The imaging resolution of conventional optical lens system is limited by the diffraction to a few hundreds of nanometers. Emerging artificially engineered plasmonic metamaterials offer a new possibility to build superlenses that overcome such a limit. In this talk I will review some of our work on optical hyperlens that are able to transfer super resolution image to the far field as well as our recent development of Janus lens that shows different imaging properties along forward and backward directions. Other plasmonic based techniques such as plasmonic structured illumination microscopy (PSIM), plasmonic dark field (PDF) microscopy will also be discussed.
Zhaowei Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCSD. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MEMS/Nanotechnology) from UCLA in 2006, and was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher in NSF Nanoscale Science & Engineering Center (NSEC) and Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. In 2008 he joined the faculty at UCSD. His research is primarily in the fields of nanophotonics, super-resolution imaging and sensing, metamaterials, plasmonics, and micro/nanofabrication. He is a recipient of the 2010 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, 2010 Hellman Fellowship Award. He is also a 2010 Kavli Fellow selected by the National Academy of Sciences. His research has been selected by the Time Magazine as top 10 scientific discoveries (7th) of 2008, and Discovery Magazine’s list of top 100 science stories at 2007 (58th) and 2008 (7th).