Jonathan A. Fan (Stanford)

Date: Mon. December 5th, 2022, 12:45 pm-1:45 pm
Location: at Rockefeller 221 (Foldy) & Zoom
Website: https://fanlab.stanford.edu/

High performance plasmonic and polaritonic materials platforms

Jonathan A. Fan

Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Abstract: I will discuss new classes of nanophotonic materials that serve as ideal model systems for infrared optoelectronic devices.  First, I will introduce a new method for growing single crystal plasmonic metal structures on amorphous substrates based on the concept of rapid melt growth.  I will show how these concepts can extend to the reliable growth of bi-crystal gold microstructures and be used to elucidate the photothermoelectric properties of individual grain boundaries.  Second, I will show that packed, aligned films of single-walled carbon nanotubes serve as infrared hyperbolic metamaterials with ultra-subwavelength unit cells.  These hyperbolic media, patterned into nanostructures, can be dynamically tuned across the infrared frequency band and be electrically driven to serve as narrowband, high speed infrared radiation sources.  Third, I will introduce bottom-up-synthesized α-MoO₃ structures as nanoscale phonon polaritonic hyperbolic resonators that feature tailorable morphologies and atomically sharp interfaces.  These nanostructures enable mapping of polaritonic resonances in α-MoO₃ across the far-infrared and feature resonator quality factors that are the highest for a phonon polaritonic van der Waals structures to date.  Finally, I will summarize future opportunities for expanding the functionality of these materials platforms for scientific study and technological implementation.

Host: Walter Lambrecht.