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High-quality three-dimensional polystyrene opal photonic crystals are fabricated by vertical deposition method. The transmission properties with different incident angles and different composite refractive index contrasts are experimentally and theoretically studied. Good agreement between the experiment and theory is achieved. We find that with the increasing incident angle, the gap position shifts to the short wavelength (blue shift) and the gap becomes shallower; and with the increase of refractive index of the opal void materials and decrease the contrast of refractive index, the gap position shifts to the long wavelength (red shift). At the same time, we observe the swelling effects when the sample is immerged in the solutions with different refractive indices, which make the microsphere diameter in solution become larger than that in air. The understanding of band gap shift behaviour may be helpful in designing optical sensors and tunable photonic crystal ultrafast optical switches.

We numerically investigate the quality factors of two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal (PC) microcavities using an auxiliary differential equations (ADE) technique in the context of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The microcavities are formed by point defects in the air hole lattice hexagonally patterned in ZnO (zinc oxide) matrix. The quality factors of these microcavities are limited primarily by the absorption of the background dielectric. We show that the ratio between the quality factors of microcavities in lossy and lossless background dielectric depends on the overlap between the field of cavity modes and the absorbing background dielectric in addition to the magnitude of absorption. These results will be helpful when designing and optimizing photonic crystal microcavities formed in lossy medium.

We numerically investigate the coupling of TE-like modes and TM-like modes in a two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal (PC) slab composed of truncated cone silicon rods. In such structures, the classification of TE-like modes and TM-like modes is generally impossible and the coupling occurs due to vertical structural asymmetries. The frequency and wavevector dependences of the mode coupling are discussed by investigating the photonic band structures, and the coupling efficiency is studied by examining the transmittance. The results show that the efficiency of mode conversion is strengthened by the vertical asymmetry and weakened by the clear small gap. These structures could be used as polarization conversion devices in integrated optics.

A highly efficient W3 Y-branch filter in a two-dimensional photonic crystal slab with triangular lattice of air holes is designed and fabricated, and its transmission properties are measured. By accurately adjusting the size of the resonant cavities, the minimum wavelength spacing of 7 nm between two channels is realized. The corresponding resonant wavelengths of the two cavities agree well with the calculated ones. This implies that this kind of filter may be promising in integrated wavelength division multiplexing system.

We report the imaging properties of a two-dimensional rectangular-lattice photonic crystal (PC) slab consisting of rectangular metallic rods immersed in a dielectric background. By simulating the electromagnetic wave propagation through such a PC slab with the finite-difference time-domain method, we find that a point source placed in the vicinity of the PC slab can form a good-quality image through the slab. The frequency region where a good-quality image is formed can be controlled by choosing the direction along which the PC slab surface normal is placed.

The extraordinary light transmission through a 200-nm thick gold film when passing through different subwavelength hole arrays is observed experimentally. The sample is fabricated by electron beam lithography and reactive ion etching system. A comparison between light transmissions shows that the hole shape changing from rectangular to diamond strongly affects the transmission intensity although both structures possess the same lattice constant of 600 nm. Moreover, the position of the transmission maximum undergoes a spectral red-shift of about 63 nm. Numerical simulations by using a transfer matrix method reproduce the observed transmission spectrum quite well.

Imaging properties of a two-dimensional photonic crystal (PC) slab consisting of a triangular lattice of metallic cylinders immersed in a dielectric background are investigated by the finite-difference time-domain technique. With the calculated field patterns of a point source placed in the vicinity of the PC slab and the corresponding equifrequency-surface contours, we find that a high-quality image can form in the opposite side of the slab in the lowest TM-polarized photonic band, and this near-field image is formed mainly by the self-collimation effect.

The abnormal transmittance in the dielectric band edge of a polystyrene opal is observed and analysed. The transmittance is periodically modulated and the period of modulation varies with the wavelength, which destroys the perfect structure of the photonic band gap. The transmittance modulation originates from the propagation of the low order whispering-gallery mode excited in polystyrene spheres. These results indicate that the whispering-gallery mode has a great influence on practical applications of polystyrene opal.

