Soft NanoPhotonics Programme Grant (sNaP)

可见光可以与新的固体以不寻常的和完全不同的方式相互作用，如果固体是由复杂有序的结构中的微小组件组装在一起的话。这个巨大的扩展研究领域的动机是许多潜在的好处（这是我们研究计划的一部分），包括增强的太阳能电池，薄，灵活和便宜，或表面，有助于详细识别任何分子在他们身上旅行。这种光和纳米级物质的结合被称为纳米光子学。到目前为止，大多数关于纳米光子学的研究都集中在将金属和绝缘体切割成纳米级图案的小块这一极其困难的挑战上。大部分的努力使用传统的制造方法，其中大部分借鉴了那些用于制造我们都使用的大众市场电子产品的技术，这些技术基于完美的平板硅。这种制造并不适合纳米光子学应用所需的尺寸和材料的三维结构，特别是如果需要大规模批量生产材料。我们在这个计划中的目标是汇集一些专家谁拥有独特的专业知识，在操纵和构建纳米结构的软材料，通常是有机或塑料，使软纳米光子器件，可以是便宜的，并且灵活。在自然界中，许多复杂的建筑都是为光学效果而设计的，我们正在学习他们的一些技巧，例如吸引蜜蜂的彩虹花瓣颜色，或者从蝴蝶翅膀上散射特定颜色的光来吓唬捕食者。在这里，我们需要将金属和有机物组合成复杂的结构，为各种应用提供新颖和不寻常的光学特性。利用组件的自组装是可能的，其中结构只是使自己，有时通过设置正确的环境来一点点刺激。我们还可以使用我们的方法进行大规模生产（并且在这方面拥有丰富的经验），从而降低生产成本。此外，这种方法使我们能够制造出使用普通技术完全不可能的结构，具有更小的纳米级特征和高度互连的3D架构。我们的结构可以变得灵活，我们还可以利用塑料来制造性能可以调整的设备，例如通过施加电压时改变纤维的颜色，或者拉伸或暴露于化学品。更新颖的想法，如电磁隐身（拉伸光通过周围的物体，从而保持不可见）也只有使用我们提出的那种3D材料才是现实的。这项资助的目的是汇集一批领先的研究人员，明确的挑战是联合收割机结合我们的专业知识，创建一个世界领先的软纳米光子学中心。这一领域刚刚兴起，我们保持着国际竞争优势，这将使我们能够开拓广泛的科学和应用领域。在这个计划补助金固有的灵活性将使我们能够继续我们的研究的快速步伐，应对在这个快速发展的领域出现的新机遇。

Visible light can be made to interact with new solids in unusual and profoundly different ways to normal if the solids are built from tiny components assembled together in intricately ordered structures. This hugely expanding research area is motivated by many potential benefits (which are part of our research programme) including enhanced solar cells which are thin, flexible and cheap, or surfaces which help to identify in detail any molecules travelling over them. This combination of light and nanoscale matter is termed NanoPhotonics.Until now, most research on NanoPhotonics has concentrated on the extremely difficult challenge of carving up metals and insulators into small chunks which are arranged in patterns on the nanometre scale. Much of the effort uses traditional fabrication methods, most of which borrow techniques from those used in building the mass-market electronics we all use, which is based on perfectly flat slabs of silicon. Such fabrication is not well suited to three-dimensional architectures of the sizes and materials needed for NanoPhotonics applications, and particularly not if large-scale mass-production of materials is required.Our aim in this programme is to bring together a number of specialists who have unique expertise in manipulating and constructing nanostructures out of soft materials, often organic or plastic, to make Soft NanoPhotonics devices which can be cheap, and flexible. In the natural world, many intricate architectures are designed for optical effects and we are learning from them some of their tricks, such as irridescent petal colours for bee attraction, or scattering particular colours of light from butterfly wings to scare predators. Here we need to put together metal and organics into sophisticated structures which give novel and unusual optical properties for a whole variety of applications.There are a number of significant advantages from our approach. Harnessing self-assembly of components is possible where the structures just make themselves , sometimes with a little prodding by setting up the right environment. We can also make large scale manufacturing possible using our approach (and have considerable experience of this), which leads to low costs for production. Also this approach allows us to make structures which are completely impossible using normal techniques, with smaller nanoscale features and highly-interconnected 3D architectures. Our structures can be made flexible, and we can also exploit the plastics to create devices whose properties can be tuned, for instance by changing the colour of a fibre when an electrical voltage is applied, or they are stretched or exposed to a chemical. More novel ideas such as electromagnetic cloaking (stretching light to pass around an object which thus remains invisible) are also only realistic using the sort of 3D materials we propose.The aim of this grant is bring together a set of leading researchers with the clear challenge to combine our expertise to create a world-leading centre in Soft NanoPhotonics. This area is only just emerging, and we retain an internationally-competitive edge which will allow us to open up a wide range of both science and application. The flexibility inherent in this progamme grant would allow us to continue the rapid pace of our research, responding to the new opportunities emerging in this rapidly progressing field.