Cancer treatments, dependent on several factors, deliver varying degrees of treatment effectiveness. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a treatment modality that selectively targets and destroys cancer cells using a light-sensitive drug with a specific optical wavelength. However, PDT encounters several constraints, mainly, limited penetration of light into deep tumors. In this paper, we present a new wireless implantable PDT system towards overcoming the constraints of current PDT treatments. The wireless-powered prototype was evaluated showing resonant inductive power delivery in a tissue phantom, emulating the bladder, providing the necessary power level for PDT treatment. The production of singlet oxygen (¹O₂) using a multi-LED system was studied by utilizing a 1,3-diphenylisobenzofuran (DPBF) in a Rose Bengal (RB) and Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solution, under both DC and AC excitations, for direct wireless powering. The photosensitizer solution is illuminated with over 5 mW of optical power generated by the four-LED array to generate ¹O₂. Our measurements confirm the production of ¹O₂ emissions as well as lifetime performance. The optical, electrical, and mechanical studies are presented on the resultant optoelectronic system, verifying the efficiency and mechanical robustness of our prototype. A fabrication flow for bio-compatible devices using laser ablation is also introduced towards large area manufacturability, scalability, and repeatability. Our manufacturing process is versatile to a variety of materials including polymeric substrates, metallic electrodes and offers design flexibility ranging from 30 microns to mm. This research advances the development of wirelessly powered implantable device for PDT, optimized for in-vivo use through careful LED selection and biocompatible design. Our results evidence the potential of a new emergent technology that addresses the limitations of PDT as a potential future therapy to enhance the curative efficiency of cancer treatment and demonstrates promising preliminary potential for in vivo application, which requires further validation before therapeutic implementation can be established.

Optical beam steering is essential for free-space optical communication, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and other fields. Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), as an efficient integrated photonics platform, offers strong electro-optic (EO) effect, low propagation loss, high-speed, and low-power modulation, making it highly attractive for optical phased array (OPA) based beam steering. However, despite these advantages, OPAs still face inherent trade-offs among field of view, sidelobe suppression, and scanning resolution. Recently, Prof. Huihui Lu's group presented a two-dimensional (2D) EO-steered OPA using a non-uniformly spaced X-cut TFLN superlattice-waveguide array and a trapezoidal grating emitter. The compact device achieves narrow main beam, wide steering range and high sidelobe suppression, demonstrating great potential for high-performance beam-steering applications.

Optical computing systems (OCS) are promising accelerators for artificial intelligence due to their high bandwidth, low latency, and inherent parallelism. However, in existing OCS implementations, task development often requires direct participation of physical hardware during training and optimization, tightly coupling development workflows to device access and limiting offline design, reproducible benchmarking, and parallel exploration. Here, we propose a Digital Twin Optical Computing System (DT-OCS), a system-level, measurement-driven digital surrogate that emulates the end-to-end input-output behavior of a specific physical OCS under different operating configurations. DT-OCS is implemented as a differentiable software module, enabling fully offline task training and configuration optimization. The optimized configuration parameters can be directly transferred to the physical OCS without hardware-in-the-loop retraining. We validate DT-OCS on a high-speed optical computing system operating at 10 GHz and equipped with a silicon-based integrated computing chip. Representative tasks, including image classification and temporal strategy generation, are evaluated. Across all tasks, the transferred models closely match the performance of their digital-twin counterparts after direct parameter transfer. These results demonstrate that DT-OCS enables a hardware-decoupled and fully offline development paradigm for optical computing systems. The DT-OCS implementation is released as open-source code to facilitate reuse and further development.

Modern optical systems require the capability to perform multi-functional and parallel imaging within compact, integrated architectures. However, conventional refractive lenses are bulky, restricted to single-mode operation, and incompatible with planar integration. In this work, we propose a trichannel metalens capable of simultaneously performing bright-field imaging, first-order edge detection, and second-order edge detection over a wide field-of-view (FOV). Specifically, by encoding combinations of input-output circular polarization, different functions are independently realized in three channels, and the spin-dependent gradient phase is employed to spatially separate them, ensuring that all three functions can be simultaneously captured under linearly polarized illumination, without necessitating mode switching or additional optical components. Experimental results show that the proposed metalens can parallelly provide three independent imaging functions with clear spatial separation and stable performance over a FOV ranging from −10° to 10°. Our approach offers a promising path toward compact, integrated imaging systems for biomedical imaging, real-time edge analysis, and machine vision applications.

With increasing demand for ocean exploration, underwater tasks become more complex. While soft robotic hands offer superior flexibility and biomimetic advantages over rigid robotic hands, their development has been hindered by low sensing accuracy and poor interactive control. Here, we propose a light-perception-based underwater digital twin hand interactive control system that integrates a multi-degree-of-freedom biomimetic pneumatic soft robotic hand with a wearable data glove based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. By fusing data from FBGs, RGB cameras, and inertial measurement units, and optimizing control strategies through reinforcement learning, we established a light-dominated perception-control-feedback closed-loop system that significantly enhances the control performance of the system in complex and dynamic underwater environments. With light as the information carrier, the system integrates a data glove with high strain sensitivity (1.148 pm/µε, linearity = 0.9996) and high bending sensitivity (26.667 pm/°, linearity = 0.9791). It achieves four-dimensional collaborative interactive control between the human operator, machine, virtual space, and environment. The system achieves posture monitoring and precise grasping in various underwater environments, offering advantages like low cost, high precision, rapid response, and strong interference resistance. This establishes a new paradigm for underwater intelligent equipment by integrating light sensing with digital twin technology, offering broad prospects for future underwater operations.

