Metasurfaces

It is an exciting time to be working in optics. Previous generations of researchers have been largely limited to the use of naturally-occurring optical materials, such as glass, crystals, et.c. Recent advances in fabrication made by the integrated circuit industry have dramatically improved our ability to produce nanostructured materials. Recent years have also seen an explosion in computing power. These two developments have made it possible to design and fabricate nanostructured materials (“metamaterials”) that have optical properties not present in natural materials. These have been used in the demonstration of several (previously unimaginable) phenomena, e.g. materials with negative refractive indices and “invisibility cloaks”. We previously demonstrated a very thin metamaterial (termed a “metasurface”) consisting of silicon nanofins on a glass substrate (Nature Comms 2014). This had the unusual property of deflecting circularly-polarised infrared light into different directions, depending on the handedness of polarisation (left- or right-handed). PhD, MPhil, & MSc projects are available on developing dielectric metasurfaces with new and technologically-useful properties. Projects will be primarily experimental, but also with theory/simulation components.