Nanorods with multidimensional optical information beyond the diffraction limit

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Wen, Shihui, Liu, Yongtao, Wang, Fan, Lin, Gungun, Zhou, Jiajia, Shi, Bingyang, Suh, Yung Doug, Jin, Dayong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 27.11.2020; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 147/143; 147/28; 639/166/898; 639/301/1019; 639/624/399/354; 639/925/357/551; Benchmarks; Diffraction; Emissions; Epitaxial growth; Fabrication; Humanities and Social Sciences; Light sources; Microscopes; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Nanorods; Nanostructure; Nanotechnology devices; Nonlinear response; Optical activity; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Upconversion; Wavelength
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19952-x

Precise design and fabrication of heterogeneous nanostructures will enable nanoscale devices to integrate multiple desirable functionalities. But due to the diffraction limit (~200 nm), the optical uniformity and diversity within the heterogeneous functional nanostructures are hardly controlled and characterized. Here, we report a set of heterogeneous nanorods; each optically active section has its unique nonlinear response to donut-shaped illumination, so that one can discern each section with super-resolution. To achieve this, we first realize an approach of highly controlled epitaxial growth and produce a range of heterogeneous structures. Each section along the nanorod structure displays tunable upconversion emissions, in four optical dimensions, including color, lifetime, excitation wavelength, and power dependency. Moreover, we demonstrate a 210 nm single nanorod as an extremely small polychromatic light source for the on-demand generation of RGB photonic emissions. This work benchmarks our ability toward the full control of sub-diffraction-limit optical diversities of single heterogeneous nanoparticles. Development of functional nanostructures can enable a range of applications in imaging and nanoscale science. Here, the authors fabricate and characterize complex heterogeneous nanorods with diverse, tunable sub-wavelength structures.