(refreshments available at 2:30 pm) Abstract: I will discuss efforts at IBM Research to develop high-performance electronic and optical devices with carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes have the potential to significantly outperform silicon, enabling an exciting array of 21st-century information technologies. To meet this challenge, we have purified semiconducting nanotubes to the 99.999% level, patterned them into narrow-pitch arrays, and demonstrated that they can support high-speed CMOS logic. Another one our new results is that carbon nanotubes support coherent plasmon resonances. These plasmons, which comprise charge oscillations in the nanotubes coupled to electromagnetic fields, can enhance light-matter interaction strengths by up to a factor of 107. They are a platform for electrically tunable optical elements, surface-enhanced absorption spectroscopy, and high-speed receivers at infrared and terahertz frequencies. In the long term, carbon nanotubes could be a foundation for unifying electrical and optical logic at the nanometer scale.
Biography: Dr. Abram Falk grew up in Portland, OR, received a B.A. in Physics from Swarthmore College (2003) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University (2009), where he was advised by Hongkun Park. His postdoctoral fellowship was advised by David Awschalom at the University of Chicago and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was awarded the Elings Prize in Experimental Science.
Dr. Falk’s Ph.D. work on electrical plasmon detection demonstrated the viability of electrically integrated quantum plasmonic circuits. Later, he developed a method for addressing individual electronic spin states in silicon carbide and for optically pumping room-temperature nuclear polarization in SiC, a first for a material that plays a leading role in the semiconductor industry.
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