In the calibration of the optical trap stiffness, it is found that there appears an attenuating oscillation as an oscillatory disturbance added to the trapped bead movement, when the scanner is driven by a triangular wave input. An equivalent oscillator model is put forward to explain the mechanism of the oscillatory disturbance. Both the measurements and calculations show that the attenuating oscillation comes from the oscillation of the scanner and the triangular wave drive causes this additional oscillation of the scanner. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the oscillatory disturbance will become stronger, when the stiffness of the trap increases or the natural frequency of the scanner decreases. We adopt another driving way, i.e. a sinusoidal wave input is used instead of the triangular wave input. Our experiment has verified that in this case the oscillatory disturbance is eliminated completely.

Membrane tethers are extracted from breast cancer cells using a force generated by an optical trap. It is experimentally obtained that the radius of tether is about 0.1 μm and the static tether force is about 8.5 pN. Calculations based on the experimental measurements give a bending modulus for the tether of 1.35×10−19 N.m and a surface membrane tension of 6.76×10−6 N/m in the breast cancer cell. The treatment with cytochalasin D results in the decreasing bending modulus and decreasing apparent surface tension. When the membrane protein caveolin is over-expressed, similar cases occur in bending modulus and apparent surface tension. In addition, the viscous resistance coefficient of the membrane is calculated to be 1.15 pN.s/μm according to the dynamic tether forces obtained under different pulling velocities.

We propose a mathematical model to analyse the membrane tether formation process on a cell surface with reservoir. Based on the experimental results, the membrane reservoir density of breast cancer cell was obtained, ? = 8.02. The membrane surface viscosity between membrane and environment ? is 0.021(pN.s/?m3), and the static force F0 = 5.71?pN.

Various Mie scattering systems, each having a transparent matrix, are studied in the mid-infrared region. Our three theoretical scattering systems correspond to a lossless scatterer, an anomalous dispersive dielectric scatterer and a metal scatterer, each in a non-air usual matrix. The refractive-index effects of the matrix on scattering and extinction efficiencies in the mid-infrared region are found to be quite different in different cases. Although the non-air usual matrix reduces scattering and extinction efficiencies in the first kind of system, it may or may not help scatter and extinguish the mid-infrared radiation in the second and it has little effect on them in the third.

We have investigated the analytical forms of the photonic density of states (DOS) in a photonic crystal in the interested frequency regime according to the rule of state conservation in a photonic crystal with pseudogaps, which states that, if a valley of the DOS appears in some range of frequencies, it must be compensated for by increasing over some other ranges. By using a model DOS with a state-conservative photonic pseudogap, we have also investigated the enhancement and suppression of spontaneous emission of two-level atoms with different frequency positions and widths of emission spectra in a state-conservative electromagnetic reservoir; and the DOS-induced suppression, enhancement, narrowing and redshifting or blueshifting of spontaneous emission spectra are naturally obtained.

Inverse opals of TiO2 with different filling fractions were fabricated by using an opal of polystyrene spheres as a template. Scanning electron microscopy showed the accumulative process of TiO2. The transmission spectra of inverse opals with different filling fractions were measured and the shifts of transmission dip with the filling fraction were observed. Our investigation made the infiltration process clear, and it might be helpful for further improvement of the fabrication of TiO2 inverse opals.

Trapping force was calculated with a homogeneous dielectric sphere model. Results indicate that the transverse trapping force of optical tweezers can be increased effectively through modifying laser beam profile while the axial stability of the system is still assured. This is quite important when optical tweezers are applied to the precise measurements for single biological molecule.

Microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) are important proteins in cells. They can regulate the organization, dynamics and function of microtubules. We measure the binding force between microtubule and a new plant MAP, i.e. AtMAP65-1, by dual-optical tweezers. The force is obtained to be 14.6±3.5 pN from the data statistics and analysis. This force measurement is helpful to understand the function and mechanism of MAPs from the mechanical point of view and lays the groundwork for future measurements of the mechanical properties of other biological macro-molecules.

