Nanophotonics

News and Updates

No Fib: NIST Unmasks a Superfast Process for Nanoscale Machining

August 23, 2022

Cutting intricate patterns as small as several billionths of a meter deep and wide, the focused ion beam (FIB) is an essential tool for deconstructing and

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‘Exceptional’ Research: Unexpected Light Behavior May Be Harnessed to Improve Optical Communications and Sensors

April 21, 2022

Shine a flashlight into murky pond water and the beam won’t penetrate very far. Absorption and scattering rapidly diminishes the intensity of the light beam

Inspired by Prehistoric Creatures, NIST Researchers Make Record-Setting Lenses

April 19, 2022

Five hundred million years ago, the oceans teemed with trillions of trilobites — creatures that were distant cousins of horseshoe crabs. All trilobites had a

Projects and Programs

PTIR combines the spatial resolution of AFM with the specificity of absorption spectroscopy

Nano-Chemical Imaging and -Spectroscopy (IR, nIR, VIS)

Ongoing

Conventional techniques for analyzing chemical composition, such as infrared (IR) microscopy often miss critically important nanoscale details. To overcome this

Designing the Nanoworld: Nanostructure, Nanodevices, and Nano-optics

Ongoing

Nano and atomic scale theory of the electronic, optical and mechanical properties of ultrasmall structures, such as semiconductor quantum dots and dopants in Si

Nanoplasmonics and Three-Dimensional Plasmonic Metamaterials

Ongoing

Metamaterials are tailor-made photonic composites--combinations of materials designed to achieve optical properties not seen in nature. The properties stem from

Light-matter interactions in Semiconductor Nanostructures

Ongoing

The quantum optics of light interacting with semiconductor-based nanostructures is being studied to extend concepts of entanglement and coherence in atomic

Publications

Broadband Nanoscale Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy by Multiresonant Nanolaminate Plasmonic Nanocavities on Vertical Nanopillars

August 8, 2022

Author(s)

Meitong Nie, Yuming Zhao, Wonil Nam, Junyeob Song, Wenqi Zhu, Henri Lezec, Amit Agrawal, Wei Zhou

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has become a sensitive detection technique for biochemical analysis. Despite significant research efforts, most SERS

Single-atom trapping in a metasurface-lens optical tweezer

August 1, 2022

Author(s)

Ting-Wei Hsu, Wenqi Zhu, Tobias Thiele, Mark Brown, Scott Papp, Amit Agrawal, Cindy Regal

Single neutral atoms in optical tweezers have become an important platform for quantum simulation, computing, and metrology [1-3]. With ground-up control

Metasurface on integrated photonic platform: from mode converters to machine learning

July 20, 2022

Author(s)

Zi Wang, Yahui Xiao, Kun Liao, Tiantian Li, Hao Song, Haoshuo Chen, S M Zia Uddin, Dun Mao, Feifan Wang, Zhiping Zhou, Bo Yuan, Wei Jiang, Nikolas Fontaine, Amit Agrawal, Alan Willner, Xiaoyong Yu, Tingyi Gu

Integrated photonic circuits are created as a small form factor and robust analogue for fiber-based optical systems, from wavelength-division multiplication

Hybrid-mode-family Kerr optical parametric oscillation for robust coherent light generation on chip

July 1, 2022

Author(s)

Feng Zhou, Xiyuan Lu, Ashutosh Rao, Jordan Stone, Gregory Moille, Edgar Perez, Daron Westly, Kartik Srinivasan

Optical parametric oscillation (OPO) using the third-order nonlinearity (X(3)) in integrated photonics platforms is an emerging approach for coherent light

Tools and Instruments

Sample Preparation and Metrology Tools

Read about our sample preparation and metrology tools.

Awards

Kartik Srinivasan Elected OSA Fellow

Kartik Srinivasan of NIST’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) was elected Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA). Dr