Bright future for nanowire light source

In a demonstration of the nanowire light source's fluorescence mode, a nanowire in the grip of an infrared beam was touched to a fluorescent bead causing the bead to fluorescence orange at the contact point. Figure a shows the experimental set up with the pair of beads on the right as control; b is a bright-field optical image of the beads, with the nanowire in contact with the leftmost bead; c is a color CCD fluorescence image showing green light emission from the nanowire and the orange emission from the bead; d is a control image of the same beads with infrared radiation but no trapped nanowire; and e is digital subtraction of d from c. Credit: Peidong Yang, Jan Liphardt, et. al.