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The authors demonstrate a thermal metasurface achieving wavelength-tunable and helicity switchable coherent infrared emission through temperature control, enabling high-performance on-chip circular dichroism spectroscopy for chiral molecular sensing.

On-chip circularly polarized light (CPL) detectors are relevant for various applications, but current approaches have shown a trade-off between wide spectral detection range, high discrimination ratio and high polarization sensitivity. Here, the authors report broadband high-performance CPL detectors based on twisted black phosphorus structures.

A metasurface-based spatial light modulator brings the pixel size down to the submicrometre scale while demonstrating real-time complex-amplitude holography, three-dimensional focusing and beam steering over a ±20.6° field of view in the visible.

Detecting the chirality of molecules is important in optics, biomedicine, and materials science, but the molecular chiroptical signals are typically weak in conventional circular dichroism. Here, the authors demonstrate strong chiroptical responses that reflect the molecular chirality in a single chiral nanoassembly synthesized from L/D-cystines.

Going from model development to a pilot implementation study, a deep learning model shows that acute aortic syndrome can be diagnosed directly from noncontrast CT, increasing accuracy and decreasing time to diagnosis.

Chiral light emission usually requires twisted or asymmetric nanostructures. Here, the authors show that even out-of plane symmetric metasurfaces can emit circularly polarized light, achieved by tuning an anisotropic continuum rather than breaking symmetry.

Wavefront control is inherently incompatible with thermal incoherence in general. To address this challenge, the authors propose a meta-emitter architecture featuring two tailored grooves interconnected by a waveguide tunnel enabling the conversion of thermal photons into coherent surface waves, thereby experimentally demonstrating feasible thermal wavefront manipulation— including thermal self-focusing and holography.

Topological metamaterial clothing based on metallic conductive textiles can be used to create robust biosensing networks on the human body that can monitor vital signs during exercise.

This work proposes a wet-chemical etching assisted aberration-enhanced single-pulsed femtosecond laser nanolithography, named “WEALTH”, for manufacturing small-size, large-area, deep holey nanostructures, promising for emerging nanophotonic devices.

Transistor-type optoelectronic sensors combine photodetection with gate-tunable transistor architectures, enabling programmable and multifunctional sensing beyond conventional devices. This Review outlines their operating principles and architectures, and highlights opportunities for intelligent, next-generation optoelectronic sensing.

By twisting bilayer conductive layers with engineered diffusivity, the authors realize moiré-driven thermal localization without nonlinearity, enabling commensurate and quasi-crystalline thermal patterns for programmable transport control.

We present an end-to-end mixture probability sampling network that generates Gaussian mixtures for structural parameters, achieving 99.9% precision in structural color design.

Applying concepts from non-Hermitian physics to diffusive systems enables the static control of heat transport. Now, this notion is expanded to dynamic control, including a demonstration of programmed thermal transport in a metamaterial.

A two-dimensional van der Waals material, NbOCl₂, that simultaneously exhibits near-unity linear dichroism (~99%) over 100 nm bandwidth in ultraviolet regime and large birefringence (0.26–0.46) within a wide visible–near-infrared transparency window is reported.

Retarder arrays enable advanced photonic applications but are limited by controllable flexibility. Here, authors demonstrate a compound modulator that creates synthetic tuneable retarder arrays, offering unprecedented dynamic control of light, enabling new beam generation, analysis, and correction.

Using channel-level decoupling to design independent photovoltage channels for each Stokes parameter with minimal crosstalk, a metaphotonic photodetector can be created that provides direct Stokes quantification.

The authors demonstrate ultra-broadband microscale optical dispersion in LiNbO₃ crystals, enabling precise and robust on-demand dispersion engineering in free space, with strong potential for applications in informatics and spectroscopy.

The use of a nanopillar lattice and orbital angular momentum provides control over the directionality of light emission on the nanoscale.

Exceptional points enable unique light–matter interactions in non-Hermitian systems. This Review surveys band, scattering and Jones exceptional points in engineered materials, highlighting emerging applications and phenomena including topological properties, dynamic control, braiding, wavefront shaping and special states.

Here, the authors demonstrate a multi-momentum transformation metasurface. The orbital angular momentum meta-transformer reconstructs different vortex beams into on-axis distinct patterns, and the linear momentum meta-transformer converts red, green and blue beams to vivid color images.

Chiral metasurfaces have been produced, with experimental observation of intrinsic chiral bound states in the continuum, which may lead to applications in chiral light sources and detectors, chiral sensing, valleytronics and asymmetric photocatalysis.

