
Alexandra Boltasseva
Photo credit: Sam Barker Photography
Bio:
Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark in 2004. She is the 2023 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize (Optica), 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2018 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist and received the 2013 IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2011 MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35), the 2009 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Optical Technologies from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Young Elite-Researcher Award from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2008). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), MRS, IEEE, Optica, and SPIE.
Presentation:
Quasi-2D Materials: from Tailorable Photonics to New Phenomena
Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Birck Nanotechnology Center and Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute, School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
aeb@purdue.edu
Tailorable and dynamically tunable materials are crucial for advancing nonlinear and quantum optics, as well as optical technologies at large including IT, classical and quantum communication, imaging, sensing and energy conversion. Recently, transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) and transition metal nitrides (TMNs) have attracted attention for photonic applications as they exhibit enhanced light-matter interactions, particularly in their metallic/plasmonic regime and near the so-called epsilon near zero (ENZ) region. Here, we explore the static and dynamic tailorability and tunability of optical properties in TCOs and TMNs. Both homogeneous TCOs and TMNs, as well as structured devices made from them, were investigated for tunability of their optical interactions such as harmonic generation and optical modulation. We also report on investigations of ultra-thin TMN films where interesting metal-to-insulator transitions happen in the so-called transdimensional regime. We will also discuss the customizability of 2D transition-metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) and electro-optical properties of Weyl Semimetals (WSM) to enable new pathways for tailorable photonic devices.
Links:
Purdue University: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/People/ptProfile?resource_id=46150
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-boltasseva-385310/