NanoPlasmonics, Microphotonics & Imaging

Research that includes:

  • Polymer, printed optical lenslet arrays
  • Microfluidic tuneable photopolymer lenses
  • Optical switches and planar lightwave MEMS
  • Vertically integrated microconfocal arrays
  • Bio-inspired integration of tuneable polymer optics with imaging electronics

BPN457: Nanopatch Lasers

Amit Lakhani
2012

The physical size and effective modal volume of conventional lasers with visible and near-infrared emission wavelengths are usually in the micrometer range due to the diffraction limit. The length scale of electronic transistors, however, is currently sub-100 nm thanks to the advance of fabrication technologies. For future integration of electronic and photonic devices on a chip-scale platform, we need novel laser sources that are not only compact but also capable of steering light in any direction necessary and potentially electrically injectable. In this project, a nanopatch laser...

BPN673: Gold Virus Nanoparticle for Molecular Imaging

SoonGweon Hong
2012

An ideal nanoscopic method via optical antenna can accomplish remarkable features in molecular detection such as single-molecule sensitivity and molecular fingerprint mining as non-invasive optical mechanism. However, ideal nanoscopic probes achieving these properties are still beyond current nanotechnology capability, being a bottleneck to practical applications. Herein, we are investigating potential of virus nanoparticles for sensitive molecular imaging probes by being integrated with optical antennae. Looking to the detail of viral capsids finds an ideal morphology of optical...

BPN510: High Linearity RF Photonic Links

John M. Wyrwas
2012

Analog RF photonic links with low distortion and low noise are critical for high-dynamic range sensing and communications applications. This project seeks to develop optical modulators and receivers for high linearity, wideband 100 MHz to 4 GHz links.

Project end date: 08/17/12

BPN691: Nanoplasmonic Imaging of Specific Biochemical Data in Living Cells

Wei-Yin (Wein) Chien
Chi-cheng Fu
Inhee Choi
Sang Hun Lee
2012

Current methods for biomolecular quantification inside cells are limited. We are developing an in-vivo nanoplasmonic imaging approach for multiplexed readout of intracellular biomolecular data – useful in the study of cellular dynamics and disease states.

Project end date: 09/09/12

BPN460: Optical Antenna for Ultra-High Efficiency Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

Tae Joon Seok
2012

Optical antennas are widely used in surface-enhanced Ramon spectroscopy (SERS) because of their ability to focus light in sub-diffraction-limited area, resulting in strong field enhancement. The field enhancement depends critically on the gap spacing of optical antennas. Current nanofabrication techniques such as focused ion beam milling and electron beam lithography are limited by poor uniformity and reproducibility as the dimension decreases below 10 nm, making it difficult to fabricate optical antennas with well-defined sub-10 nm gap spacing. In this project, we report on the...

BPN689: Hybrid Integration of III-V on Si/SiN Photonics Platform

Sangyoon Han
2012

Develop a technology for integrating III-V on Silicon and Silicon Nitride photonics platform

Project end date: 01/31/13

BPN692: DNA Sequencing by Graphene Nanopores with Integrated Plasmonic Nanoantennas

Chi-cheng Fu
Inhee Choi
SoonGweon Hong
2012

Atomically-thin nature of graphene nanopores make it possible to sequence single DNA molecules with base-pair resolution. However, conventional approaches to fabricate nanopores on graphene require expensive and sophisticated process such as electron beam sculpting/drilling. Here, we report a simple single-step fabrication for creating graphene nanopores with integrated plasmonic nanoantenna by photothermal effect of gold nanorods. Tunability of nanopore dimensions and optical properties of plasmonic nanoantennas has been demonstrated by controlling laser fluence. The optical...

BPN498: Integrated Silica Optomechanical Oscillators

Karen E. Grutter
Alejandro Grine
Niels Quack
Tristan Rocheleau
Turker Beyazoglu
2013

Optical microring/disk resonators are the central component in many micro-optical applications, including optomechanical devices. Optomechanical devices that use light to stimulate mechanical resonance have applications in displacement sensing, optical mixing, and reference oscillators. High optical Q is necessary for these applications, so we are exploring the use of silica, which has low optical loss. So far, using a wafer-scale reflow process, we have achieved an optical Q of 15 million and have observed self-excited optomechanical oscillations. We have also fabricated nitride...

BPN595: Fast Optical Phased Array for 10MHz Beamforming

Mischa Megens
2014

We developed an optical phased array incorporating a single-layer high-index-contrast sub- wavelength grating (HCG) for 2D beamsteering. There are a number of other approaches for optical phased arrays such as liquid-crystal-based phased arrays and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) phased array. Switching of liquid-crystal based phased arrays typically takes on the order of milliseconds. Arrays of MEMS mirrors moving perpendicular to the substrate are usually made of silicon so that a metal-coated layer is required on top, resulting in thermal induced stress when very high optical...

BPN710: Reconfigurable Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits

Sangyoon Han
2013

Silicon photonics has emerged as one of the key technologies for data communications, especially in datacenters. Using standard CMOS fabrication steps, optical modulators, photodetectors, and passive optical components have been realized. The photonic circuits demonstrated so far are mostly static. We are interested in dynamically reconfigurable or tunable circuits in Si photonics, such as tunable filters or optical switches. In this project, we integrate MEMS with Si photonics on an silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The optical waveguides and passive optical components are...