2012 Institute of Optics Research Opportunities
Nick Vamivakas
Institute of Optics
nick.vamivakas@rochester.edu
Research Project: Nanoscale optical metrology with single quantum dots
Recent advances in material science have made it possible to engineer physical structures with characteristic length scales of a few to tens of nanometers. The ability to tailor a structure’s geometry and material composition at these lengths directly influences the exhibited optical, electrical and mechanical properties ushering in an era where it is necessary to consider the quantum behavior of a material’s excitations in device design and development. The end result is an impressive array of applications for leveraging nanoscience in areas ranging from optoelectronics to medicine. Quantum dots are nanostructures that result when a semiconductor’s elementary electronic excitations, excitons (Coulomb bound electron‐hole pairs), are confined in all three dimensions to a size that is comparable to the exciton’s effective Bohr radius – just a few nanometers. The confinement is typically introduced by embedding one semiconductor material into a second semiconductor with a larger bandgap. A manifestation of the quantum confinement is a discrete spectrum of optical transition energies, observable both in optical absorption and emission, resulting in quantum dots being referred to as artificial atoms. The objectives of this project will be accomplished by marrying state-of-the‐art resonant optical spectroscopy techniques with advanced nanoscale fabrication procedures to realize quantum dot devices exhibiting controlled quantum mechanical behavior in geometries suitable for high resolution nanoscale optical metrology.
