Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience
The Kavli Foundation supports scientific research, honors scientific achievement, and promotes public understanding of scientists and their work. Its particular focuses are astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. For more information about the Foundation, visit their Web site at http://www.kavlifoundation.org/
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Xiang Zhang (View Bio)
University of California, Berkeley
Monday, April 25, 7:00-8:00 pm
San Francisco Marriott Marquis
Golden Gate Ballroom
Talk Presentation: Metamaterials -- Creating Properties that Do Not Exist in Nature (View Abstract)
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Biography
Xiang Zhang received his BS and MS in physics in Nanjing University, China. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and was on the faculties of The Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 2004.
Zhang is the Ernest S. Kuh Chaired Professor at UC, Berkeley and the director of the NSF Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (SINAM). He is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He has authored more than 180 publications, including articles in Science, Nature and Physical Review Letters. His group’s research in optical metamaterials was included in Time Magazine’s Top 10 Scientific Discoveries in 2008. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a fellow of APS, OSA, AAAS and SPIE. Zhang is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award; SME Dell K. Allen Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award; ONR Young Investigator Award; and MIT’s Rohsenow Lecturer.
Abstract
Recent theory predicted a new class of photonic composite materials whose properties, derived by structure rather than chemical compositions, promise unprecedented electromagnetic properties that do not exist in nature, such as optical magnetism and negative refraction. Superlens made of metamaterials breaks the fundamental diffraction limit, which may have a profound impact on a wide range of applications such as nanoscale photonics, electronics manufacturing, and biomedical imaging.
I’ll discuss recent progress that demonstrated the intriguing physics. We created the first bulk optical metamaterials that show the negative refractions. We demonstrated the superlens and optical cloak using carefully designed plasmonic materials dispersions. The recent discoveries on new topological symmetry such as Mobius symmetry in metamaterials reveal a fundamentally new realm of physical properties that do not occur in nature materials. I will further discuss an array of new technologies, including a superlens for nanoscale lithography that could transform the next generation of nanomanufacturing and plasmon lasers that could act as sources of coherent light on the molecular scale.
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