Optical fiber with dimension at micrometer scale has intrigue the widely development of Internet, and now the world becomes “smaller and smaller”. Nowadays, optical fibers with dimension at nanometer scale induce another round of scientific interesting.

Among all kinds of optical nanofibers, Polymeric nanofiber has been seen as the one of the primer choice for nanophotonic devices and integrated optical circuit, due to its fantastic mechanical performance, and good bio-compatibility, and various optical properties through chimerical design.

ZHANG Douguo and ZOU Gang at University of Science and Technology of China of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the co-workers proposed a novel optical mode, which is the Bloch Surface Waves confined in one dimensional (BSW-1D) with a single polymeric nanofiber. By using this optical mode, they successfully solve the technique problem that thin polymeric nanofiber cannot transport optical signals when it was put on a glass substrate. This work was published on Nature Communications.

Polymeric fibers with small radii (such as ≤125 nm) are delicate to handle and should be laid down on a solid substrate to obtain practical devices. However, placing these nanofibers on commonly used glass substrates prevents them transport optical signals.

Researchers numerically and experimentally demonstrated that when the nanofiber is placed on a suitable dielectric multilayer, it supports a new guided mode, a Bloch surface wave (BSW) confined in one-dimension. The physical origin of this new mode is discussed in comparison with the typical two-dimensional BSW mode.

The top layer of the dielectric multilayer is of the same materials as that for glass substrate. By placing the nanofibers on this multilayer, all the thin polymeric nanofibers can transport optical signals.

This study opens the possibility of using a wide range of polymeric fibers which are compatible with biological materials, and can be doped with a wide range of fluophors during or after manufacture. Also, it may lead to a wide range of new optical devices operating over a wide range of wavelengths. The devices would all be of nanometric size.