Optically Assembled Meta-Materials
Abstract
Major Goals: Optical meta-materials (OMMs) enable electromagnetic cloaking and novel sensing for U.S. Army applications. Bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles paves a promising way towards high-quality OMMs. The assembly overcomes limits of top-down lithography that has spatial control limited to scale above tens of nanometers. Chemically synthesized colloidal particles have perfect atomic-scale crystallinity and narrow size distribution. Despite tremendous progress in bottom-up assembly of meta-materials, two problems have prevented the broader implementation of the OMMs. One is that it is challenging to make the OMMs with precisely controlled properties for desired applications. The other is that severe loss in metallic OMMs in the visible and near-infrared parts of electromagnetic spectrum limits their applications. We aim to tackle these problems through innovations in design and optical assembly of OMMs with colloidal particles (CPs) as building blocks, which will lead to OMMs with programmable functions, loss compensation and scalable production. For the initial 18 months of the project, our specific research aims include: Aim 1: Assembly of 2D meta-molecules. I propose to employ optical tweezers to assemble CPs into metamolecules and to realize in-situ polymerization of the meta-molecules. Aim 2: Programmable chiral OMMs. I propose to develop optically assembled chiral OMMs with dynamic control of their optical responses. Aim 3: Loss management in OMMs. I propose to reduce loss in the OMMs by using dielectric CPs or metallic CPs coupled to gain molecules.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 13, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1097483
Entities
People
- Yuebing Zheng
Organizations
- University of Texas at Austin