Title: Nanostructured Materials and Optics: Enabing a New Era of Optoelectronic Technologies

　　Speaker: Prof. Connie J. Chang-Hasnain

　　Time：Sep 10 2009 14:00(PM)
　　Venue: Institute of Semiconductors,  CAS
　　
　　CONNIE J. CHANG-HASNAIN

　　DEPT. OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

　　UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CA 94720

　　EMAIL: CCH@EECS.BERKELEY.EDU

　　Abstract

　　There are intense interests in semiconductor structures with dimensions at the two ends of the nanometer regime. Materials with size on the order of a few nanometers are critical because their physical properties may be altered by its dimensions. In particular, they offer a tremendous opportunity to engineer properties of optoelectronic materials. On the other hand, materials that have sub-optical-wavelength dimensions are of enormous interests because they open up a new window to re-examine the wave guiding properties. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of our activities in these areas.

　　I will discuss the synthesis and characteristics of III-V compound nanoneedles that are monolithically grown on Si and sapphire despite of a very large lattice mismatches, 4% and 33%, respectively. The structures show excellent crystalline and optical quality. The nanoneedles are promising for ultrahigh gain avalanche photo detectors, low threshold lasers on Si and high efficiency solar cells. This new material enables the opportunities of making highly efficient optoelectronic devices on Si. They will find applications for optical interconnects, field emission tips, AFM probe tips and atto-liter liquid delivery.

　　For the hundred-nm regime structures, we recently discovered a novel high index contrast subwavelength grating (HCG) structure, which showed an unprecedented effects on optical wave guiding and reflection properties. I will discuss new integrated optics using HCG as a platform. The HCG grating brings guided-wave optics to a totally untrespassed regime and will find many useful applications in lasers, filters, waveguides, bio/chemical and gas sensors and detectors.

　　Biography

　　Prof. Connie Chang-Hasnain is John R. Whinnery Chair Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as Chair of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. She received a B.S. degree (1982) from UC Davis, and her M.S. (1984) and Ph.D. (1987) degrees from UC Berkeley, all in Electrical Engineering. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty, Dr. Chang-Hasnain was a member of the technical staff at Bellcore (1987–1992) and an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (1992–1996). Since January 1996, she is Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

　　Her research interests have been in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers， MEMS tunable optoelectronic devices and nanostructured materials and nano-optoelectronic devices. Prof. Chang-Hasnain co-authored over 300 research papers in technical journals and conferences, six book chapters and 36 patents. Prof. Chang-Hasnain was named a Presidential Faculty Fellow, a National Young Investigator, a Packard Fellow, a Sloan Research Fellow, and Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer of the Year by Eta Kappa Nu. She received the 1994 IEEE LEOS Distinguished Lecturer Award, the 2000 Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, 2003 IEEE William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the 2005 Gilbreth Lecturer Award from National Academy of Engineering, the 2007 OSA Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, the 2008 National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship, 2009 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Foundation 2009. Prof. Chang-Hasnain is a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA and IEE. She is elected an Honorary Member of A.F. Ioffe Institute in 2005 and a Chang Jiang Scholar Endowed Chair from the Peoples Republic of China, Ministry of Education 2009. Since 2007, she is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology.