonance parameters. The topology structure can improve the robustness of the Fano resonance spectrum; the bound states in continuous mode can increase the slope of Fano spectrum; the Fano resonance can expand the bandwidth of resonance spectrum by combining other material systems besides silicon photonics; the multi-mode Fano resonances can enhance the capability of the spectral multiplexing; the reverse design methods can improve the performance of the device. We believe that this review can provide an excellent reference for researchers who are studying the silicon photonic devices.

A plasmonic waveguide system composed of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) stub coupled with circular cavity resonator was proposed to produce ultra sharp Fano resonances, which resulted from the coupling between the ultra narrow discrete resonances and the ultra broad spectrum of the plasmonic circular cavity and stub resonator, respectively. The spectral line shapes of the Fano resonances can be easily adjusted by changing the structure parameters. And the transmittance of the system can sharply decrease from peak (“on state”) to valley (“off state”) with wavelength shifts of only about 8 nm. Due to the sharp phase change of the ultra asymmetric Fano resonance, a maximum group index of about 180 can be realized. Also, the ultra sharp spectrum contributes to a highly efficient plasmonic refractive index sensor, which can yield a linear sensitivity of 1277 nm/RIU and figure of merit of about 2.1 × 104. The proposed structure may have potential applications in nanoscale filter, slow light, and refractive index sensor.

A low cost polymer sampled waveguide Bragg grating which can be fabricated by using the simple contact lithography is proposed. By using the contact lithography and reactive ion etching, the sampled Bragg grating structures were fabricated on the waveguide bottom cladding, where a channel waveguide was fabricated on top of it as the waveguide core to form the polymer sampled waveguide Bragg grating working at around 1550 nm. The measured transmission and reflection spectra of the fabricated polymer sampled waveguide Bragg grating exhibit multiple dips and peaks, respectively. And the wavelength interval among the peaks is 0.376 nm, which shows good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Waveguide ring resonators (WRRs) operating at a telecom window of 1.4∼1.6 μm based on asymmetric Au-(Pb, La)(Zr, Ti)O3-Au structure is proposed and investigated. Electro-optical control of such WRRs is conducted by introducing epitaxial (Pb, La)(Zr, Ti)O3 (PLZT) thin films as the core layer deposited between the upper and lower gold slabs with different widths. The long-term reliability, large electro-optic (EO) coefficients, and spontaneous polarization properties of PLZT thin films have ensured high performance of our WRRs. It has been demonstrated that the footprint of WRR can be fabricated less than 20 μm2 with the radius of ring resonator around 1 μm through combining PLZT thin films with surface plasmons (SPs). Furthermore, the large extinction ratio (∼43 dB), as well as comparatively low insertion loss (

In the one-dimensional cutting stock problem with usable leftovers (1DCSPUL), items of the current order are cut from stock bars to minimize material cost. Here, stock bars include both standard ones bought commercially and old leftovers generated in processing previous orders, and cutting patterns often include new leftovers that are usable in processing subsequent orders. Leftovers of the same length are considered to be of the same type. The number of types of leftovers should be limited to simplify the cutting process and reduce the storage area. This paper presents an integer programming model for the 1DCSPUL with limited leftover types and describes a heuristic algorithm based on a column-generation procedure to solve it. Computational results show that the proposed approach is more effective than several published algorithms in reducing trim loss, especially when the number of types of leftovers is limited.

A simple T-shaped plasmonic nanostructure composed of two perpendicular coupled nanorods is proposed to produce strong Fano resonances. By the near-field coupling between the “bright” dipole and “dark” quadrupole plasmons of the nanorods, a deep Fano dip is formed in the extinction spectrum, which can be well fitted by the Fano interference model. The effects of the geometry parameters including nanorod length, coupling gap size, and coupling location to the Fano resonances are analyzed in detail, and a very high refractive index sensitivity is achieved by the Fano resonance. Also by adjusting the incident polarization direction, double Fano resonances can be formed by the interferences of the dipole, quadrupole, and hexapole plasmons. The proposed nanorod dimer structure is agile, and a trimer which supports double Fano resonances can be easily formed by introducing a third perpendicular coupled nanorod. The proposed T-shaped nanorod dimer structure may have applications in the fields of biological sensing and plasmon-induced transparency.

By means of the transfer-matrix method, the effects of parameter modulation on the quality of near-field imaging in one-dimensional photonic crystal consisting of alternately left-handed material and right-handed material are investigated. Based on analyses of the recovery rate and phase shift, the results show that the imaging quality is not obviously affected by the minor changes of layer thickness. In addition, by modulating the material parameters of the left-handed material, it is found that for both the real part and the imaginary part, the system is more sensitive to the permeability than the permittivity for the TE wave. For the TM wave, it is reverse. These properties are very useful to fabricate left-handed material photonic crystals in practice.

We fabricate the hybrid films of colloidal CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) and poly(9-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) sandwiched between two electrodes. The voltage and temperature dependences of the electroluminescence (EL) are measured. The quantum-confined Stark effect of colloidal QDs is clearly observed. To explore the mechanism in the QD EL, hybrid films are fabricated with different concentrations of colloidal QDs. Electrons and holes are proposed to be separately transported in QDs and PVK, respectively.

We synthesize colloidal CdSe/CdS core/shell quantum dots with different shell thicknesses, and there are five samples including CdSe core dots, and CdSe/CdS core/shell dots with 1–4 CdS layers. X-ray diffraction and Raman measurements indicate that the stress in CdSe core becomes stronger with the increasing shell thickness, and the optical measurements show that when the shell becomes thicker, the photoluminescence quantum yield is enhanced, and the radiative decay is also expedited. The temperature-dependent optical spectra are measured. The relation between the microstructure and the optical properties is discussed.

Single-negative materials based on photonic crystal with multiple defect layers are designed and the free modulation of defect modes is studied. The results show that the multi-defect structure can avoid the interference between the defect states. Therefore, the designed double defect modes in the zero effective-phase gap can be adjusted independently by changing the thickness of different defect layers. In addition, the two tunable defect modes have the omnidirectional characteristics. This multi-defect structure with above-mentioned two advantages has potential applications in modern optical devices such as tunable omnidirectional filters.

A newly synthesized 1,3,4-oxadiazole derivatives have been studied using a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser system. The series molecules present strong three-photon absorption and frequency upconversion fluorescence at wavelengths from 1205nm to 1575nm. Furthermore, there is no proportional relationship between three-photon absorption cross sections and the chemical structure transformation from monomer, dimer to trimer. Effective charge-transfer distance by π-conjugation bonds may be the contributing factor. In the experimental design, the far-field intensity distribution of femtosecond laser beam has been taken into account. We give the optimized analytical solution of nonlinear transmission in a three-photon absorption (3PA) process when the incident beam has a Gaussian transverse spatial profile.

Nanocombs with a disc cap structure of ZnO have been synthesized on Si substrates by using pure Zinc powders as the source materials based on a vapour-phase transport process. The morphology and the microstructure are investigated by a scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. Based on the transmission electron microscopy and selected area electron diffraction analysis, the growth directions of three representative parts, nanoribbon stem, nanorod branch and nanodisc cap of the nanocomb are revealed. The growth mechanism of the disc-capped nanocombs is discussed based on the self-catalyzed vapour-liquid-solid process.