Innofocus

Self-Cooing Food Supply Chain Solution and Cool Box Application

april.chen — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:52:45 +0000

Quantum Photonic Chips (QPCs)

april.chen — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:26:51 +0000

Quantum Photonic Chips (QPCs) are miniaturized, integrated devices that use photons to perform quantum computations and other quantum technologies, delivering faster computation, more secure communications and more energy saving solutions. The design of QPCs involve creating nanoscale components such as waveguides, beam splitters and interferometers, into an ultracompact space. These elements guide and manipulate photons to enable quantum phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition, for quantum computing and quantum key distribution (QKD). Bringing the QPCs to life requires precision and innovation, and Innofocus laser nanoprinting technology is able to achieve sub-100 nm resolution with <10 nm accuracy, ensuring that even the most delicate structures are fabricated flawlessly. Innofocus has been investing into QPC development since 2023, and has successfully designed, simulated, fabricated, and characterized the QPC prototype, named INNOFOCUS QPC-⍺ in early 2025. Innofocus welcomes and is open to collaborations from all industries. Researchers, collaborators, and valued customers will join together to build the ecosystem of nano-manufacturing in Australia. With QPC fabricating capabilities, Innofocus aims to provide smaller, faster, and energy-saving solutions for more industries.

Fan-In-Fan-Out Waveguide

april.chen — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 06:36:01 +0000

Optical waveguide is a structure that can confine and guide light wave. The Fan-In-Fan-Out structure is one of the most basic composing elements for quantum photonic chip, and it is widely used in optical communication systems and quantum technology.

Innofocus can design, fabricate and characterize optical waveguide structures on multiple materials:

Silicon
Sapphire
Glasses

Two Hundred Nanometer Thin Multifocal Graphene Oxide Metalens for Varying Magnification Broadband Imaging

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:57:59 +0000

Conventional microscopes, which rely on multiple objective lenses for varying magnifications, are bulky, complex, and costly, making them difficult to integrate into compact devices. They require frequent manual adjustments, complicating the imaging process and increasing maintenance burdens. This paper explores the potential of single ultrathin graphene metalens to address this issue. We propose and demonstrate a 200 nm thin multiaxial focus graphene metalens with high-quality focusing, designed using spatial multiplexing and fabricated by one-step laser nanoprinting. A five-focal graphene metalens has been created, achieving clear imaging with varying magnifications across a broadband covering the entire visible wavelength. The graphene metalens has significantly reduced the size of the imaging system by orders of magnitude and holds profound potential for facilitating the integration and miniaturization of optical microscopic systems.

This paper was titled “Two Hundred Nanometer Thin Multifocal Graphene Oxide Metalens for Varying Magnification Broadband Imaging” and published on ACS Nano. The first author is Dr. Guiyuan Cao.

Multi-Wavelength Achromatic Graphene Metalenses for Visible, NIR, and Beyond

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:47:39 +0000

The demand for achromatic ultrathin flat lenses has become increasingly stringent, particularly for high-performance imaging and display applications. Despite significant progress in achromatic metasurface and diffraction lenses, no single material has yet been capable of constructing ultrathin achromatic flat lenses covering ultrabroad wavebands, including the visible and near-infrared (NIR), due to the limitations of material bandgaps. This limitation complicates fabrication processes, integration, and miniaturization, often leading to instability. In this paper, making use of the dispersionless nature of graphene, high numerical aperture multi-wavelength achromatic metalenses (MAGLs) made entirely from graphene is proposed and demonstrated. This approach, based on a partial intensity resonance (PIR) mechanism, requires no iterative algorithms. Two MAGLs for visible and communication bands, respectively, are designed and fabricated. Remarkably, the measured focal lengths only deviate by less than 0.15% from the desired values. The graphene metalens (GML) in the visible produced clear and high-quality images of microscopic character and Brassica napus cells. The demonstrated MAGLs significantly simplify the fabrication process and enhance integration, miniaturization, and stability. Their unique single-material design offers tremendous potential to replace conventional refractive lenses in applications such as virtual reality glasses, hyperspectral imaging systems, and fluorescence microscopes.

This paper was titled “Multi-Wavelength Achromatic Graphene Metalenses for Visible, NIR, and Beyond” and published on Laser & Photonics Reviews. The first author is Dr. Guiyuan Cao.

Read more:

https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.202401542

Ultra-high NA graphene oxide flat lens on a fiber facet with near diffraction-limited focusing

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:43:57 +0000

The realization of a high numerical aperture (NA) fiber lens is critical for achieving high imaging resolution in endoscopes, enabling subwavelength operation in optical tweezers and high efficiency coupling between optical fibers and photonic chips. However, it remains challenging with conventional design and fabrication. Here we propose an ultrathin (400 nm) graphene oxide (GO) film lens fabricated in situ on a standard single-mode fiber facet using the femtosecond laser direct writing technique. An extremely high NA of 0.89 is achieved with a near diffraction-limited focal spot (FWHM=0.68λ), which is verified theoretically and experimentally. The diameter of the fabricated fiber GO lens is as small as 12 μm with no beam expansion structure. The proposed fiber GO lens is promising for applications such as super-resolution imaging, compact optical tweezers, medical endoscopes, and on-chip integration.

