Shengli Zou

Assistant Professor Phone: 407-823-4123 Office: CH 227 E-mail: szou@mail.ucf.edu Link: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~szou/

Interests

Optical properties of nanoparticles and their applications. The topic for the optical properties of metal nanoparticles is of potentially significant interest in applications to surface enhanced Raman scattering, biosensors, nanoantennas, optical filters, waveguide and other devices. Advances in modern nanotechnology have enabled precise control in the preparation of particles with specified sizes and shapes. Also, particles can be fabricated into one, two, or three dimensional arrays and other patterns. However the relationship between array structure and optical properties is less well understood.

Research

Research in the Shengli Zou lab focuses on the development of new theories and algorithms to facilitate the appreciation between the structures of nanoparticles or nanoapertures and their optical properties. The current projects involve in the studies of particles arrays with complicated structures and the development of the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD), Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA), and Multiple Multipole (MMP) methods. The ultimate goals of those projects are to provide theoretical guidelines in the rational design of new devices and instruments.

Directed assembly of single walled carbon nanotubes New algorithms will be developed for simulations of directed or self assembly of carbon nanotubes or other interesting molecules on different surfaces or solutions. The related topics include simulations of self-cleaning surfaces using Molecular Dynamic (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) methods. The van der Waals and electrostatic interactions between different species will be of specific interest in those projects.