Active Fabrics of Light

by Alison Taylor

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Visionary Presentation:
Evelyn Hu, Harvard University, USA

Nanophotonic Systems: Active Fabrics of Light

Making a comparison with modern day electronics where individual functions, or “threads,” are so small that we see an overall “fabric” rather than individual devices, Evelyn Hu described profound advances in photonic materials and components that allow us to produce photonic networks and systems that can be regarded as seamless “fabrics” of light.

She reviewed developments in nanoscale engineering of materials that have given rise to an abundance of optical metamaterials and metasurfaces with extraordinary properties such as “near-zero index” materials and “flat” lenses and photonic controllers. The promise of these fabrics of light lies in “smart textiles” that could be integrated widely to sense, analyze, compute, and communicate information about the environment, as well as harvest the energy that would power those functions.

Tags:

• lenses
• metasurfaces
• nanophotonics
• nanoscale
• near-zero index
• optical metamaterials
• photonic controllers

Posted: 20 Sep 2017 by Alison Taylor