--
Alan Aspuru-Guzik
Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University
http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu
Forwarded message:
From: Gleb Akselrod <gleb.akselrod(a)gmail.com>
To: Gleb Akselrod <gleb.akselrod(a)gmail.com>
Date: Monday, April 22, 2013, 5:15:47 PM
Subject: MOS Seminar, tomorrow (Tuesday), 12 pm
Hello colleagues,
I would like to invite you all to the Modern Optics and Spectroscopy Seminar, which I
will be giving tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12 pm, in the Grier Room, 34-401. Hope you can come.
Cheers,
Gleb
J-aggregates: Excitonic Material for Strong Light-Matter Coupling and Energy Funneling
Gleb M. Akselrod
Coherent coupling between chromophores is in part responsible for the remarkable energy
transfer efficiency of natural photosynthetic systems. If Nature can do it, can we
engineer materials with such coherent interactions that can be harnessed in optoelectronic
devices ranging from lasers to solar cells to photodectectors? In this talk I will discuss
my work on J-aggregates, a remarkable organic material made by the self-assembly of
organic dye molecules into sheets. The result of this aggregation is a coherently
delocalized exciton at room temperature with extremely high optical absorption and record
exciton diffusion lengths (~100 nm). I will first show that these J-aggregate properties
can be exploited in optical microcavities to obtain laser operation in the strong
light-matter coupling regime. Second, I will demonstrate how J-aggregates can be used as
an excitonic antenna for fluorescence enhancement of single molecules and quantum dots, an
excitonic analogue to plasm
onic enh
ancement.