Lipson Nanophotonics Group

Welcome to Lipson Nanophotonics Group!

Nanophotonics can provide high bandwidth, high speed and ultra-small optoelectronic components. This technology has the potential to revolutionize telecommunications, computation and sensing.

We investigate the physics and applications of nanoscale photonic structures. In particular, we are interested in light confining structures that can slow down, trap, enhance and manipulate light. Photonic structures can enhance light-matter interactions by orders of magnitude. The applications of the devices that we design, fabricate and demonstrate are numerous: on-chip light modulation (optically and electro-optically) and detection, networks on-chip, nonlinear phenomena, multi-material devices and platforms, microfluidics, basic physics, etc.

Lipson Nanophotonics Group 2023

Active Research Projects

Nanophotonics for Neuroscience

Using active switching on a nanophotonic platform, we generate patterns of single neurons at unprecedented frequencies by an implantable probe with high timing precision (<1 ms), critical for understanding behavior in animals. Scaling up the number of controllable emitters and integrating recording electrodes with this nanophotonic platform will enable large-scale studies of neural activity with high precision in behaving animals.

Near-field Heat Transfer

Broadband thermal radiation sources are critical for various applications including spectroscopy and electricity generation. However, due to the difficulty in simultaneously achieving high absorptivity and low thermal mass these sources are inefficient. Our platform has the potential to enable development of ideal blackbody sources operating at substantially lower heating powers.