Opening charge transport pathways: In perovskite solar cells, the insulating nature of passivation layers needed to boost open-circuit voltage also increases the series resistance of the cell and limits the fill factor. Most improvements in power conversion efficiency have come from higher open-circuit voltage, with most fill factor improvements reported for very small-area cells. Peng et al. used a nanostructured titanium oxide electron transport layer to boost the fill factor of larger-area cells (1 square centimeter) to 0.84 by creating local regions with high conductivity. Science , this issue p. 390

The colour gamut, a two-dimensional (2D) colour space primarily comprising hue and saturation (HS), lays the most important foundation for the colour display and printing industries. Recently, the metasurface has been considered a promising paradigm for nanoprinting and holographic imaging, demonstrating a subwavelength image resolution, a flat profile, high durability, and multi-functionalities. Much effort has been devoted to broaden the 2D HS plane, also known as the CIE map. However, the brightness (B), as the carrier of chiaroscuro information, has long been neglected in metasurface-based nanoprinting or holograms due to the challenge in realising arbitrary and simultaneous control of full-colour HSB tuning in a passive device. Here, we report a dielectric metasurface made of crystal silicon nanoblocks, which achieves not only tailorable coverage of the primary colours red, green and blue (RGB) but also intensity control of the individual colours. The colour gamut is hence extruded from the 2D CIE to a complete 3D HSB space. Moreover, thanks to the independent control of the RGB intensity and phase, we further show that a single-layer silicon metasurface could simultaneously exhibit arbitrary HSB colour nanoprinting and a full-colour hologram image. Our findings open up possibilities for high-resolution and high-fidelity optical security devices as well as advanced cryptographic approaches.

Controlling the flux of photons is crucial in many areas of science and technology. Artificial materials with nano-scale modulation of the refractive index, such as photonic crystals, are able to exercise such control and have opened exciting new possibilities for light manipulation. An interesting alternative to such periodic structures is the class of materials known as quasi-crystals, which offer unique advantages such as richer Fourier spectra. Here we introduce a novel approach for designing such richer Fourier spectra, by using a periodic structure that allows us to control its Fourier components almost at will. Our approach is based on binary gratings, which makes the structures easy to replicate and to tailor towards specific applications. As an example, we show how these structures can be employed to achieve highly efficient broad-band light trapping in thin films that approach the theoretical (Lambertian) limit, a problem of crucial importance for photovoltaics.

Metalenses consist of nanostructures that locally control the optical phase. They offer many degrees of freedom for manipulating a wavefront, which gives a number of advantages over bulk lenses, such as the straightforward elimination of spherical aberrations and an ultrathin dimension. Here, we compare the phase profiles of metalenses made of different dielectric materials and note the advantage of high refractive index materials. Higher refractive index materials such as silicon afford more degrees of freedom in terms of design and fabrication and are the basis for high-performance metalenses, even in the visible. Nevertheless, the imaging performance of single-element metalenses is still limited by coma and chromatic aberrations. This limitation is exacerbated by high numerical apertures and large areas. We review the challenges and trade-offs between numerical aperture, field of view, coma, chromatic aberration, and size. We also evaluate different phase engineering approaches to address these problems. We believe this review will help guide future developments in high-performance metalenses toward wide-field and high-resolution imaging, enabling scientific high-end miniature imaging systems.