FYI:
Prof. Harry Atwater
Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science
California Institute of Technology
Date: Tuesday, November 29th
Time: 12noon-1PM (*Food will be served* 11:45AM-12noon)
Place: 4-163
Tuning Light-Matter Interactions in Nanostructures Approaching the Atomic-Thickness Scale
Progress in understanding resonant subwavelength optical structures has fueled a worldwide explosion of interest in both fundamental processes and nanophotonic devices
for imaging, sensing, solar energy conversion and thermal radiation control. However, for most nanophotonic materials, the optical properties are fixed at the time of fabrication. Achieving active tunable of the optical properties to modify the light matter
interaction at the nanoscale which is an emerging opportunity to bringmetamaterials and metasurfaces to life as dynamic objects composed of tunable nanoscaleresonators and antennas for various application. Electrical tuning of the carrier density in conducting
oxides, transition metal nitrides and two-dimensional materials enables the optical dispersion of individual structures to be altered from dielectric to plasmonic, yielding active nano-antenna arrays with gate tunable phase and amplitude modulation of absorption, radiative emission
and scattering. Operation of individual patch antennas and beam steering phased arrays of antennas will be discussed.
MIT Lemelson Presidential Fellow
NSF Graduate Research Fellow