Carbon nanotubes based nanophotonic devices (from metamaterials to holograms)

When?

Thursday 10 May 2012, 13:00

Where?

02ATI02

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Haider Butt, Centre of Molecular Materials for Photonics and Electronics, University of Cambridge

The remarkable interaction of light with nano-scaled structures occurs in nature, such as in the butterfly wings giving them the fascinating colours we observe. In my recent research have studied the interaction of light with a special form of nanostructures called multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The manner in which the arrays of carbon nanotubes are arranged dictates the special optical effects and applications that can be achieved from them. Such as, the periodic arrays of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (with nanoscale spacings) act as metamaterials. These arrays display artificial dielectric properties towards incident waves and can be used as optical filters and waveguides. Carbon nanotube forests on the other hand are the perfect absorbers of light. We demonstrate their novel utilisation for producing amplitude based Fresnel lenses. These lenses display high contrast focusing capabilities and have potential application in solar cells. Lastly we present the utilisation of carbon nanotubes as pixels for producing high resolution holograms. Due to the nanoscale size of carbon nanotubes, the holograms produced from them have very wide viewing angles.