A team of researchers led by San Francisco State
University’s Weining Man is the first to build and demonstrate the ability of
two-dimensional disordered photonic band gap material, designed to be a
platform to control light in unprecedented ways. The new material could allow
researchers to manipulate the flow and radiation of light in new ways by
breaking away from the highly angular and constrained pathways for light
dictated inside orderly photonic crystals. Instead, the material could lead to
arbitrarily shaped, wavy, curved, and sharply bending ways to steer light, Man
and her colleagues say.