Major breakthroughs needed to meet 21st Century technical challenges across areas of top global priority, including alternative energy, healthcare, environmental monitoring, information technology, and world security, will be achieved through convergence of science. This talk will provides examples of how our institute is conducting multidisciplinary research linking materials science and engineering with nanotechnology and photonics to create new generation multifunctional hybrid materials for applications in the fields of optical information processing, sensor technology, energy and health care. This talk will focus only on applications to energy and health care.
We are developing new photo responsive inorganic: Organic hybrid materials for efficient harvesting of solar photons over a broad spectral range. A major direction is development of photon transforming nanostructures, the optical nanotransformers which convert a single ultraviolet photons to two visible photons and those which upconvert two or more infrared photons to visible photons to enhance ultraviolet photon utilization, while also harvesting IR photons that are unutilized in conventional solar cells. Nanomedicine provides approaches for meeting our current and future healthcare challenges such as cancer, neurological disorders, infectious diseases. [1-3] Our research applies biophotonics to nanomedicine, using multifunction nanomaterial for bioimaging, sensing, and light-guided and light-activated therapy. A major direction pursued in our lab is brain research with the emerging field of neurophotonics, where we apply these photoresponsive materials for functional mapping of the brain using optical and photoacoustic imaging as well as for noninvasive optogenetic stimulation of brain activity using near-IR absorbing optical nanotransformers. This talk will conclude with a discussion of future outlook and new opportunities in these fields.
REFERENCES: [1] P. N. Prasad “Nanophotonics” John Wiley & Sons, (2004).; [2]: P. N. Prasad “Introduction to Biophotonics” John Wiley & Sons, (2003).; [3] P. N. Prasad “Introduction to Nanomedicine and Nanobioengineering” John Wiley & Sons, (2012).
Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, the field of 2D materials is one of the fastest growing fields in science and Technology. The lecture will review some of the latest developments in this fast growing field.