This study presents a method for fabricating high-resolution, luminescent cerium-doped YAG:Ce³⁺ 3D microstructures using sol–gel synthesis combined with multiphoton laser lithography and controlled annealing. The process yields single-phase crystalline architectures with sub-micrometer features (≈0.48 µm) and isotropic shrinkage while preserving geometry. Structural and optical analysis confirms phase purity and strong emission at 558 nm, with optimal performance at 2 mol% Ce³⁺, enabling applications in photonic and optoelectronic microsystems.

By teaching an AI to use optical tweezers, researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, have sped up the analysis of life’s smallest components. The AI platform captures particles, takes measurements and loads new samples, all without human intervention.

Precise shaping of three-dimensional vector fields inside enclosed optical cavities has long been a critical unresolved bottleneck in modern photonics, essential for super-resolution imaging, nanolasers and advanced quantum photonic technologies. To address this, scientists in China invented a novel full-space adjoint-enabled freeform meta-optics framework, realizing 5-fold imaging fidelity enhancement while retaining λ/5 optical super-resolution. This technique opens new avenues for cutting-edge nanophotonics, topological photonics and quantum optics applications.

Efficient electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia requires not only active catalysts, but also precise control over active hydrogen utilization under industrial operating conditions. By introducing cerium into Cu₂O, we constructed Cu⁰-Cu⁺ and Cu-O-Ce dual active sites, enabling the regulation of hydrogen transfer pathways and suppressing the competing hydrogen evolution reaction to promote the selective nitrate-to-ammonia conversion.

Researchers have released the conceptual design of the Huizhou Hadron Spectrometer (HHaS), a next-generation experiment to be built at the High-Intensity Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China. HHaS aims for an unprecedented event rate of 1–100 MHz, with ~1% momentum resolution, ~3% electromagnetic energy resolution, and mm-level track pointing precision. With one month of running, HHaS can record an η meson sample three orders of magnitude larger than the world’s total existing data—enabling sensitivity for new physics searches two orders of magnitude beyond current limits.