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    • Volume 61, Issue 03

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    Sally Cole Johnson
    March 19, 2025
    Who benefits from cuts that create a national security crisis?
    (Photo credit: Chalmers University of Technology)
    Researcher Minghao Qi, a professor at Purdue University, with the team’s setup.
    Justine Murphy
    March 5, 2025
    Atomic clocks and their accuracy are crucial for exact time of day and global positioning in technology like smartphones, GPS, and computers. Now, researchers are working to boost...
    (Photo credit: William P.D. Hayes/Columbia Engineering)
    Natalie Fardian-Melamed in the lab working on a combo scanning probe—an inverted-optical microscope to explore single photon avalanching nanocrystal mechano-optics and photophysics. (Photo credit: William P.D. Hayes/Columbia Engineering)
    Sally Cole Johnson
    Feb. 27, 2025
    Researchers discover photon avalanching nanoparticles are supersensitive to mechanical force—and nanosensors they went on to create are poised to redefine what’s possible in terms...
    (Image credit: IDTechEx)
    FIGURE 1. The photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology market. (Image credit: IDTechEx)
    Sam Dale
    Feb. 26, 2025
    IDTechEx shares technologies and trends emerging within the photonic integrated circuit market.
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    Peter Fretty
    Feb. 24, 2025
    After a few down years, optimism is surfacing for a strong 2025.

    More content from Volume 61, Issue 03

    (Image credit: SMART DiSTAP)
    Lead researchers Dr. Song Wang (left), a research scientist at SMART DiSTAP, and Dr. Yangyang Han (right), a senior postdoctoral associate at SMART DiSTAP.
    Justine Murphy
    Feb. 17, 2025
    It’s not always easy to tell if a plant is dehydrated, and sometimes it’s too late to save it. But a sensor designed by an international team of scientists detects distress in...
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    René Jonker
    Feb. 13, 2025
    Scaling silicon photonics for AI and data centers faces innovation hurdles in four key areas: Energy efficiency, manufacturing and packaging, ecosystem development, and cost optimizatio...
    (Photo credit: Chromacity)
    FIGURE 1. A Chromacity engineer aligns an ultrafast fiber laser with second-harmonic generation.
    Wojciech Gora
    Feb. 10, 2025
    Fiber-based ultrafast lasers—with pulses of one-tenth of one-trillionth of a second—continue to evolve, and near-term advances will expand their use to materials processing, nonlinear...
    (Image credit: Nativo Calavera)
    FIGURE 1. Transforming bacteria into solar-powered lasers: we extract light-harvesting structures from bacteria (left), enhance them with proprietary specially engineered lasing units (middle), and place them into a lasing cavity (right) to create a new type of laser that runs directly on sunlight. The natural light-gathering rings (green/purple) of purple bacteria measure 60-nm across and achieve near-perfect efficiency in energy transfer of captured photons.
    Erik Gauger
    Feb. 7, 2025
    A new way to power space missions piggybacks on bacteria's efficient light-harvesting abilities to create sunlight-powered lasers—and could enable power transmission between satellites...
    (Image credit: iGii)
    Gii: A pure, porous three-dimensional carbon nanostructure poised to revolutionize sensing.
    Des Gibson
    Feb. 6, 2025
    A sustainable carbon nanomaterial “Gii” is poised to revolutionize broadband photodetectors because it can absorb the full spectrum of light—from ultraviolet to infrared.
    (Image credit: SI Sensors)
    CCD-in-CMOS image sensors.
    Phil Brown
    Jan. 29, 2025
    A novel structure design within a photodiode creates drift fields to increase the velocity of signal electrons that allows them to be swept out of the photodiode and sampled much...
    FIGURE 1. Laser welding busbar.
    Najah George
    Jan. 22, 2025
    Laser pulsing with different pulse shapes reduces heat and increases strength in busbar welding for prismatic lithium-ion batteries.
    (Image credit: SCANLAB)
    FIGURE 1. In a single-tab electrode design, electrons travel along the entire distance (a); in a tabless electrode design, full-flags along the foil mean shorter distances for electrons to travel (b).
    Huihong Qian
    Jan. 13, 2025
    Tabless battery technology offers route to increase the energy density of battery packs, and laser cutting via galvanometer-based scan system offers a manufacturing solution.