91°µÍø

Reducing the propagation loss, while increasing electric field confinement, is a major goal of nanophotonics for future high bandwidth, high processing speed computational requirements. However, in the current state-of-the-art metal waveguides, the propagating signal suffers restrictive limiting losses as the size of the components are reduced to the nano-scale regime. In this project we seek to exploit the propagation of surface plasmon nanojets on nanostructured thin films in order to reduce propagation losses while retaining field confinement. This improvement will allow advances into future nanophotonic-based computational platforms that will leapfrog Moore’s Law.

While the term ‘innovation ecosystem’ is often utilized, the concept is rarely quantified. Oak Ridge National Lab conducted a ground-breaking application of natural language processing, link analysis and other computational techniques to transform text and numerical data into metrics on clean energy innovation activity and geography for the U.S. Department of Energy. The project demonstrates that a machine-assisted methodology gives the user a replicable method to rapidly identify, quantify and characterize clean energy innovation ecosystems.