CDI-Type I: Computer Aided Design of Nanostructured Optical Materials

技术概述：该奖项是根据提交给网络发现与创新计划的提案颁发的。该奖项支持开发计算工具的研究，以研究光与纳米结构光学材料（也称为光子晶体）的相互作用。这些工具将成为计算机辅助设计系统的一部分，该系统可用于创建新的单个光子晶体和包含光子晶体的新表面涂层。发展将由设计和制造纳米结构材料的社区的需求来指导。该系统将通过使用它来创建具有特定光学特性的光子晶体来进行评估。光如何与纳米结构光学材料相互作用的研究将导致对构建系统复杂性的理解。周期性的布局和微小的组成块使得光子晶体在几何上很复杂。这种几何复杂性导致光学复杂性，因为必须考虑光的全波模型，并且必须考虑衍射效应。最后，必须仔细地模拟三个明显不同的物理尺度，从单个光子晶体的结构，到小体积表面涂层的组成，再到被表面涂层覆盖的小物体的尺度。计算思维将用于确定系统的结构和设计系统内的各个模块。时域有限差分技术将用于解决单个光子晶体的物理光学问题，射线追踪方法将用于执行包含光子晶体的表面涂层的几何光学计算，计算机图形渲染技术将用于描述应用于三维物体时表面涂层的颜色外观。目前PC显卡上的强大图形处理器将用于加速有限差分时域、光线追踪和渲染算法。我们将探索新的数值求解技术，以提高物理光学和几何光学模拟的性能。pi将制造出一种金属光子晶体，提高白炽灯泡的效率。其他新的热光伏和等离子体光子晶体可能会被开发出来。随着以有趣的新方式反射光线的新型表面涂层的出现，pi计划扩展各种可能的工业和建筑设计。该奖项是根据提交给网络发现与创新计划的提案颁发的。本项目涉及电子与光子材料科学中具有技术相关性的主题领域的基础研究问题。由一名计算机科学家、一名材料研究人员和一名数学家组成的跨学科研究团队将开发计算工具来设计纳米结构光学材料或光子晶体。计算工具将能够精确计算光如何与光子晶体相互作用，光子晶体是一种具有周期性结构的材料，与光相互作用可产生特定的光学特性，例如不能通过晶体传输的特定频率的光。pi将开发的计算工具将使具有特定性质的光子晶体的计算机辅助设计成为可能。作为对计算工具的测试，pi计划制造一种金属光子晶体，以提高白炽灯泡的效率。pi还将开发新的教学材料，使光子晶体的原理更容易为公众所接受。

TECHNICAL SUMMARYThis award is made on a proposal submitted to the Cyberenabled Discovery and Innovation initiative. This award supports research to develop computational tools to study the interaction of light with nanostructured optical materials, also known as photonic crystals. These tools will be part of a computer aided design system that can be used to create new individual photonic crystals and new surface coatings that contain photonic crystals. Development will be guided by the needs of the community that designs and fabricates nanostructured materials. The system will be evaluated by using it to create a photonic crystal with specific optical properties. The investigation of how light interacts with nanostructured optical materials will lead to an understanding of complexity in a built system. The periodic layout and minute size of the constituent building blocks makes a photonic crystal geometrically complex. This geometric complexity leads to optical complexity because the full wave model of light must be taken into account, and diffraction effects must be considered. Finally, three distinctly different physical scales must be carefully modeled, from the structure of an individual photonic crystal, to the composition of a small volume of surface coating, to the scale of a small object covered with the surface coating. Computational thinking will be used to determine the structure of the system and to design individual modules within the system. A finite difference time domain technique will be used to solve physical optics problems for an individual photonic crystal, a ray tracing approach will be employed to perform geometric optics calculations for a surface coating that contains photonic crystals, and computer graphics rendering techniques will be utilized to depict the color appearance of the surface coating when applied to a three dimensional object. The powerful graphics processors available today on PC graphics cards will be employed to accelerate the finite difference time domain, ray tracing, and rendering algorithms. Novel numerical solution techniques will be explored to improve the performance of both the physical optics and geometric optics simulations.The PIs will create a metallic photonic crystal that will improve the efficiency of incandescent light bulbs. Other novel thermophotovoltaic and plasmonic photonic crystals may be developed. As new surface coatings that reflect light in interesting new ways become available, the PIs plan to extend a variety of possible industrial and architectural designs.NONTECHNICAL SUMMARYThis award is made on a proposal submitted to the Cyberenabled Discovery and Innovation initiative. This project addresses fundamental research issues in a topical area of electronic and photonic materials science having technological relevance. An interdisciplinary research team that includes a computer scientist, a materials researcher, and a mathematician will develop computational tools to design nanostructured optical materials, or photonic crystals. The computational tools will enable accurate calculations of how light interacts with photonic crystals which are materials that are structured to have a periodicity that interacts with light to lead to specific optical properties, such as particular frequencies of light which are not transmitted though the crystal. The computational tools that the PIs will develop will enable computer assisted design of photonic crystals with specific properties. As a test of the computational tools, the PIs plan to create a metallic photonic crystal that will improve the efficiency of incandescent light bulbs. The PIs will also develop novel instructional materials to make the principles of photonic crystals accessible to the general public.