Evolutionary Nanophotonics

Stefan Preble, Professor, MicroSystems Engineering, RIT

It isn't always straightforward how to design nanophotonic devices. In order to obtain better performance we have recently turned to nature for our inspiration. For example, nature has evolved many of the very first nanophotonic devices, such as the beautiful colors of some butterfly wings. In this talk we will present evolutionary designed devices that significantly outperform human designs.