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.
 |
 |
| Group Video, June 2015 | Russian River Canoe Trip, July 2014 |
 |
 |
| Upconversion | Nanoscale optical tomography |
Latest News
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 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!
October 26: Jen represented the School of Engineering at the Reunion Weekend Presidents Reception with a talk on chirality.!
October 17: In celebration of National Nanotechnology Day, Katherine, Alice, and John introduced nanoscience and its various applications at the Crystal Springs Uplands Middle School. They then made some liquid nitrogen ice cream, and the students taste tested it against store-bought ice cream to feel how "nano" crystals affect the texture of ice cream. Thanks to teacher Rob Kashima for hosting, and Angela Hwang from SNSF for organizing the event!
October 12: Congratulations to Brian on his paper, “Active Polarization Control with a Parity-time-symmetric Plasmonic Resonator,” now published in Physical Review B!
September 1: Welcome to John Abendroth, our new D-Lab member!
September 8: Jen gave the plenary talk at the International Microscopy Congress in Sydney, Australia. Thank you, Simon Ringer, for the invitation!!
August 27: Congratulations to Katherine on her paper, “Visualizing Facet-Dependent Hydrogenation Dynamics in Individual Palladium Nanoparticles,” now published in Nano Letters!
August 23: Katherine, Alice and Chris (below), as well as Michal, Randy and Jen attend and present at the ACS meeting in Boston! 
Featured Research
I. 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!
II. Imaging Photochemistry in Real-Time:
Michal and co-workers bring light to an environmental transmission electron microscope, using this capability to image a light-driven phase transition in real-time. Plasmons were found to increase the rate of distinct reaction steps with unique time constants; enable reaction nucleation at sites closest to the electromagnetic hot spots; and open a new reaction pathways that are not observed without illumination. The work is now published in Nature Communications!
III. Active Polarization Control:
Brian and co-workers have recently designed a nanoscale plasmonic structure capable of acting as a tunable polarizer. Using loss and gain in a plasmonic coaxial structure, circularly polarized light can be converted to linear polarization, and linearly polarized light can additionally be rotated based on the amount of loss and gain present in the structure. This compact and reconfigurable polarizer may enable next-generation displays, modulators, and metasurfaces. Their work is published in Physical Review B!
