The nanometer scale (which encompasses things more than a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair) represents the frontier in the ongoing miniaturization of electronic technology. At the nanoscale, the physical laws of matter are very differently compared to those at the conventional macroscale. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for future technology development: while further advances in technology may be hindered without a proper understanding of the novel physics phenomena of materials and devices at the nanoscale, a good grasp of the nanoscale physics may, on the other hand, enable innovative device design to create completely new devices and applications unlike those at the macroscale.
In my research, I am particularly interested in how light and matter interact at the nanoscale – where the materials are generally smaller than the wavelength of the light itself – and how nanodevices may be designed for optimum light interaction characteristics. To investigate this, I work together with a group of collaborators and co-workers to design, fabricate and characterize various nanoscale materials. My expertise lies in the optical characterization techniques required for such studies, such as (micro-)photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and time-resolved PL, (micro-)Raman spectroscopy, cathodoluminescence (CL) spectroscopy, photon correlation measurements as well as electron microscopy.