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Mission
Recent developments in the precise fabrication of nanoparticles and nanostructures, in combination with powerful computational modeling tools, are rapidly leading to a revolution in optics. A new discipline, Nanophotonics, is emerging from these advances. Nanophotonics is the development of new tools and strategies to generate and manipulate light at the nanoscale, using fundamentally new “components” whose dimensions are a small fraction of an optical wavelength. This broadly multidisciplinary, rapidly expanding field is already leading to:
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new, rationally designed optical materials and devices fabricated “from the bottom up” with unique and novel properties and functionalities
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successful approaches for miniaturizing optical components such as switches and waveguides to dimensions compatible with today’s and tomorrow’s ultrasmall on-chip integrated electronics
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powerful new ways to probe, interrogate, and modify biological systems, from new high information-content intracellular probes to new strategies for disease diagnosis and therapeutics
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strategies for the deep subwavelength focusing of light leading to the development of optical microscopes that resolve features approaching atomic dimensions;
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robust, tailored nanoprobes that will provide rapid structural and chemical identification of chemical species and biomolecules, for applications ranging from homeland security to proteomics.
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