Trapping Light on Thermal Photodetectors Shatters Speed Records
Metasurfaces featuring tailored silver nanocubes could allow thermal photodetectors to approach speeds akin to traditional digital cameras.
Metamaterials
Duke ECE is home to world leaders in metamaterials and metasurfaces. Our faculty members demonstrated the world’s first negative refractive index metamaterial in 2000, and in 2006 a Duke ECE engineer invented a metamaterial “invisibility cloak” that renders objects undetectable at microwave frequencies. Currently, a $7.5 million DoD investment funds our proving ground for acoustic metamaterials, while eight companies—and counting—have grown from our research.
Research Areas
- Electromagnetic metamaterials and metasurfaces
- Quantum nanophotonics
- Plasmonics
- Nonlinear, transformation and fiber optics
- Electromagnetic cloaking
Highlights
Bending Waves with Metamaterials: Why Do You Study That?
Metamaterials are materials engineered to bend light in ways nature never intended. From invisibility cloaks to seeing through objects, David R. Smith’s research shows how metamaterials are changing optics, physics, and the future of technology.
Tying Light from Lasers into Stable “Optical Knots”
Interference patterns between overlapping laser beams could transmit encoded information over thousands of feet through chaotic environments.
Associated Faculty
Steven Cummer, Ph.D.
Associate Chair, William H. Younger Distinguished Professor of Engineering
Natalia Litchinitser, Ph.D.
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Maiken H. Mikkelsen
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
David R. Smith
James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Other Research Specialties
Explore additional specialty research areas in Duke ECE and throughout the Pratt School of Engineering.