Congratulations to Dr. John Schaibley for winning AFOSR Young Investigator Award

The recipients of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Young Investigator Research Program have been announced. Assistant Professor John Schaibley is one of 58 scientists and engineers to receive this prestigious award to study Plasmonic Amplifiers. This three year research grant will fund the development of technology that could improve transistors. This research has potential to enable ultra-high bandwidth technologies which utilize plasmonic waves for information processing applications.

"Transistors based on plasmonic waves potentially could be used to build computers that are 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the computers of today, and therefore capable of solving highly computational, intensive problems — and quickly.However, there is a fundamental problem: It is very difficult to amplify or store plasmonic waves because they lose a large amount of energy by heating up the device.

To counteract this, Schaibley is developing new plasmonic amplifiers using a nanoscale active layer only a few atoms thick. Multiple plasmonic waves will interact with the electrons in the thin active layer, causing these electrons to slosh around and pump energy into a weaker plasmonic signal. The result is more energy being pumped into the signal to overcome the losses resulting in a plasmonic amplifier."
- UA News

Congratulations to Professor Schaibley on receiving this prestigious award.