News
Huib Bakker has been appointed as director of FOM Institute AMOLF starting on February 1st, 2016. He succeeds AMOLF director Vinod Subramaniam, who became Rector of VU University on September 1st, 2015. At this date Bakker took over from Subramaniam leading AMOLF as interim director.
On December 15th Jorik van de Groep defended his PhD thesis Resonant Nanophotonic Structures for Photovoltaics at the University of Amsterdam.
Researchers at AMOLF have discovered a new technique for making transparent conductors used in electronics such as solar cells and smartphones.
Researchers at the FOM Institute AMOLF have observed a surprising effect during experiments in which light is ‘trapped’ in a cavity. They established that the presence of nanoparticles close to the cavity could increase the speed of the light running through the cavity. This goes against the 70-year-old expectation that the refractive index of the particles predicts the speed of light. In that case, the nanoparticles ought to slow the light down. Radiation from the particles was found to be responsible for this surprising effect. Furthermore, the particles cause the light to remain trapped in the cavity for a longer period of time. This is an important finding, as the measurement of such changes in the speed of light forms the basis for sensors with extreme sensitivity. The researchers published their findings in Physical Review Letters on 11 November.
AMOLF’s visiting scientist Wim Sinke was awarded a royal decoration last Friday, November 13 at the symposium Our solar energy future that was organized at the occasion of Sinke’s 60th birthday. Six (inter-)national speakers gave presentations on state-of-the art photovoltaic energy conversion, honoring the many contributions of Sinke in this field.
Researchers of FOM Institute AMOLF and Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique in Grenoble (France) have shown that the evolution of bacteria can be accelerated when their environment fluctuates in time. The research gives new insights in the evolutionary limitations of organisms and the positive effect of changing conditions, and leads to new suggestions for the evolutionary optimization of biotechnological processes. The work also reveals a flip-side, because evolutionary acceleration can also be detrimental in some cases. For example, the alternating use of antibiotics could increase the risk that bacteria more rapidly evolve resistance against antibiotics. The results will be published Friday, November 13, in PNAS.
Microscopy techniques used to study the movement of swimming microbes are limited to two dimensions (2D) or require sophisticated devices. In a paper to be published online on 2 November, AMOLF researchers present a new method to track the movement of bacteria swimming in three dimensions (3D) using simple microscopes that are standard in biological laboratories.
The American Physical Society (APS) has elected AMOLF group leader Pieter Rein ten Wolde as APS Fellow.
The FOM Physics Thesis Award 2015 goes to AMOLF alumnus Said Rodriguez for his thesis Coupling light and matter in metallic nanoparticle arrays. Rodriguez received the prize in January 2016 at the annual conference Physics@FOM Veldhoven. The prize consists of a 10.000 euro payment.
Researchers from AMOLF, Cambridge, Lund and Kiel have revealed that molecular vibrations drive the process known as singlet fission.
Metallic nanoparticles have the ability to confine light to volumes much smaller than the wavelength. If such particles are arranged in a special configuration they can show interesting optical phenomena, similar to a molecule consisting of multiple atoms. Such coupled particle systems are therefore referred to as metamolecules. Due to their small size, it is difficult to control and study their optical response. To address this problem, researchers from the FOM institute AMOLF and Stanford University have used an electron beam to control the optical behavior of such a metamolecule in a novel way by carefully positioning it with respect to the structure. The research was published in Nanoletters on October 12th, 2015.
As of September 1st, 2015 AMOLF group leader Tom Shimizu has been appointed professor of ‘Experimental Physics of Behavior’ at the VU University Amsterdam.