July 13, 2015

Nanoscale device has big profile in light




(July 13, 2015)  University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created a nanoscale device that can emit light as powerfully as an object 10,000 times its size. It's an advance that could have huge implications for a variety of imaging and energy applications.

In a paper published July 10, 2015 in the journal Physical Review Letters, Zongfu Yu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison, PhD student Ming Zhou, and their collaborators describe nanoscale device that  that drastically outpaces previous technology in its ability to scatter light.  They showed how a single nanoresonator can manipulate light to cast a very large "reflection."  The nanoresonator's capacity to absorb and emit light energy is such that it can make itself—and, in applications, other very small things—appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size.

“Making an object look much 10,000 times larger than its physical size has lots of implications in technologies related to light," Yu says.


The researchers realized the advance through materials innovation and a keen understanding of the physics of light. Much like sound, light can resonate, amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in which the wavelength of light is much larger than in a vacuum, which allows light waves to resonate more powerfully.


journal reference >>