Nanophotonics and Neuroengineering Laboratory

Research Areas:

Neuroengineering/physics:

(a) developing means to record from the brain of primates by employing implantable microelectronically active neural signal probes, with the goal of ‘reading out’ large numbers of individual neurons from different brain microcircuits in real time. Work is under way to develop such neuroengineering tools for (i) neural proscthetic use, and (ii) access different regions of the brain to explore the massively spatially parallel ‘architecture’ of the brain engaged e.g. from sensing to action;

(b) Employing nanoparticles such as semiconductor quantum dots as a means of delivering light locally in the near field to genetically modified photosensitive neural cells via a FRET-like process.

(c) Developing a dual-function brain implantable microscale chip which combined both “readout” (by electrical or possibly optical means) and “write-in” (by optical and possible electrical injection) modalities for real-time spatio-temporal interaction with neural microcircuits and the external world

Photonics and NanoMaterials:

(a) employing colloidal quantum dots (CdSe core, and CdS/Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S/ZnS mutishell)  as single photon emitters in practical, electrically excitable devices. The group has an ongoing collaboration QD Vision,a Boston area company,  as well as Prof. V. Bulovic at MIT

(b) the broader and more general subject of interfacing organic and inorganic semiconductor  nanoscale structures with interest in (i) excitation and charge transport across interfaces, (ii) light emitting and detecting devices, and (iii) for biosensing as well as for (photoelectric and other) energy conversion. 

Ultrasfast Optoacoustics: 

Generation of very short wavelength (ultrashort pulse) acoustic waves by optical means to perform imaging of nanostructures by a new type of “picosecond optoacoustic microscopy”. In the sound frequency range of several tens of GHz, the acoustic wavelength becomes on the order of few tens of nanometers. These conditions are being explored in the development of a new type of nanometer scale optoacoustic microscopy and  applications to imaging of subsurface nanoscale features in materials and device structures of device relevance. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Humphrey Maris Brown who is an expert in phonon physics.