Project title: Plasmonics, from electrons to devices

Supervisors: Andrew Horsfield and Mark van Schilfgaarde
 

Project description:

Plasmonics is the study of the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with the collective motion of electrons. It enables the manipulation of light at very small length scales (nm), making possible completely new types of devices. In this field, simulation is a central tool for discovering new phenomena, and interpreting complex experimental data. In device simulations the properties of the material are captured in a frequency, wavelength and position dependent dielectric function. In this project you will use the GW approximation [1] to describe the electronic properties of a material, from which you will then generate the dielectric function. This will then be fed into finite element codes to solve Maxwell’s equations in the frequency domain to determine the properties of devices [2]. This builds on several recent projects, notably the search for a plasmonic material to replace silver.

[1] M. van Schilfgaarde and M. I. Katsnelson, Physical Review B 83 081409(R) (2011) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.83.081409]

[2] S. Kéna-Cohen, A. Wiener, Y. Sivan, P. N. Stavrinou, D. D. C. Bradley, A. Horsfield, and S. A. Maier, ACS Nano 5 9958–9965 (2011) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn203754v]