New trends in photonics: From green photonics to biophotonics

The unrelenting expansion in the field of photonics over the past half-century has been leading to ubiquitous applications, ranging from telecommunications to medicine. To keep up such momentum, new photonic technologies should be able to provide versatile tools not only in the realm of advanced sciences, but more importantly, in our common lives. To this end, this thesis will encompass various new approaches in the context of green photonics and biophotonics---the two disciplines which emerge rapidly nowadays and may permeate all aspects of our lives, e.g. energy efficiency and human health, in the future.;In the first part, I will introduce a technique, based on two-photon photovoltaic effect, which delivers electrical power by harvesting the optical energy lost in silicon photonic devices. As power dissipation is a pressing problem in VLSI industry, this technique addresses the "true" CMOS compatibility issue of silicon photonics and paves the path towards "green" integrated photonics. Another new technology in silicon photonics will also be presented. An integrated piezoelectric transducers are used to electrically alter silicon's optical properties. More notably, such capability represents a "green" approach for adaptive control of the optical response using electronic intelligence.;In the second part, a new imaging modality called Serial Time-Encoded Amplified Microscopy (STEAM) will be introduced. This technology allows ultra-fast real-time imaging with an unprecedented speed (∼6 million frames per second). Using this technique, the world's fastest barcode reader and 2D imaging system have been demonstrated. This enables us to capture ultrafast biological and chemical dynamics, especially detecting rogue events in biology and medicine, which has applications in high-throughput flow cytometry. I will also introduce a technique which is able to perform simultaneous high-precision laser microsurgery and microscopy without mechanical scanning of the probe. The fact that this technology can be miniaturized makes it very useful for endoscopic surgery.