Negative refraction and imaging properties of the electromagnetic wave through a two-dimensional photonic crystal (PC) slab, which consists of a square lattice of elliptical dielectric rods immersed in the air background, is studied by the plane-wave expansion method and the finite-difference time-domain method. A point source placed in the vicinity of the PC slab can form a good-quality image spot through the PC slab for the incident frequencies within the second photonic band. The calculated result also shows that negative refraction occurs in this kind of PC slab.

Two kinds of subwavelength hole arrays in metallic films are designed to verify the important role of the periodicity in enhanced transmission of light. The measured optical spectra show that the quasiperiodic hole arrays exhibit an enhanced transmission peak centred at 707 nm with a transmission intensity of about 20%, while no plasmon resonance peak is found for the amorphous hole arrays. When the hole diameter decreases in the quasiperiodic structure, the position of the transmission peak shifts slightly, and the transmittance drops. These phenomena indicate the important role of the long-range structural order (particularly the periodicity) in assisting the coupling of incident light wave with the surface plasmon modes of the metallic structures.

Binary multilayers with a certain kind of disorder may exhibit high reflection range over a very wide bandwidth. The dependencies of this bandwidth on the center wavelength, random layers sequence, refractive contrast of the coating materials, layer thickness errors and the angle of incidence have been studied numerically. Our simulations have shown that broadband reflectors can be designed for various applications. The reflective curves for staggered multilayers are also computed. The results show that the broadening effect of irregular multilayers is dominated by its degree of disorder. A broadband TiO2-SiO2 multilayer is fabricated. The measured width of the transmittance less than 1% for this multilayer covers 400 nm, from 700 to 1100 nm, which is just the tuning range of Ti: sapphire lasers.

We fabricated two-dimensional photonic crystal slab Y-branch waveguides with different intervals between the two output ports and measured their light guiding characteristics. The field intensity distributions of the TE polarized wave modes are also calculated by means of a transfer matrix method. Both the theoretical and experimental results show that the minimum interval between the two output ports is about 1.4 times the transport wavelength of 1.55 μm. If the interval becomes smaller, light waves in the two branches will couple each other seriously. The result will be helpful for designs of ultracompact wave demultiplexers and all-optical integrated circuits.

The transmission properties of quasiperiodic photonic crystals (QPCs) based on the random square-triangle tiling system are investigated by the multiple scattering method. The hollow cylinders are introduced in our calculation. It is found that QPCs with hollow cylinders also possess a complete band gap common to s- and p-polarized waves when the inner radius of hollow cylinders is larger than a certain value. The QPCs possessing the complete band gap can be applied to the fields of light emitting, wave-guides, optical filters, high-Q resonators and antennas.

Under illumination of excitation light, the force that can make fluorescent dye-labelled microtubules break up is measured by using dual-beam optical tweezers. It is found that this force is about several piconewtons, which is two orders of magnitude smaller than that without fluorescence label. Microtubules can be elongated about 20% and the increase of the tensile force is nonlinear with the microtubule elongation. Some qualitative explanations are given for the mechanisms about the breakup and elongation of microtubules exposed to excitation light.

A high-quality two-dimensional polystyrene photonic crystal is fabricated by the method of focused ion beam etching. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the transmittance spectrum are used to characterize the properties of the photonic crystal. The measured transmittance spectrum is in agreement with the theoretical one. The influences of the disorders caused by the random perturbations in the diameter or the position of the air holes on the photonic band structure are analysed. It is found that the phtonic bandgap can tolerate less than 10% degree of disorder.

We propose a ring photonic crystal working in the near infrared region, where the air holes in the background material GaAs are arranged to form a series of rings. We find that the band gaps do not depend on the incident direction and only a small number of rows are needed to create a frequency gap in the transmission spectrum. The transmission spectra of both P and S polarizations show that there is a complete bandgap in the hexagonal ring photonic crystals and the ratio of gap width to mid-gap frequency is as high as 11%.

