Nano Optics

Transforming How Information is Communicated

The VINSE core facilities house tools that enable a broad spectrum of photonics research initiatives at Vanderbilt in communications, energy and sustainability, life sciences, and national security. A small sampling:

Fabrication of plasmonic nanostructures for photovoltaics and medicine. Active manipulation, control, and measurement of single molecules and cells at the level of nanometer displacements and piconewton forces. Atom-scale active electro-optical devices made from two-dimensional materials based on quantum-confinement effects. Manipulating intensity, wavelength and propagation direction of light in nanostructured optical materials for applications from optical modulators to optical biosensing.

Electronic, optical, and electro-optical devices made from carbon-based materials and applied in the biomedical arena and energy conversion. Nanostructured metamaterials for novel, ultracompact devices such as super-resolution lenses, modulators, perfect optical absorbers, photodetectors and light sources. Nanostructured metal and metal-oxide nanowires, nanodisks and nanoantennas for lasers, ultrafast optical modulators, and nonlinear optics.