Two EQUATE scientists received EPSCoR Fellowship awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). These projects will also benefit their work with the preceding NSF EPSCoR funding for five years and $20 million to Nebraska's Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE) research collaboration, with which they are affiliated.
Abdelghani Laraoui, assistant professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) College of Engineering, gained $300,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for several Husker graduate students to add quantum research skills in visits at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Laraoui proposed a Research Fellows team experience in Plasmonic Cavity Nanostructures to Boost Single Photon Emission from Multilayered Hexagonal Boron Nitride.
This research aims to fabricate metallic nanocavities integrated with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) flakes, with defects acting as nanoscale single photon emitters (SPEs) at room temperature. Laraoui, with UNL’s Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, said this learning could promote the performance and efficiency of new quantum device development by providing key understanding of rich quantum phenomena at the nanoscale level. As host site, Penn State offers high-end facilities for the Nebraska students to practice cutting-edge research in quantum optics and applied aspects of quantum communication, plus enhance skills to boost America’s high-tech workforce development of new quantum technologies.
Laraoui said efficient and compact SPE platforms operating at room temperature with ultrafast speed and high brightness are needed as fundamental components of emerging quantum communication and sensing technologies. However, so far it has been challenging to design SPEs based on nanoscale solid-state materials with both fast emission rates and strong brightness demands, with challenges in achieving the exact placement of quantum emitters’ placement, dynamics, and integration.
This project’s work includes fabricating hybrid plasmonic-hBN nanocavities at Penn State, studying enhancement effect of the nanostructures on the quantum properties of SPEs at UNL, and performing finite element method (FEM) simulations to gauge SPE-plasmon coupling coefficients and determine the ideal spatial position of the metallic nanostructures with support of Dr. Christos Argyropoulos, an associate professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State and a former EQUATE SI. The hybrid nanophotonic structures produced would hasten and advance single photon emission that generates photons needed for key quantum communication technologies such as quantum entanglement.
Yanan “Laura” Wang, assistant professor with UNL’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, earned a $300,000 NSF EPSCoR Research Fellowship to study Integrated Photonics, encompassing functional devices like light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers, waveguides, filters, modulators, and photodetectors miniaturized onto a single chip. These technologies make impacts on signal sensing, processing, and communication. Wang's EPSCoR Research Fellows project focuses on a family of emerging wide-bandgap crystals--layered cesium lead halide perovskites--and explores their potential in integrated photonics. She and her graduate student will carry out the project via extended visits and collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland. Wang looks forward to working in the world-class cleanroom and nanofabrication facilities at NIST, where she aims to establish a long-term collaboration between UNL and NIST, to benefit Nebraska’s quantum research and education landscape.
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