Berkeley Lab researchers have produced non-toxic nanocrystals that efficiently emit blue light, making them a bright candidate for solid-state lighting. These materials could also play a role in long-term storage of carbon dioxide, a potential means of tempering the effects of global warming.

Studying Einstein’s General Relativity theory and such celestial phenomena as black holes and strange attractors in a laboratory setting may soon be possible using the new breed of artificial optical materials that can bend light in unusual ways.

Berkeley researchers have taken a major step towards a true invisibility device with the creation of a carpet cloak from nanostructured silicon that conceals the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection. This new cloak suggests that true invisibility materials are within reach.

Berkeley Lab researchers at The Molecular Foundry were part of an international team that created a silicon photonic crystal-based device which behaves like a superlens and provides the first experimental demonstration of optical antimatter.

Berkeley Lab researchers have taken a major step forward in the technology of spintronics by creating the “persistent spin helix,” which allows them to control the spin states of highly mobile electrons at different locations in a semiconductor and turn the collective state on and off at will. The discovery represents a new conservation law, an important advance in fundamental physics.