Welcome! We are the research group of Jen Dionne, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. We are a diverse team of materials scientists, chemists, applied physicists, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, bioengineers and mechanical engineers, researching new ways to control light-matter interactions.
We imagine a world where diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's and tuberculosis are detected and cured with light; where solar cells provide abundant clean energy; and where cell phones compute at the speed of light. We then strive to make that future a reality through development of new nanophotonic materials, methods, and devices.
Please feel free to navigate this site or contact us for more information!
What is a typical day like for a researcher in our group? Check out our videos to learn more about our science and our culture. If you like what you see and want to join our team, please send us your resume. We're always on the lookout for smart, creative people.
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| Group Video, June 2015 | Russian River Canoe Trip, July 2014 |
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| Upconversion | Nanoscale optical tomography |
Latest News
May 30: Congratulations to Katherine on her paper, “Bimetallic nanostructures: combining plasmonic and catalytic metals for photocatalysis,” now published in Advances in Physics X!
May 9: Congratulations to Shing Shing Ho for successfully defending her thesis! 
May 6: Congratulations to Stefan on his paper, “Small Alkaline-Earth-Based Core/Shell Nanoparticles for Efficient Upconversion,” now published in Nano Letters!
April 17:Congratulations to Michelle and her teammates (Velvet Gaston, Bessie Noll, and Hadiza Felicien) who came in second place at Stanford’s first ever Cleantech Challenge. The winners of a challenge set by Total, Michelle and her team designed a microgrid that Total could use at sites in West Africa. 
April 5-7: The D-Lab brings their 'SUPR'-powers to the Stanford Universitiy Photonics Retreat in Pt. Reyes. Thanks to SPRC for organizing!
April 3: Congratulations to Jason Casar, who is among this year's NSF Graduate Research Fellows!
April 1: Jen is awarded the the NSF's 2019 Alan T. Waterman Award for development of materials and methods to image dynamic physical, chemical and biological processes with high resolution. Thank you Paul McIntyre and Yi Cui for the nomination, and to all students, postdocs, and collaborators for making this research possible! News Release
March 30: Stefan is named an Ignite Fellow, a program that allows innovators to formulate, develop, and commercialize their ideas. Congratulations, Stefan!
January 30: Alice Lay successfully defends her thesis! Congratulations, soon-to-be doctor Lay! 
January 7: Jen presents at Physics of Quantum Electronics, PQE-2019, in Snowbird, Utah.
January: Congratulations to David, Mark, Jen and graduated lab members Brian and Hadiseh whose book chapter entitled "Parity-Time Symmetric Plasmonics" is now published in Springer's "Parity-Time Symmetry and It's Applications", edited by Jianke Yang and Demetrios Christodoulides.
December 27: Congratulations to Michelle on her paper, “Enantiospecific Optical Enhancement of Chiral Sensing and Separation with Dielectric Metasurfaces,” now published in ACS Photonics!
November 30: Congratulations, Shing-Shing on winning best poster at the Stanford Center for Imaging Industry Affiliates Meeting!
November 9: Jen presents at the Nature Conference on Integrated Nanophotonics in Nanjing! Thank you Alberto Moscatelli for the invitation!!
November 7: Congratulations to Michal on her paper, “In-situ observation of plasmon-controlled photocatalytic dehydrogenation of individual palladium nanoparticles,” now published in Nature Communications!
November 5: Jen and Stefan presented on the lab's work on upconversion and dielectric metasurfaces at Corning. Thank you Waguih Ishak and Rebecca Schaevitz for the invitation!!
November 1: Welcome to new D-Lab members Claire McLellan and Lisa Poulikakos!
Featured Research
I. Bimetallic nanostructures: compbining plasmonic and catalytic metals for photocatalysis:
Katherine and co-workers recently reviewed bimetallic plasmon photocatalysts which combine a catalytic metal with a plasmonic metal, focusing on three architectures: antenna-reactor, core-shell, and alloyed nanoparticles. For each geometry, they describe the basic physical properties, discuss the unique intermetallic effects that lead to optical and/or chemical control, and point to future research directions. Their work is now published in Advances in Physics: X!
II. Small alkaline-earth-based core/shell nanoparticles for efficient upconversion:
Stefan and co-workers developed small alkaline-earth rare-earth fluoride (MLnF) core/shell upconverting nanoparticles in sub-15 nm size regime with excellent upconversion performance. The optical conversion efficiencies (UCQY) of 6 different MLnF (M=Ca,Sr,Ba; Ln=Y,Lu) host materials were measured as function of the thickness of the passivating shell layers. SrLuF nanoparticles are the most efficient with 5 times higher UCQY than the reference material hexagonal NaGdF4. Their work is now published in Nano Letters!
III. Enantiospecific Optical Enhancement of Chiral Sensing:
Michelle and co-workers demonstrate how a metasurface of dielectric disks can be designed to enable enantiospecific enhancements in sensing and separation of chiral molecules. Using first-order kinetics of the molecule thiocamphor, they predict that the metasurface could enable a 20% enantiomeric excesses with a >2000-fold increase in yield for a photoionization reaction compared to CPL alone. Their work is now published in ACS Photonics!
