In Japanese, kiri means cut, and gami means paper. Only, here, the paper is replaced with pure gold foil and is cut with a beam of gallium ions.
Currently, when nanotechnology is on the throne, a lot of very small devices are born. And because of the nanoscale, the components have correspondingly small demands. Light is also not immune to the race… nano, especially when used for ever-smaller electronic bugs. Small, but still extremely accurate.
Therefore, the researchers had the idea of applying the Japanese art of kirigami to make the device. In Japanese, kiri means cut, and gami means paper. They cut the paper in meticulous detail and then folded it into a work.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Jiafang Li, Beijing Academy of Sciences.
Therefore, in order to fabricate an optical device with nanoscale, the research team led by Assoc.Prof.Dr. Li Gia Phuong (Jiafang Li) at the Beijing Academy of Sciences and Assoc. Phuong Xuan Lai (Nicholas Xuanlai Fang) at MIT and Cambridge, used the traditional Japanese art of paper cutting kirigami. Only difference, here, pure gold foil is substituted for paper and is cut with a beam of gallium ions.
Dr. Jiafang Li said that if a lot of ions are released, the gold foil will be cut. But if it is less, the ion beam only pulls away or replaces a few gold atoms, causing the sheet of material to expand unevenly, so it warps up to form wide or narrow slits that allow light to be absorbed more or less. as little as required. And they succeeded in beaming light at the nanoscale.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nicholas Xuanlai Fang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Indeed, the potential of kirigami has been seen in the past, but efforts to exploit it are still fraught with difficulty. So this time, the researchers set up equations that predict the behavior of the gold foil depending on the density conditions and the path of the ion beam used.
The researchers had the idea to apply the Japanese art of kirigami to make the device.
It is from this traditional Japanese art of paper cutting that suggests the work of directing light at the nanoscale.
The sheets of material with these auto-widening-narrow slits are then 3D printed into optical devices that can interact with light to be transmitted in the right direction. And then, from among the generated nanobeams, the researchers choose the optimal light beam to put into the application.