Our research, funded through Dr. Charles Lee’s visionary program that has opened up many new directions, has focused on development of multiscale modeling guided, photoresponsive polymers, nanocomposites and multi-domain organic: inorganic hierarchical nanostructures for unprecedented manipulation and transformation of light. Presented here are two examples: 1) Chiral Polymer Photonics that allows for chirality control of linear and nonlinear optical processes, opening new directions for optical signal processing, beam manipulation and sensing. We synthesized new generation chiral polymers with large linear and nonlinear optical chiralities, and demonstrated new phenomena of plasmonic and excitonic enhancement in their nanocomposites with metallic nanoparticles or quantum dots, aimed towards producing a new class of metamaterials. A new direction is interaction of complex light (with orbital angular momentum)with a complex medium (chiral). We have shown manipulation of magneto-optic effect in nanocomposites of chiral polymers with stable, organic biradicals, that may produce a new generation of highly sensitive magneto-optic material, enable sensing of weak magnetic field due to brain waves 2) Photon transforming hybrid nanostructures that provide radically new approaches to,manipulate and transform photons on-demand, using multiphoton interactions. We introduced new multistep cascaded energy transfer routes in hierarchically built organic chromophore coupled core-multiple shell inorganic nanostructures, for highly efficient upconversion.We showed unprecedented level upconversion ,even of a low power cw lamp light, and are pursuing their applications in IR harvesting for photovoltaics, sensor technology, night vision and security marking for friend-foe identification. A new direction is Neurophotonics which can provide noninvasively, an effective human:machine interface for quantifying and enhancing the cognitive state of military personal, and thus paving the path way to a quantified warrior paradigm. We apply these photoresponsive materials for functional mapping of the brain using optical and photoacoustic imaging, as well as magneto-optics to sense regioselectively the magnetic field due to brain waves. We have also demonstrated optogenetic stimulation of brain activity using near IR absorbing optical nanotransformers that can enhance the cognitive state and therefore, the preparedness of military.

Photoresponsive polymers, nanocomposites and hirarchical hybrid nanostructures

254th National Meeting (2017)

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