Prof. Junsuk Rho at the Wilson Lecture Series/ECE fall 2022 Colloquium
Metamaterials: from invisibility cloak to future extended reality displays
The invisibility cloak in Harry Potter and the dreams of invisibility as a superpower are no longer fiction. With the invention of metamaterials, they are theoretically and experimentally possible in real life. Metamaterials — materials that are engineered to have properties that are not found in naturally-occurring materials — allow us to overcome physical limitations. Scientists around the world are researching metamaterials that can be used in diverse sectors, including healthcare, optical display, and military affairs. For example, metalenses, which can exceed the physical limitations of light, may facilitate leaps in biology and chemistry. The development of metamaterials has just begun, but their potential is limitless. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of metamaterials and metasurfaces: principles, applications and manufacturing methods towards their science-to-technology transition.
About Professor Rho
Prof. Rho is a Mu-Eun-Jae Endowed Chair Professor and Young Distinguished Professor at POSTECH, Korea, in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. at the UC Berkeley (2013), M.S. at the UIUC (2008) and B.S. at Seoul National University (2007) all in Mechanical Engineering. Prior joining POSTECH, he conducted postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and also worked as a principal investigator (Ugo Fano Fellow) at Argonne National Laboratory. Rho's research group is not only developing a new concept of novel optical nanomaterials having extraordinary eletromagnetic properties, but also realizing engineering device applications including, but not limited to, super-resolution imaging, tunable/active/reconfigurable metasurfaces, next-generation displays, VR/AR/XR devices, radiative cooling devices, unconventional nanofabrications, scalable nanomanufacturing methods and deep-learning-based design methodologies.