This paper was titled “Ultra-high NA graphene oxide flat lens on a fiber facet with near diffraction-limited focusing” and published on Photonics Research. The first author is Dr. Xiaoke Chen.

Read more:

https://doi.org/10.1364/PRJ.521005

Direct laser writing on halide perovskites: from mechanisms to applications

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:38:46 +0000

Metal halide perovskites have emerged as game-changing semiconductor materials in optoelectronics. As an efficient micro-/nano-manufacturing technology, direct laser writing (DLW) has been extensively used to fabricate patterns, micro/nanostructures, and pixel arrays on perovskites to promote their optoelectronic applications. Owing to the unique ionic properties and soft lattices of perovskites, DLW can introduce rich light–matter interactions, including laser ablation, crystallisation, ion migration, phase segregation, photoreaction, and other transitions, which enable diverse functionalities in addition to the intrinsic properties of perovskites. Based on their patterned structures, perovskites have numerous applications in displays, optical information encryption, solar cells, light-emitting diodes, lasers, photodetectors, and planar lenses, which are comprehensively discussed in this review. Finally, we discuss the challenges that must be addressed for the future development of this fascinating field.

This paper was titled “Direct laser writing on halide perovskites: from mechanisms to applications” and published on Light: Advanced Manufacturing. The first author is Dr. Yuhang Sheng.

Highly efficient flexible structured metasurface by roll‑to‑roll printing for diurnal radiative cooling

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:33:07 +0000

An ideal radiative cooler requires accurate spectral control capability to achieve efficient thermal emission in the atmospheric transparency window (8–13 μm), low solar absorption, good stability, scalability, and a simple structure for effective diurnal radiative cooling. Flexible cooling films made from polymer relying on polymer intrinsic absorbance represent a cost-effective solution but lack accuracy in spectral control. Here, we propose and demonstrate a metasurface concept enabled by periodically arranged three-dimensional (3D) trench-like structures in a thin layer of polymer for high-performance radiative cooling. The structured polymer metasurface radiative cooler is manufactured by a roll-to-roll printing method. It exhibits superior spectral breadth and selectivity, which offers outstanding omnidirectional absorption/emission (96.1%) in the atmospheric transparency window, low solar absorption (4.8%), and high stability. Impressive cooling power of 129.8 W m− 2 and temperature deduction of 7 °C on a clear sky midday have been achieved, promising broad practical applications in energy saving and passive heat dispersion fields.

This paper was titled “Highly efficient flexible structured metasurface by roll‑to‑roll printing for diurnal radiative cooling” and published on ELight. The first author is Dr. Keng-Te Lin.

Graphene oxide for photonics, electronics and optoelectronics

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:20:20 +0000

Graphene oxide (GO) was initially developed to emulate graphene, but it was soon recognized as a functional material in its own right, addressing an application space that is not accessible to graphene and other carbon materials. Over the past decade, research on GO has made tremendous advances in material synthesis and property tailoring. These, in turn, have led to rapid progress in GO-based photonics, electronics and optoelectronics, paving the way for technological breakthroughs with exceptional performance. In this Review, we provide an overview of the optical, electrical and optoelectronic properties of GO and reduced GO on the basis of their chemical structures and fabrication approaches, together with their applications in key technologies such as solar energy harvesting, energy storage, medical diagnosis, image display and optical communications. We also discuss the challenges of this field, together with exciting opportunities for future technological advances.

This paper was titled “Graphene oxide for photonics, electronics and optoelectronics” and published on Nature Review Chemistry. The first author is Dr. Jiayang Wu.

Design of a dynamic multi-topological charge graphene orbital angular momentum metalens

april.chen — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:14:03 +0000

Traditional OAM generation devices are bulky and can generally only create OAM with one specific topological charge. Although metasurface-based devices have overcome the volume limitations, no tunable metasurface-based OAM generators have been demonstrated to date. Here, a dynamically tunable multi-topological charge OAM generator based on an ultrathin integrable graphene metalens is demonstrated by simulation using the detour phase technique and spatial multiplexing. Different topological charges can be designed on different focal planes. Stretching the OAM graphene metalens allows the focal plane and the topological values to be changed dynamically. This design method paves an innovative route toward miniaturization and integrating OAM beam-type photonic devices for practical applications.

This paper was titled “Design of a dynamic multi-topological charge graphene orbital angular momentum metalens” and published on Optics Express. The first author is Dr. Guiyuan Cao.