Research within Nano
Nanotechnology is a key enabling technology. Our research leads to a fundamental understanding of structures and dynamics at the nanoscale and builds bridges to applications in everyday life.
At SDUs faculty of engineering we focus on developing new devices with huge impact for the green change of society. This includes new ways of generating energy via organic solar cells, new ways of storing energy via supercaps, bendabel light emitting and transforming screens, disruptive photonic and plasmonic elements, advanced sensors and much more. We also develop and use new classes of low-dimensional and smart materials for applications in photonics, information technology, civil engineering and more. For these developments and for elucidating the full potential of nanoscaling of matter and light, we need to be able to structure and characterize both volume matter, surfaces and interfaces on the nanoscale.
Research areas
Nanodevices
Nanoscaled structuring of materials helps to improve existing functionalities and generate new ones, which exist solely because of nanoscaling and the appearance of quantum effects. A good example are plasmonic nanodevices, which exploit the interaction between photonic and electronic motion on the nanoscale. The speed of light and its enormous bandwidth are combined with tamed plasmons, which are interactions between the light's electromagnetic field and conduction electrons at metal nanostructures. This way, the nanostructures control optical fields on a scale that is much smaller than the wavelength of light.
Imaging on the nanoscale
Hard and soft materials are characterized at the micro- and nanoscales with a broad variety of state-of-the art characterization equipment, from SEM and AFM to Helium ion microscopy and laser based multiphoton microscopies. Surfaces as well as interfaces are analyzed with both invasive and non-destructive methods. Recently, a new national infrastructure for elemental imaging on the nanoscale – NANOCHEM – has been established, with instruments ranging from nano FTIR via advanced Raman microscopy to FIB-SIMS.
Nanooptics and plasmonics
Nanophotonics has led to novel and rapidly developing fields such as plasmonics, photonic crystals, and metamaterials. Over the last few decades, explosive growth in this field encompasses fundamental research and applications that exploit unique optical properties. Research topics include strongly enhanced and extremely confined electromagnetic modes supported by plasmonic nanostructures, linear and nonlinear electromagnetic phenomena for light modulation and detection using ultracompact nanophotonic components, dynamic and multifunctional optical metasurfaces for controlling radiation flow and wavefronts, and efficient coupling of quantum emitters to nanostructures for enhanced spontaneous emissions.
Micro- and nanosensors
Sensors are most important for controlling most technical and biological processes, providing an actual status of the global as well as very local environment. Given this variety of applications and purposes, sensors have an intrinsic need for improvement, integration and miniaturization. Micro- and nanoscaling of sensors not only leads to increased robustness, affordability and integrability in advanced environments such as microfluidics, but also results in new and previously unexplored features. Examples include molecular sensors on nano cantilevers or polarisation sensitive sensors for single photon emitters.
Quantum engineering
With the emergence of 2D materials, i.e. ultrathin metal flakes, graphene or similar monolayers, polaritons – hybrid light-matter states - can be explored and manipulated in flatland, in engineered metasurfaces interfacing light-emitting quantum systems, or serving as light sources themselves. Investigations in the quantum regime include strongly enhanced and extremely confined electromagnetic modes, which give rise to linear and nonlinear electromagnetic phenomena for light modulation and detection. Eventually, efficient coupling of quantum emitters to nanostructures and optical metasurfaces enhances and funnels spontaneous emission and provides a basis for controlled single-photon emission – an important ingredient for future quantum devices.
Further reading
BooksBasics of Nanotechnology (3rd Edition)
by Horst-Günter Rubahn
Paperback, 234 Pages, Published 2008 by Wiley-Vch
ISBN-13: 978-3-527-40800-9, ISBN: 3-527-40800-2
Organic Nanostructures for Next Generation Devices
101 (Springer Series in Materials Science)
by Helmut Sitter, Katharina Al-Shamery, Horst-Günter Rubahn
Hardcover, 358 Pages, Published 2008 by Springer
Kindle Ebook
ISBN-13: 978-3-540-71922-9, ISBN: 3-540-71922-9
Plasmonic Nanoguides and Circuits
by Sergey Bozhevolnyi
441 Pages, Published 2019 by Crc Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-429-53364-8, ISBN: 0-429-53364-0
Metasurfaces (1st Edition)
Physics and Applications
by Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, Patrice Genevet, Fei Ding
Paperback, 166 Pages, Published 2018 by Mdpi Ag
ISBN-13: 978-3-03897-344-7, ISBN: 3-03897-344-0
Quantum Plasmonics (Reprint)
(Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences, Band 185)
by Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, Luis Martin-Moreno, Francisco Garcia-Vidal
Paperback, 348 Pages, Published 2018 by Springer
ISBN-13: 978-3-319-83379-8, ISBN: 3-319-83379-0
Special journal issue
De Gruyter
Volume 8 Issue 8 - Special Issue: Topological Nanophotonics; Guest Editors: Niels Asger Mortensen, Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, Andrea Alù
August 2019
Issue of Nanophotonics
Nanodevices
Imaging on nanoscale
Nanooptics and plasmonics
Micro- and nanosensors
Quantum engineering
Last Updated 15.11.2024