Nanostructured Photonic Metamaterials
Over the last twenty years photonics, the science of light, has played a key role in creating the world as we know it. It is impossible to imagine modern society without the internet and mobile telephony (made possible by the implementation of optical fibre networks), CD's and DVD's (underpinned by the development of lasers), modern display technologies, and laser-assisted manufacturing.
We believe that the next photonic revolution will be fuelled by a dependence on radically new types of photonic materials called ‘metamaterials’. Metamaterials are artificial electromagnetic media with unusual and useful functionalities achieved by structuring on a sub-wavelength scale. Nanotechnology-enabled materials are now universally seen as a direction where the global economy will grow strongly in the 21st century. Our research programme is at the core of this global movement.
We aim to develop a new generation of revolutionary switchable and active nanostructured photonic media to provide groundbreaking solutions for telecoms, energy and light generation, imaging, lithography, data storage, sensing, and security and defence applications. These goals will be achieved by advancing the physics of the control, guiding and amplification of light in nanostructures and by developing new nanofabrication techniques, hybridization processes, and procedures for the integration of novel metamaterial structures into waveguide and fibre environments.
The Programme will mobilize and focus the resources and interdisciplinary expertise available at the University of Southampton to establish an internationally recognized centre for Photonic Metamaterials reserach. It brings together an investigators’ team with a formidable track record (in excess of £34M research funding and more than 460 journal publications over the last ten years) and will draw heavily on the world-leading facilities at the university’s new Mountbatten Building nanofabrication cleanroom and laboratory complex.