Colloidally stable and highly luminescent near-IR emitting Ag 2 S quantum dots (NIRQDs) were prepared by a very simple aqueous method using 2-mercaptopropionic acid (2MPA) as a coating. Emission of Ag 2 S-2MPA NIRQDs can be tuned between 780 and 950 nm. These NIRQDs have photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQY) around 7-39% and exhibit excellent cytocompatibility even at 600 mg mL À1 in NIH/3T3 cells. With such improved properties, Ag 2 S-2MPA NIRQDs have a great potential in practical bio-applications.

The authors demonstrate more than 9 nm tunability of the whispering gallery modes ͑WGMs͒ of rhodamine B doped water microdroplets resting on a superhydrophobic surface. Tunability was achieved by controlling the size of the microdroplets in a current controlled mini humidity chamber. WGMs were observed with quality factors of more than 8000 when kept stable. The sensitivity of the resonances to the size and shape of the microdroplet reveals opportunities for the use of this technique as a probe to characterize superhydrophobic surfaces and investigate liquid-solid surfaces.

We describe a cw Kerr-lens mode-locked Cr(2+):ZnSe laser pumped by a 1800 nm thulium fiber laser. The astigmatically compensated asymmetric x cavity contained a 2.4-mm-long Cr(2+):ZnSe sample with a pump absorption coefficient of 11.6 cm(-1) and was operated with a 1% output coupler. The dispersion compensation was achieved by using a MgF(2) prism pair. During Kerr-lens mode-locked operation, we could generate 95 fs pulses at a pulse repetition rate of 94.3 MHz and with 40 mW of output power. The center wavelength of the pulses was 2420 nm. The pulses had a spectral width of 69 nm and a time-bandwidth product of 0.335, which is close to the transform limit for hyperbolic secant pulses.

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Room temperature visible and near-infrared photoluminescence from black silicon has been observed. The black silicon is manufactured by shining femtosecond laser pulses on silicon wafers in air, which were later annealed in vacuum. The photoluminescence is quenched above 120 K due to thermalization and competing nonradiative recombination of the carriers. The photoluminescence intensity at 10K depends sublinearly on the excitation laser intensity confirming band tail recombination at the defect sites.