We discuss a novel nanoscale platform offering utility in nanophotonics, photovoltaics, visual prosthetics, and biological and chemical sensing. As subwavelength optical waveguides, these nanostructures can be used in a range of nanoscale manipulations of light, including optical nanomicroscopy and lithography, high efficiency solar cells, high electrode-density retinal implants and discrete optical metamedia. A modification of the basic structure enables the fabrication of highly sensitive bio/chemical sensors and nanoscale bipolar neurostimulators. We will report on aspects of these applications, with emphasis on radial junction "nanocoax" thin film solar cells. This structure allows for a unique decoupling of the optical and electronic length scales in photovoltaics, enabling highly efficient charge extraction in ultrathin films with, paradoxically, highly efficient light collection. The nanocoax thus exhibits strong optical absorption across the visible, and state-of-the-art power conversion efficiency using PV thinner than carrier diffusion lengths, suggesting a new path to high efficiency solar power.
Michael J. Naughton is Chairman and Ferris Endowed Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Boston College. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1986, and did his postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty of the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1988. He moved to Boston College in 1998 and became department chairman in 2006. Naughton was awarded the US National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1992, and elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003. An experimentalist, Naughton’s research is in condensed matter, materials, and nanoscale physics, with recent concentrations on molecular organic superconductors, biochemical sensing, and nanoscale manipulation of light with subwavelength waveguides. He has 30 issued or pending patents, and 170 publications.