Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Valentine has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development grant.
The four-year, $400,000 grant – All-Dielectric Optical Metasurfaces For Controlling Wave Fronts – will allow Valentine to continue research that will lead to a new class of ultra-compact optical elements that can improve the performance and integration of a wide range of devices such as visible and infrared cameras, light-wave imagers, as well as be an enabling technology for applications such as free-space telecommunications and optical manipulation.
Valentine will develop metasurfaces for manipulating the phase and wavefront of light for ultra-compact optical elements such as lenses, waveplates and beam formers. The approach is to use arrays of nanoscale dielectric resonators to form metasurfaces. High efficiency will be achieved by overlapping electric and magnetic resonances, allowing full control over the amplitude and phase of the transmitted light.
“This research will result in a better fundamental understanding of how electric and magnetic resonances can be independently manipulated in single, high-index resonators, yielding new insights into metasurface and low-loss optical antenna design,” Valentine said.
Valentine joined the mechanical engineering department in 2010. He completed a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2010 at UC-Berkeley. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.
This research is supported by NSF’s Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (Award Abstract #1351334).