Controlling Spontaneous Emission of Light by Nanophotonic Methods.
From Semiconductor Quantum Dots to Fluorescent Proteins.
Prof. Dr. W. L. Vos, Complex Photonic Systems (COPS), MESA+, Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, Enschede

In 1987, by some standards a little while ago, Eli Yablonovitch and Sajeev John independently proposed the idea of a photonic band gap. These events could be taken as the start of the burgeoning field of Nanophotonics. Eli's interest was to control spontaneous emission to improve semiconductor lasers, while Sajeev proposed to literally localize photons. The field had a slow start and Nature (the magazine) even claimed it was all a big mistake. After they were proven wrong, the virus caught on. For instance, our group was the first to control spontaneous emission (of quantum dots) with photonic crystals.

At this time, the photonic-crystal field has become an important class of the large family of “metamaterials”. It is exhilarating that many people with a wide range of backgrounds participate, e.g. in physics, chemistry, electronics, mathematics, and even bio-physicists and biologists. The range of fabrication methods is staggering, many of which are pursued at the MESA+ Institute or at AMOLF. Meanwhile, many are even dreaming of photonic integrated circuits that could one day process information encoded as light.

This talk is not intended as a historical review. I wish to present our latest insights and discuss with you how one can (experimentally) control spontaneous emission. How does this work for sources as different as quantum dots, dye molecules, or even fluorescing proteins. In addition, we will briefly review fabrication techniques and cavities in 3D crystals, or switching photonic band gap crystals in a fast way.