Jaime Gómez-Rivas moves Surface Photonics research to DIFFER
On 1 July 2015, the research group in Surface Photonics lead by Jaime Gómez-Rivas will officially become part of DIFFER. The group works on a unique mix of applied and fundamental research. Up to 1 July, the group was based at Philips Research on the TU/e campus, and was part of FOM Institute AMOLF. The work of the Surface Photonics team has led to more than seventy publications in peer-reviewed journals and twenty patent applications.
At DIFFER, the team will find a new challenge: to shed light on fundamental processes in energy technology. How does light travel through a solar cell? Can we see charges move while solar energy is converted to fuels? These are the questions that the Surface Photonics group, lead by Jaime Gómez-Rivas, hopes to answer. In the new DIFFER lab, the group will work on integrated photonics and terhertz spectroscopy to study charge dynamics in materials for (generating) solar fuels.
Gómez started working at FOM Institute AMOLF ten years ago, in the then newly established Center for Nanophotonics. In 2010 the group started a new line of research, located at AMOLF, on optical pump-THz time domain spectroscopy of semiconductors. Together with Philips, the group worked on the application of fundamental nanophotonics to improve LED lighting.