Zhang Dao-Zhong

The role of periodicity in enhanced transmission through subwavelength hole arrays

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.

Effects of Spherical Aberration on Optical Trapping Forces for Rayleigh Particles

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.

Energy Squeeze of Ultrashort Light Pulse by Kerr Nonlinear Photonic Crystals

Self-phase modulation can efficiently shape the spectrum of an optical pulse propagating along an optical material with Kerr nonlinearity. In this work we show that a one-dimensional Kerr nonlinear photonic crystal can impose anomalous spectrum modulation to a high-power ultrashort light pulse. The spectrum component at the photonic band gap edge can be one order of magnitude enhanced in addition to the ordinary spectrum broadening due to self-phase modulation. The enhancement is strictly pinned at the band gap edge by changing the sample length, the intensity or central wavelength of the incident pulse. The phenomenon is attributed to band gap induced enhancement of light-matter interaction.

Mechanical Properties of Breast Cancer Cell Membrane Studied with Optical Tweezers

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.

A Y-Branch Photonic Crystal Slab Waveguide with an Ultrashort Interport Interval

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.

Optical properties of the direct-coupled Y-branch filters by using photonic crystal slabs

We fabricated a new type of two-dimensional photonic crystal slab filter. The resonant cavities were directly put into the waveguide arms. The optical transmissions of the filters were measured and the results show that the optimized two-channel filters give good intensity distribution at the output ports of the waveguide. A minimum wavelength spacing of 5 nm of the filter outputs is realized by accurately controlling the size of the resonant cavities.

Effect of spherical aberration introduced by water solution on trapping force

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.

Synthesis and Band Gap Control in Three-Dimensional Polystyrene Opal Photonic Crystals

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.

Measurement of Breaking Force of Fluorescence Labelled Microtubules with Optical Tweezers

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.

Fabrication of High Quality Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystals

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.