Authors showcase a framework for visual perception enhancement system based on vision-driven metasurfaces. It can help humans obtain information in multiple frequency bands and allows the metasurface platform with more interesting functions.

The design and optimization of a metasurface is a computationally- and time-consuming effort. Here, the authors propose a neural network-based algorithm for functional metasurface design, and demonstrate it for some functional metasurfaces.

An unconventional machine learning-based inverse design framework enables the generation of ultrabroadband and band-selective thermal meta-emitters with complex 3D architectures and diverse material compositions.

The authors demonstrate on-chip circularly polarized light detection using the chiral properties of transition metal dichalcogenide valleytronic transistors on centrosymmetric plasmonic metamaterials.

Spatiotemporal beams differ from standard spatial structured light. The authors introduce 2D spacetime duality to uncover the conventional–spatiotemporal beam connection, enabling the development of high-fidelity spatiotemporal beams.

Optical tweezers can apply 3D forces to trap and move microparticles, but application of 3D optical torques for controlled rotations remains challenging. Here, the authors report a technique for controlling 3D optical torque via a single beam, achieving dynamic 3D rotations around an arbitrary axis.

Realizing conversion between microwave and optical signals in free space is a challenge. Here, the authors propose and demonstrate a programmable metasurface that can achieve wireless microwave-laser interconversion for bidirectional air-water cross-media wireless communications.

Topological photonic structures enable robust light transport but face coupling challenges. The authors demonstrate transverse spin matching governs the coupling between the topological waveguide and waveguide, achieving 96.3% theoretical and 94.2% experimental transmission efficiencies.

A deep learning model provides high accuracy in detecting pancreatic lesions in multicenter data, outperforming radiology specialists.

The authors introduce a loss-enhanced magneto-optical effect and sublinearly amplify the frequency response of a non-Hermitian optical cavity under different background magnetic fields. This effect is exploited to detect subtle magnetic field variations against a strong background with enhanced system response and sensitivity.

Simultaneous control of the direction and polarization of quantum emission using photonic nanostructures is a long-standing challenge in photonics. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate unidirectional chiral emission from a twisted bilayer metasurface with multi-dimensional control.

The detection of light intensity, polarization, and spectral information with a single device is desired for efficient optical sensing and computing applications. Here, the authors report the realization of metasurface-assisted graphene photodetectors able to simultaneously detect polarization states and wavelengths of broadband infrared light.

Moiré quasicrystals exhibit many exotic phenomena. Here, the authors report an acoustic moiré quasicrystal that not only achieves a localization-delocalization transition, but also enables wave propagation shifting from diffusion to canalization or localization.

A real–momentum topological photonic crystal that harnesses real-space disorder is used to generate a Pancharatnam–Berry phase while preserving momentum-space topology.

The researchers fuse metamaterials and origami technical to achieve ultra-wideband and large-depth reflection modulation. Flexible electronics amplify its lightweight, transparency, and cost-effectiveness, making it ideal for satellite communications.

Temporal cloaks, which hide a temporal event within a signal, have been previously limited to very short and periodic event cloaking. Here the authors report a temporal cloak with a programmable-length cloaking window using a silicon microring and optical frequency comb.

A 2 nm displacement resolution of a centimetre-sized object in a 3 cm cavity is demonstrated.

Here a conformality-assisted tracing method is proposed to devise free-form and three-dimensional conformal metamaterials, featuring accuracy and efficiency in handling complex geometry and adaptability to various diffusion and wave fields.

The authors reveal hyperbolic-to-hyperbolic transitions where two nearby Reststrahlen bands just touch each other. Such phenomena are prevalent in isostructural rare-earth oxyorthosilicates and unfolds vast opportunities for broadband on-chip light control.

Peptide aldehydes are an important class of biomolecules, playing essential roles in various living systems, and there is an ongoing demand for the efficient synthesis of peptide aldehydes. Herein, the authors report the electrooxidative ring-opening reaction via C‒N bond cleavage for the synthesis of unnatural peptide aldehydes.

Flat bands have empowered novel phenomena such as canalization, high-collimation and low-loss propagation. Here, the authors propose the concept of symmetry broken moiré systems, which overcomes the limitations of fixed flat bands, enabling multiple and unidirectional canalizations.

Caustics, as a unique type of singularity in wave phenomena, occur in diverse physical systems. Here, the authors realize multi-dimensional customization of caustics with 3D-printed metasurfaces. This arbitrary caustic engineering is poised to bring new revolutions to many domains.

Van der Waals NbOCl2 crystal is a candidate platform for subwavelength thin film photon-pair sources. Here, the authors demonstrate generation of polarization entangled states from a two-layer stack of orthogonally oriented van der Waals crystal.