The latest issue of Advanced Optical Materials is now available. The articles in this issue bring you exciting developments in the fields of Photodetectors, OLEDs, Lasers, and Metasurfaces.

On our November covers, we highlight the following stunning designs, which visualize recent advances in optical materials: 

Biosensors

On the front cover, K. V. Sreekanth, G. Strangi, and co-workers demonstrate a grating-coupled hyperbolic material-based plasmonic platform that provides extremely high angular sensitivity by exciting the bulk plasmon polaritons associated with hyperbolic metamaterials. This angular-scan plasmonic biosensor is used for the detection of low molecular weight biomolecules such as biotin and high molecular weight macromolecules such as Cowpea mosaic virus at ultralow concentrations.

Metasurfaces

Low-scattering metasurfaces with controlled bandwidths are realized by Q. Cheng, T. J. Cui, and co-workers. The metasurface, which is featured on the inside cover, is divided into several unequally sized rectangular sections, which are randomly occupied by three basic elements with different reflection phases. When light is incident upon the metasurface, the backward energy is dispersed into various directions due to the strong interference from the elements with different reflection phases.

Caterpillar Robots

With proper alignment of the molecules in liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) films, the material deformation can be engineered. On the back cover, P. Wasylczyk and co-workers show that, upon illumination with laser light, a 15 mm long stripe of LCE soft material curls in a way that mimics the caterpillar body motion. The miniature soft robot can crawl on flat surfaces, climb slopes, squeeze through obstacles, and transport loads.

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