Nanophotonics & Metamaterials

The Nanophotonics and Metamaterials group, under Prof. Nikolay Zheludev, leads the UK’s flagship research programme on photonic metamaterials - a new generation of nanotech-enabled materials with engineered and actively controllable optical properties.

Through better understanding of the new physics of advanced materials structured on the sub-wavelength scale, we seek to control and harness light at the nanoscale and so to provide ground-breaking solutions for telecoms, energy and light generation, imaging, lithography, data storage, sensing, and security and defence applications.

Our research interests include:

• Advanced materials for nanophotonics (including phase-change, high-index dielectric, epsilon-near zero, and superconducting materials);
• Nano-opto-mechanical reconfigurable metamaterials;
• Integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies;
• Free-electron interactions with light in nanostructured media;
• Toroidal electrodynamics