Nanostructured Optical Materials Website: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/dickerson/index_files/Page339.htm Professor James H. Dickerson (Physics) is developing novel nanocrystals and nanostructured thin films to be used in nanoscale optical devices. Dickerson is investigating rare-earth oxide and chalcogenide nanocrystals both for their fundamental physical phenomena (size dependent effects such as quantum confinement) and for their use in optical and magneto-optical devices. He also is fabricating these thin films using an emerging thin-film production process (electrophoretic deposition) that uses DC and AC electrical fields to steer and to deposit nanocrystals onto substrates.
"These materials are ideal candidates to produce small, high-capacity components for tunable nanoscale optical devices, such as mirrors, optical waveguides, optical isolators, and others," Dickerson says. "Such devices could be employed in a host of applications, such as nanoscale optical computers." |
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