June 16, 2014

Trapping light: a long lifetime in a very small place



Researchers create an innovative light-trapping nanostructure using a genetic-inspired approach

Physicists at the University of Rochester have created a silicon nanocavity that allows light to be trapped longer than in other similarly-sized optical cavities. An innovative design approach, which mimics evolutionary biology, allowed them to achieve a 10-fold improvement on the performance of previous nanocavities.