Whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavities provide increasing opportunities for precision measurement due to their ultrahigh sensitivity, compact size, and fast response. However, the conventional WGM sensors rely on monitoring the changes of a single mode, and the abundant sensing information in WGM transmission spectra has not been fully utilized. Here, empowered by machine learning (ML), we propose and demonstrate an ergodic spectra sensing method in an optofluidic microcavity for high-precision pressure measurement. The developed ML method realizes the analysis of the full features of optical spectra. The prediction accuracy of 99.97% is obtained with the average error as low as 0.32 kPa in the pressure range of 100 kPa via the training and testing stages. We further achieve the real-time readout of arbitrary unknown pressure within the range of measurement, and a prediction accuracy of 99.51% is obtained. Moreover, we demonstrate that the ergodic spectra sensing accuracy is ∼11.5% higher than that of simply extracting resonating modes’ wavelength. With the high sensitivity and prediction accuracy, this work opens up a new avenue for integrated intelligent optical sensing.

The recent development on wearable and stretchable electronics calls for skin conformable power sources that are beyond current battery technologies. Among the many novel energy devices being explored, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) made from intrinsically stretchable materials has a great potential to meet the above requirement as being both soft and efficient. In this paper, we present a lithography-free and low-cost TENG device comprising a porous-structured PDMS layer and a stretchable PEDOT:PSS electrode. The porous PDMS structure is formed by using self-assembled polystyrene beads as the sacrificial template and it is highly ordered with great uniformity and high structural stability under compression force. Moreover, the porous PDMS TENG exhibits improved output voltage and current of 1.65 V and 0.54 nA compared to its counterpart with non-porous PDMS with 0.66 V and 0.34 nA. The effect of different loading force and frequency on the output response of the TENG device has also been studied. This work could shed light on diverse structural modification methods for improving the performance of PDMS-based TENG and the development of intrinsically stretchable TENG for wearable device applications.

Optical trapping techniques are of great interest since they have the advantage of enabling the direct handling of nanoparticles. Among various optical trapping systems, photonic crystal nanobeam cavities have attracted great attention for integrated on-chip trapping and manipulation. However, optical trapping with high efficiency and low input power is still a big challenge in nanobeam cavities because most of the light energy is confined within the solid dielectric region. To this end, by incorporating a nanoslotted structure into an ultracompact one-dimensional photonic crystal nanobeam cavity structure, we design a promising on-chip device with ultralarge trapping potential depth to enhance the optical trapping characteristic of the cavity. In this work, we first provide a systematic analysis of the optical trapping force for an airborne polystyrene (PS) nanoparticle trapped in a cavity model. Then, to validate the theoretical analysis, the numerical simulation proof is demonstrated in detail by using the three-dimensional finite element method. For trapping a PS nanoparticle of 10 nm radius within the air-slot, a maximum trapping force as high as 8.28 nN/mW and a depth of trapping potential as large as 1.15×105 kBT mW 1 are obtained, where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T is the system temperature. We estimate a lateral trapping stiffness of 167.17 pN·nm 1· mW 1 for a 10 nm radius PS nanoparticle along the cavity x-axis, more than two orders of magnitude higher than previously demonstrated on-chip, near field traps. Moreover, the threshold power for stable trapping as low as 0.087 μW is achieved. In addition, trapping of a single 25 nm radius PS nanoparticle causes a 0.6 nm redshift in peak wavelength. Thus, the proposed cavity device can be used to detect single nanoparticle trapping by monitoring the resonant peak wavelength shift. We believe that the architecture with features of an ultracompact footprint, high integrability with optical waveguides/circuits, and efficient trapping demonstrated here will provide a promising candidate for developing a lab-on-a-chip device with versatile functionalities.

The modulation of resonance features in microcavities is important to applications in nanophotonics. Based on the asymmetric whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) in a plasmonic resonator, we theoretically studied the mode evolution in an asymmetric WGM plasmonic system. Exploiting the gap or nano-scatter in the plasmonic ring cavity, the symmetry of the system will be broken and the standing wave in the cavity will be tunable. Based on this asymmetric structure, the output coupling rate between the two cavity modes can also be tuned. Moreover, the proposed method could further be applied for sensing and detecting the position of defects in a WGM system.