High quality colloidal photonic crystals made from polystyrene spheres with diameter 240 nm are fabricated by the vertical deposition method. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the transmittance spectrum are used to characterize the properties of the photonic crystal. The SEAT images show that there are few lattice defects. The transmittance of the photonic crystal is above 75% in the pass band at 700 nm and is lower than 5% at the centre of the band gap, respectively. It is found that proper concentration is a very important factor to fabricate the photonic crystal when the diameter of the spheres is lower than 300 nm.

We report a simple method to make two-dimensional plane gratings that can be used as splitters. In the self-assembly process, the colloidal spheres can form single layer square or triangular lattice on a flat surface and in our experiments the triangular lattice is a more common structure. As an incident beam passes through the triangular lattice, it can be split into seven sub-beams, among which six beams have the same density and scattering angle. This grating is not sensitive to the polarization direction of the incident light.

A technique of displacement and force measurements with a photodiode quadrant detector in an optical tweezers system is presented. The stiffness of optical trap is calibrated and the leukemia cell membrane tension is measured. The results show that the optical tweezers combined with the quadrant detector is a very useful tool for detecting the displacement and force with a millisecond-order response.

A novel model of two-dimensional periodically poled lithium niobate designed for second harmonic generation of 1064 nm is proposed, in which a rectangular light route is used. The effective length of the sample is longer than the sample real length by (5/3).21/2 times. The conversion efficiency enhances greatly without prolonging the periodically poled crystal length.

Antimonite and cryolite are used as the high and low refractive index coating materials to be evaporated alternately to the glass substrates. All cryolite layers have the same thickness d/4na, and the thickness of antimonite layers varies randomly around an average value d/4nb, with =650 nm, na and nb their refractive indices. Three kinds of multilayer are prepared, they possess the same degree of thickness disorder, but different total lengths, i.e., 10, 15 and 21 periods. We measure the transmission and reflection spectrum after the light passing through these multilayers. The exponential intensity variation versus total length is experimentally demonstrated, and the light localization length is then obtained. Our experimental results can be fitted very well with the numerical simulation. Based on the measured and calculated localization length, the effects of phase coherent Bragg reflection and Anderson localization are discussed.

Experimental study on crystallization of polystyrene spheres and SrTiO3 particles in laser standing wave field is presented. The diameter of polystyrene, which are able to be trapped, is 7 times smaller than that reported by Burns, the corresponding lattice constant is reduced to 1.5 μm. The crystallization effect of SrTiO3 particles with a refractive constant of 2.5 in the visible range is observed for the first time. Based on the results above we believe that it is possible to construct photonic crystal with lattice constant extended to visible wave range by this method.

A procedure for fabricating novel TiO2 membrane material with sub-micrometre pores and large specific surface area from the template has been demonstrated. The morphology and structure of the membrane have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy. The results have indicated that the macroporous membrane consists of uniform hollow spheres which are interconnected to each other by `small windows'. Potential unique applications of this macroporous material in the fields of catalysis, optics, sensors, etc, are suggested.

The trapping force on Rayleigh particles in an optical tweezers system with an oil immersion objective is calculated by an electromagnetic model. The results indicate that the stability of particles trapped will be affected by spherical aberration, which is caused by refractive difference between objective oil and water solution, when the specimen manipulated is suspended in a water solution. The trapping force and depth of potential well will decrease and the minimum of laser power for ensuring the stability of particles trapped will increase with the enhanced trapping depth.

Trapping force of an optical tweezers system with an oil immersion objective is calculated with a ray-optics model. Results indicate that the trapping force will be decreased as a result of the introduction of spherical aberration, which is caused by the refractive mismatch between objective oil and water, when the sample manipulated is suspended in a water solution. The effect of spherical aberration will be serious when the detection depth of the optical tweezers is enhanced.