Bottom-up approaches in nano and microscale engineering: From quantum tunnelling composites to liquid crystal lasers
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Bottom-up approaches in nano and microscale engineering: From quantum tunnelling composites to liquid crystal lasers
Wed, 06/03/2013 - 13:15 to 14:15
Location:
Speaker:
Dr Philip Hands
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Synopsis:
Modern high-tech laboratory fabrication facilities offer scientists and engineers innumerous opportunities for the design and fabrication of materials and novel devices down to the micro and nanoscale. However, as length-scales are increasingly reduced, the cost-effective mass-manufacture of such devices, especially at the nanoscale, using conventional "top-down" approaches, becomes increasingly problematic. In this talk I will present a number of technologies that use micro and nanoscale engineering, but using a "bottom-up" approach that is compatible with large-scale and low-cost manufacture. These include nanoscale spikes naturally forming on nickel microparticles, where electrical conduction dominated by quantum tunnelling is used to create highly sensitive pressure and chemical vapour sensors. Also I will introduce how liquid crystals can be used to make self-assembled nanoscale structures, for use in the construction of tunable lasers only 10 microns thick. Such devices will hopefully enable a new range of low-cost, high-functionality sensors and devices, suitable for portable point-of-care biomedical applications.
Biography:
Philip has an MSci (1999) and PhD (2003) in Physics from Durham University, where he worked on Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC) technology for pressure and chemical vapour sensing (electronic nose) applications. He has postdoctoral experience at the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI) at Durham University, Dept of Physics (2003-2007), where he worked on the design and fabrication of adaptive liquid crystal technology. In particular he worked on adaptive liquid crystal lenses for 3D displays, optical tweezing and adaptive optics for astronomy and ophthalmics. Philip also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, Dept of Engineering (2007-2012), where he continued his work in liquid crystal devices. He was a leading researcher in the COSMOS research program, developing tuneable organic liquid crystal lasers, made from self-assembled one-dimensional photonic band-gap materials. He has made several key advances in the field of liquid crystal lasers, including array-based pumping, simultaneous polychromatic emission and more recently the development of paintable and ink-jet printable lasers. In October 2011, Philip moved to Edinburgh University, School of Engineering, where he was awarded a Chancellor's Research Fellowship. He hopes to continue further research in these areas, with a particular focus upon developing low-cost semi-disposable tuneable laser sources for point of care biomedical applications. He is also interested in electrical and optical sensing technologies for portable chemical and DNA sequence detection.