Controlling nano to microscale dynamics with light: from fundamental research to advanced fabrication

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We must transform to a more sustainable society. Advanced materials and new manufacturing methods will play a central role in the effort to develop renewable energy sources and reduced-impact high tech fabrication processes. We will use light as a probe and also as a scapel, to study, control and fabricate systems on the micro and nanoscale. Our research follows two main thrusts: A) Lasers are used to precision cut a wide range of consumer products, from cars to smartphones. Even with such success, to produce a product with a specific 3D shape, one must resort to more wasteful and less precise tools since a laser beam cannot be stopped in mid-flight. Due to NSERC DG funding, we were able to invent a novel technique to control laser penetration depth in arbitrary materials, ranging from steel to bone. We will apply this potentially transformative technology to improve high power laser welding and fabricate new artificial materials with submicron precision. Our results will reduce manufacturing time, helping the Canadian automotive, microelectronics and aerospace industries. More importantly, active depth control may open laser processing to completely new approaches or materials that are currently out of reach. B) In a typical solar cell, one photon from the sun excites one electron in the cell. Recently, theorists have predicted that we can double the electron conversion efficiency in one of the most environmentally alluring materials, carbon, in the form a nanotube. Though the potential of carbon nanotube solar cells is huge, the challenges are immense. We need to understand their basic fundamental properties for them to serve as a building block for a novel opto-electronic industry. An important component of this effort is to track the birth and motion of electrons in the tiny nm-diameter tubes with extreme high time resolution only possible with ultrafast optics. An essential component of this research is the contributions and training of students with sophisticated optical tools, novel materials, nano-characterization and advanced manufacturing.