Molecular Foundry Seminar

"Bioinspired Photonic Band Gap Crystals at Visible Frequencies"

Asst. Professor, Department of Chemistry, Adjunct Asst. Professor,
Department of Physics, University of Utah,
Tuesday, July 27th at 1:30 pm, Bldg. 67-Room 3111

Abstract:

The strikingly colorful world of insects is in large part the result of optical interference produced by the interaction of light with precisely ordered, periodic bio-polymeric structures, incorporated into their exoskeletons. Such structural colors have recently gained tremendous interest for the use as photonic crystals with promising potential for energy and information technology applications. In this talk, I will present several photonic nanostructures “engineered” by beetles and butterflies with architectures that are still far from our synthetic reach, including diamond-based lattice structures. I will also discuss bio-templating fabrication routes that take advantage of the synergistic combination of photonic engineering in biology with sol-gel chemistry-based materials synthesis. Using this approach, we create high-dielectric three-dimensional photonic crystals with a variety of lattice geometries and band gaps at visible frequencies. In addition, we apply a range of structural and optical characterization tools to evaluate the properties of these novel photonic architectures and compare them to theoretical models and band structure calculations.