Nano Optics: Transforming how information is communicated

Overview

The VINSE core facilities houses 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.

Selected Podcasts

Episode 37:    Francis Afzal   – photonic devices that have the potential to vastly increase the rate at which we can communicate data
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Episode 7:  Thomas Folland  - Trapping and concentrating light.
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Episode 1:  You Zhou   - Photonics: the manipulation of light.
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Core Faculty

Josh Caldwell
Philippe Fauchet
Richard Haglund
Justus Ndukaife
Wellington Pham
Sandra Rosenthal
Norman Tolk
Jason Valentine
Sharon Weiss