The nanoscale structures inspired by the natural catenaries can achromatically spin light wave.

Cellular-membrane-coated nanoparticles have increasingly been pursued to leverage the natural cell functions for enhancing biocompatibility and improved therapeutic efficacy. Taking advantage of specialized cell membranes or combining functions from different membrane types facilitates the strengthening of their functionality. Herein, we fuse membrane materials derived from red blood cells (RBCs) and melanoma cells (B16-F10 cells) to create a hybrid biomimetic coating (RBC-B16), and RBC-B16 hybrid membrane camouflaged doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded hollow copper sulfide nanoparticles (DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs) are fabricated for combination therapy of melanoma. The DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs are comprehensively characterized, showing the inherent properties of the both source cells. Compared to the bare CuS NPs, the DCuS@[RBC-B16] NPs exhibit highly specific self-recognition to the source cell line in vitro and achieve markedly prolonged circulation lifetime and enhanced homogeneous targeting abilities in vivo inherited from the source cells. Thus, the DOX-loaded [RBC-B16]-coated CuS NP platform exhibits excellent synergistic photothermal/chemotherapy with about 100% melanoma tumor growth inhibition rate. The reported strategy may contribute to personalized nanomedicine of various tumors by combining the RBCs with a homotypic cancer membrane accordingly on the surface of the nanoparticle.

A novel method is proposed to manipulate beam by modulating light phase through a metallic film with arrayed nano-slits, which have constant depth but variant widths. The slits transport electro-magnetic energy in the form of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in nanometric waveguides and provide desired phase retardations of beam manipulating with variant phase propagation constant. Numerical simulation of an illustrative lens design example is performed through finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and shows agreement with theory analysis result. In addition, extraordinary optical transmission of SPPs through sub-wavelength metallic slits is observed in the simulation and helps to improve elements' energy using factor.

As highlighted by recent articles [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 053901 (2010) and Science 331, 889-892 (2011)], the coherent control of narrowband perfect absorption in intrinsic silicon slab has attracted much attention. In this paper, we demonstrate that broadband coherent perfect absorber (CPA) can be achieved by heavily doping an ultrathin silicon film. Two distinct perfect absorption regimes are derived with extremely broad and moderately narrow bandwidth under symmetrical coherent illumination. The large enhancement of bandwidth may open up new avenues for broadband applications. Subsequently, interferometric method is used to control the absorption coherently with extremely large contrast between the maximum and minimum absorptance. Compared with the results in literatures, the thin film CPAs proposed here show much more flexibility in both operation frequency and bandwidth.