Upcoming Webinars
When: 8 April 2021, 12:00 - 13:00 - Eastern Daylight Time (UTC - 04:00)
Light-matter interactions can be highly controlled via nanostructured thin films on the surface of objects. Indeed, a single-layer of designed and engineered subwavelength nanostructures, so-called metasurfaces, can resonantly couple to the incident light and manipulate the light’s behavior, in demand. Metasurfaces can reproduce the functions of bulk optics, and on occasions, can offer new functionalities that are not possible with conventional diffractive optics.
In this webinar hosted by the Thin Films Technical Group, Mohsen Rahmani, a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow, from Nottingham Trent University will review his journey in employing metallic to dielectric and semiconductor metasurfaces to control the light intensity, frequency and propagation direction. In addition, Rahmani will discuss how metasurfaces can lead to several exciting applications, including night vision, flat optics and ultra-sensitive biochemical sensing.
When: 4 May 2021, 8:30 - 9:30 - Eastern Daylight Time (UTC - 04:00)
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, remains viable on solids for periods of up to a week, so one potential route for human infection is via exposure to an infectious dose from a solid. During this webinar hosted by the Thin Films Technical Group, Prof. William Ducker will discuss the concept of using a coating on common touch surfaces, such as door handles and railings to continuously reduce the probability of infection by SARS-CoV-2.
The critical characteristics are: (1) rapid loss of viral transmission, (2) ability to continuously reduce transmission over time and environmental exposure without human intervention, (3) ability to coat many different surfaces, and (4) low toxicity to humans. Examples of successful coatings will be discussed, including a coating based on cuprous oxide (Cu2O) particles bound with polyurethane. The half-life of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on this surface is 3-4 minutes. After one hour on coated glass or stainless steel, the viral titer was reduced by about 99.9% on average compared to the uncoated sample. An advantage of a polyurethane-based coating is that polyurethane is already used to coat a large number of everyday objects. The coating adheres well to glass, steel, various plastics, wood, and cardboard. It retains its activity after one month and after cycles of disinfection and exposure to the virus.
You can watch any of the following webinar presentations, which were hosted by the OSA Thin Films Technical Group, on-demand.