Nanoscale Photonic Engineering for Solar Cells and Information Processing

Nanoscale photonic engineering presents exciting opportunities to advance key technologies of this century: renewable energy sources, information technology and health care. In this talk, I will describe two specific examples in photovoltaics and integrated photonic information processing, where nanophotonics could influence the fundamental aspects of technological development.

One of the central parts in advanced photovoltaics is the light management. Light management improves light absorption, which reduces material cost and at the same time improves cell efficiency. In the first part of my talk, I will describe why the nanoscale optical engineering can fundamentally perform better than the conventional bulk optics for light management.

In the second part, I will focus on dynamic photonic structures for on-chip information processing. Dynamic silicon structures can replace exotic materials that are required to perform special light manipulation. This could potentially solve the material integration problem, which is currently the major obstacle in integrated photonics. I will also describe one intriguing nanophotonic effect: a one-way electromagnetic waveguide that only allows light to propagate in one direction.