Modern Minigolf – MariaC and Qian top players
Our perspective on solar thermal desalination has been published in ACS Photonics – Congrats Will!
See the full article here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsphotonics.2c01251
Themal detection of strong light-matter interaction
The work in collaboration with Paris Saclay University and La Sapienza in Rome, has been published in ACS Nano.
We have demonstrated a thermal transducer capable to detect strong light-matter interaction by monitoring heat dissipation in a quantum well sandwiched between an antenna and a thermally expanding material.
The result is interesting because the technique does not rely on far-field analysis (often difficult to achieve) and also opens the way to exploit dissipative dynamics in cavity-embedded quantum systems.
See more: https://pubs.acs.org/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1021/acsnano.2c04452&ref=pdf
The work on fast topology optimization is out
Many processes depend superlinearly on light intensity (that is: two photons are more than twice as better as one). This work shows how to efficiently design lossless ultrathin dielectric optical metasurfaces to achieve extremely large light intensities. The concept can benefit nonlinear optical processes such as photothermal catalysis, light-driven desalination or higher-harmonics generation.
Interestingly, we also show that sometimes it is better to give up some input power (i.e., lose some energy) if that translates into more local field intensities.
Thanks to Yage Zhao and Ming Zhang and great collaboration with Nordlander’s group
Summer group retreat (seminars, tacos, escaperoom, bbq…)
EscapeTheRoom
Have a look at our commentary on gas-phase photothermal catalysis
The article has been published in Joule. Among other things, it shows how flow rates can be modified without affecting heat transfer if the regime is dominated by thermal conductivity. This can help in controlling chemical reactions without affecting the temperature.
Challenges in temperature measurements in gas-phase photothermal catalysis
Our new perspective on photothermal catalysis is out
In this perspective, in collaboration with the groups of Paolo Fornasiero, Vladimir Shalaev, Alexandra Boltasseva and Alberto Naldoni we discuss the role of plasmonic metasurfaces in photothermal catalysis. Published in Nanophotonics:
Challenges and prospects of plasmonic metasurfaces for photothermal catalysis
Will Schmid wins prestigious NSF GRFP Fellowship!
Big congrats to Will for being awarded the GRFP Fellowship from the National Science Foundation!
Disentangling thermal and non-thermal contributions in plasmo-catalysis
Our Response to “Distinguishing thermal from non-thermal contributions to plasmonic hydrodefluorination” has been published in Nature Catalysis