Past events

Metamaterials Fabricated by Fibre Drawing

Prof Simon Fleming, University of Sydney

Abstract

Metamaterials offer extraordinary possibilities, from being able to engineer permittivity and permeability, through to sub-diffraction imaging and invisibility cloaking. However, they sub-wavelength structured composites of highly dissimilar materials and are very challenging to make, especially inexpensively in volume. In this talk I will describe our work applying the well-established fibre drawing process to the realisation of metamaterials and metamaterial devices, including hyperlenses capable of beating the diffraction limit by two orders of magnitude.

Biography

Simon Fleming has over thirty year’s research experience in photonics and optics with ~350 journal and conference publications. His research focus is specialty optical fibres, from their design and fabrication to their application. He has recently been exploring the application of the fibre drawing technique as a broader micro-fabrication approach for realisation of a wide range of structures from metamaterial hyperlenses to biomedical devices. He has worked in industry and academia, the latter in roles frequently involving end-user engagement. He headed the University of Sydney’s Optical Fibre Technology Centre (OFTC) from 1997 to 2008. He has served on several company boards and been actively involved in research translation. He is currently Professor of Optics in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Research and Prototype Foundry, the University’s micro- and nano-fabrication user facility. He is President of the Australian Optical Society, a Fellow of IET, and a Chartered Engineer.