Materials and strategies for flexible, stretchable and large area photonic devices

Gao, Li

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/72951 Copy

Description

Title

Materials and strategies for flexible, stretchable and large area photonic devices

Author(s)

Gao, Li

Issue Date

2015-01-21

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Rogers, John A.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Rogers, John A.

Committee Member(s)

• Braun, Paul V.
• Dillon, Shen J.
• Li, Xiuling

Department of Study

Materials Science & Engineerng

Discipline

Materials Science & Engr

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Negative index metamaterials
• stretchable and wide band tunable plasmonics
• epidermal photonics and thermochromic liquid crystal

Abstract

Various electronic devices have been realized in flexible and stretchable formats that can open up huge applications in biomedical industry. Other than electronic signals, photons can also interact with matters intensely and provide valuable information about the underlying substrates and immediate medium. However, photonic components have been rarely demonstrated in a flexible and stretchable format, due to the complicated fabrication process and rigid substrates involved in most photonic devices. The photonic device function is limited when flexibility and curvature features are requested in operation, and they also have rare applications as epidermal sensors. This dissertation aim to demonstrate functional photonic devices in a flexible and stretchable format by using unconventional fabrication techniques such as soft nanoimprint lithography and nanotransfer printing etc. One example is fabricating flexible, large area, multilayerd negative index metamaterials which are unattainable with conventional fabrication techniques and have high figure of merit in the visible range of operation. Optical modeling by finite domain time domain simulations will be incorporated to achieve optimized device design. Similarly, large area and highly stretchable plasmonic nanoparticle arrays will be obtained to show large resonance tuning for the first time with unusual three dimensional buckled structure beyond critical strain. The mechanics and plasmonic resonance associated with such large strains will be investigated by both experiment and analytical modeling. Another example is to design novel schemes for stretchable thermochromic liquid crystal sensors that have excellent mechanical property and are well-suited for high precision epidermal thermographic applications.

Graduation Semester

2014-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/72951

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 Li Gao

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