Professor Xiang Zhang, Chancellor's Professor and Director of NSF Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) at University of California, Berkeley, gave a talk on "Photonic MetaMaterials, Nano-Scale Plasmonics and Super Lens" at IME on 24 January 2008.

Recent theory predicted a new class of nanostructures made of engineered sub wavelength entities - meta "atoms" and/or "molecules" which enable the unprecedented electromagnetic properties that do not exist in nature. Such meta-materials may have profound impact in applications such as nano-scale imaging, nanolithography and integrated nano-photonics.

At his talk, Prof. Zhang discussed some important experiments that demonstrated these intriguing phenomena. He showed, for the first time, the high frequency magnetic activity at THz generated by artificially structured "meta molecule resonance", as well as the artificial plasma. He also discussed nano plasmonics for imaging and bio-sensing.

Prof Zhang's current research is focusing on nano-scale science and technology, meta-materials, nano-photonics and bio-technologies. He has published more than 80 technical papers and given over 80 invited or keynote talks at international conferences and institutions.