Surface plasmon photonics: from fundamentals to applications

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This proposal is at the frontiers of photonics and devoted to the investigation of devices operating with surface plasmons, particularly lasers and parity time symmetric structures, high-speed photodetectors and modulators, and biosensors for disease detection and point-of-care applications. Conducting the work described herein will result in significant and far-reaching advances, of interest to the plasmonics and broad photonics communities, and to telecom, sensor and healthcare companies. The surface plasmon lasers, photodetectors and modulators proposed hold the promise of high-performance at very low cost, attributes that are of significant interest for telecom applications, particularly next-generation optical networks and short-reach optical communications. Our work on surface plasmon biosensors will lead to point-of-care devices for the detection of cardiac troponin I (a protein marker for myocardial injury or infarction), for human thyroid stimulating hormone (for which many Canadians suffer from a deficiency), and for the Dengue virus which afflicts about 500M people globally each year including Canadian military personnel deployed in Dengue prevalent regions. Over the duration of this program, 5 Ph.D. students will complete their studies and 5 new students will begin. The students will be integrated into a productive, collaborative and multidisciplinary team. The applicant’s group is attractive to students from many disciplines - engineering (EE, Phys, Chem, Biomed) and science (Phys, Biochem). The students will receive training on the modelling, design, fabrication in cleanrooms, and experimental characterisation of photonic devices and biosensors. The students will interact directly with our industrial, international and medical collaborators. They will obtain their graduate degrees having acquired theoretical and experimental skills which are immediately useful and valued by industry and academia. New knowledge will be disseminated in top journals, conferences, and in patents, new industrial partnerships will be formed, and potentially a new company created to ensure the transfer of technologies to the private sector. The research outcomes and the highly qualified personnel produced will be of high interest to Canadian high-technology industry, particularly to the electronics and photonics industries, which are of strategic importance to Canada’s innovation agenda. The proposed research aligns very well with the Government of Canada’s Strategy on R&D, specifically with the “Nanotechnology” focus area of the “Advanced Manufacturing” research priority, the “Communications networks and services” focus area of the “Information and Communications Technologies” research priority, and the “Biomedical engineering and medical technologies” focus area of the “Health and Life Sciences” research priority.