title: Self-assembled fibre optoelectronics with discrete translational symmetry.
abstract: Fibres with electronic and photonic properties are essential building blocks for functional fabrics with system level attributes. The scalability of thermal fibre drawing approach offers access to large device quantities, while constraining the devices to be translational symmetric. Lifting this symmetry to create discrete devices in fibres will increase their utility. Here, we draw, from a macroscopic preform, fibres that have three parallel internal non-contacting continuous domains; a semiconducting glass between two conductors. We then heat the fibre and generate a capillary fluid instability, resulting in the selective transformation of the cylindrical semiconducting domain into discrete spheres while keeping the conductive domains unchanged. The cylindrical-to-spherical expansion bridges the continuous conducting domains to create ∼104self-assembled, electrically contacted and entirely packaged discrete spherical devices per metre of fibre. The photodetection and Mie resonance dependent response are measured by illuminating the fibre while connecting its ends to an electrical readout.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7522-0233
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rein
authors.affiliation: Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Etgar
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Levy
authors.affiliation: Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington IN 47408-2664, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gumennik
authors.affiliation: Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL), The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA.
authors.forename: Ayman F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Abouraddy
authors.affiliation: Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Joannopoulos
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Yoel
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fink