Janelle Shane

It turns out sapphire is a very useful high-tech material, due to its hardness, insulating properties, optical transparency, and thermal conductivity. By starting with a tiny seed crystal, a huge column of highly pure crystal can be slowly drawn out of a molten vat, producing big honking specimens like the

But are these optics free range? And what about added sugar? Spotted at Photonics West 2015, at the OPCO Laboratory booth.

This is the nanolaser equivalent of being smacked in the face with a slab of corrugated roofing during a tornado. There’s one step in making microscopic lasers where you have to peel away metal from much of the substrate, leaving behind pillar-shaped lasers surrounded by small metallic patches. These

I finished my PhD! (!!!) Thanks so much to all of you for following so far, and giving me a use for the interesting images that wouldn’t necessarily make it to publication. I’m glad I’m not the only one amused by strange-looking dust [http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/post/

On the right: a photonic nanostructure, used in researching new light-based ways to make computers communicate faster. On the left: a single human hair (oops). Fortunately, according to Dr. Felipe Vallini of UCSD (who made and imaged this structure): “A hair hit my device, but he is still fine!”