Exploring Nanometric Periodic Superstructures in Photonics and Bio-nanoelectronics

Professor Jingming (Jimmy) Xu, Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics, Brown University

In this talk, I report on our explorations of Nanometric Periodic Superstructures – systems of highly ordered and uniform nano-elements which, due to both the local and long-range phase-coherent interactions, may exhibit collective behaviors and emergent properties unavailable in the individual nano-elements. I will introduce examples of such superstructures we made using a simple, nonlithographic, scalable, and material independent method. Our exploration of such superstructures in semiconductors has taken us beyond the relatively simple enhancements of photoemission efficiency to a new, interesting, and yet-to-be-understood regime of photonics – coherent light emission (possibly lasing?) in Silicon. Our experimentations of highly-ordered carbon nanotube arrays on the other hand have resulted in demonstrations of broad-band scalable infrared detection in both cooled and uncooled modes, in realizing site-specific linking to DNA and proteins, and in DNA detection with 5 attomole and single-mutation sensitivities.
Jimmy Xu is Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics at Brown University, and conducts research in quantum and molecular electronics and photonics. Prior to coming to Brown in 1999, he was Director of the Nortel Institute for Telecommunications and held two endowed chair professorships at the University of Toronto. He received seven international and national prizes and awards for his research accomplishments, including the 1995 Steacie Prize of Canada. He was editor of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices 92-97, is on several advisory and editorial boards, and chaired a number of conferences and committees. He was a Distinguished Visiting Scientist of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2000-2002, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Postech, Korea, 2003. Results from his lab have been reported in over 160 refereed journal papers in science and engineering, and in over 100 conference proceedings. He has been granted 16 patents, and gave over 160 invited seminars, keynote and plenary speeches. He is most proud of the accomplishments of his former and current students, 10 of them won 12 international, national and university prizes and awards for their thesis researches and are now leading professionals in industry and academia.