Cardiorespiratory rhythm disorders (CRD) are prevalent yet underdiagnosed conditions with substantial health risks. Current diagnostic methods are limited by invasiveness, intermittent symptom presentation, and low sensitivity during wakefulness. Sleep, by contrast, offers a stable physiological state ideal for early CRD detection. Here, we introduce a fiber-optic vital sign monitoring pillow (VSMP) that aims to realize the vision of home-based nocturnal health management, leveraging natural sleep for the accurate and unobtrusive early detection of CRD. By integrating fiber-optic sensing, biomechanical engineering, and advanced signal processing, the VSMP achieves early CRD detection through heart rate variability analysis and Lorenz scatter plots, while also facilitating blood pressure estimation (<8% error). Thus, we present VSMP as a new paradigm that transforms passive sleep into an active diagnostic session, paving the way for data-driven, personalized health management and proactive, precision medicine directly in the home environment.

Nonlocal metasurfaces generate optical vortices via momentum-space topological singularities, eliminating the need for complex meta-atom phasing or precise beam alignment. Their utility has been constrained by narrow bandwidth and low efficiency stemming from the steep dispersion of high-Q resonances. Here, we introduce a cavity-assisted reflective nonlocal metasurface that overcomes these limits by hybridizing bound states in the continuum (BICs) with degeneracy points (DPs). A Fabry-Pérot cavity supplies a single, addressable control for BIC-DP coupling, enabling deterministic tuning of dispersion, radiative Q, and polarization to realize quasi-flat bands with strong scattering. Simulations predict near-unity on-resonance conversion and >90% overall efficiency—3–4× higher and >15× broader than conventional designs. Experiments confirm operation from 1480 to 1600 nm with ~80% peak efficiency and 91.7% OAM purity, while suppressing edge effects and markedly reducing sensitivity to alignment, beam profile, and numerical aperture. Crucially, the device enables broadband, efficient conversion of zero-order Bessel beams into high-quality, OAM-carrying perfect vortex beams—performance not achieved by prior metasurfaces. These results establish a practical, scalable route to broadband, high-efficiency vortex generation for high-dimensional optical communications, advanced imaging, and quantum photonics.

Sorting and detection of enantiomers hold critical importance in biomedical, chemical, and pharmacological sciences due to their fundamental role in molecular interactions and therapeutic efficacy. Over the past two decades, diverse chemical, biophysical, and microfluidic methodologies have been developed for chiral enantiomer sorting and detection. While these approaches have demonstrated significant capabilities, optical techniques have attracted increasing interest due to their intrinsic advantages, including rapid analysis, minimal sample consumption, and non-invasive operation. This review comprehensively overviews recent advances in optical methods for chiral enantiomer sorting and detection. We focus on emerging optical concepts, including exotic optical forces and engineered light fields, such as bound states in the continuum and metasurfaces, and analyze their operational principles, capabilities, and inherent limitations. Furthermore, we investigate the growing impact of artificial intelligence in reshaping optical sorting and sensing strategies, particularly its role in improving analytical precision and enabling autonomous operation. The review concludes with a forward-looking perspective, discussing persistent challenges like system scalability and real-world implementation while outlining promising future directions, including integrated lab-on-chip platforms and advanced chiral metamaterials.

We present the first demonstration of a polymer-based micro-ring resonator array with over 40 elements fabricated using nanoimprint lithography (NIL), and its application for photoacoustic tomography imaging. By precisely varying the radius of each micro-ring at the nanometer scale and maintaining its high-quality factor, we achieved distinguishable resonances within a free spectral range of only 2.19 nm. The micro-ring array was used to perform photoacoustic tomography (PAT), achieving lateral and axial resolutions of 40 µm and 38 µm, respectively, and an ultrasound response bandwidth of 173.5 MHz, and a noise equivalent pressure (NEP) of 13.5 Pa. PAT images of ex vivo mouse prostates were acquired by the micro-ring array, showing a high correlation with biological tissue structures and regions of blood vessels. Further spectral analysis of the PAT images can differentiate the prostate cancers from the normal prostates. This work highlights the significant advantages of using NIL-fabricated micro-ring resonator arrays made from polymer materials, demonstrating their potential for advanced applications in biomedical imaging as well as optical communications and integrated photonic systems.

The notion of a path in quantum mechanics has fuelled many debates on the very nature of what quantumness is. Although traditionally associated with physical paths, such as double slits, it can be far more abstract. Now Yan Wang and colleagues demonstrate exotic trajectories in an abstract quantum space built from the Bloch sphere of a locally entangled photon, while shaping the path using its non-local entangled partner as a control. The steering and directing along these new paths is enabled by cascaded metasurfaces, demonstrating the myriad of possibilities that emerge when structured matter meets quantum structured light.