Richard’s research focuses on creating new microchip technologies and designer meta-materials which can manipulate light & sound at the nanoscale. His research group creates circuits which route photons & phonons in the same way that conventional circuitry routes electrons through wires. By sending laser light into photonic circuits, Richard’s lab can optically interact with micro-mechanical oscillators and use them to measure displacements as small as the radius of a single proton. By engineering these unique capabilities, they can create sensors which are only limited by the laws of quantum physics and can thus detect accelerations, temperatures, and forces with extreme sensitivity. These light-based sensors are now laying the groundwork towards next-generation microphones, bio-sensors, and inertial navigation systems which can out-perform many conventional micro-technologies in terms of sensitivity, energy consumption, and immunity to environmental noise and jamming.

Using techniques uniquely developed at the TU Delft, the microchips manufactured in Richard’s lab currently mark some of the most world’s most sensitive photonic force sensors. His group aims to create nano-mechanical sensors which are so sensitive and easy-to-use that one can probe the fundamental laws of physics in new ways but are also compatible with the needs of commercial innovations.

Scientific Interests:

• quantum sensors operating at room temperature environments
• optomechanical technologies for telecom industry
• the physics of nanofabrication

Expertise:

• integrated cavity optomechanical sensors
• photonic and phononic meta-material engineering
• ultra-delicate nanofabrication
• fiber-based optical characterization

Models & Equipment:

• Advanced microchip fabrication facilities and collaborations with Kavli Nanolabs and EKL
• Newly built telecom fiber-optics lab in Precision and Microsystems Engineering Dept.
• Close collaborations on machine learning design with MACHINA at TU Delft