Eggenberger Award for Stephan Kress
Stephan Kress receives the Hans-Eggenberger-Prize for his dissertation on the control of light at nanoscales. The annual award, endowed with CHF 100,000, is given to outstanding young scientists who are primarily active in the interdisciplinary application of electronics and electrical energy technology.
With current optical methods such as glass lenses light cannot be controlled on nanoscales since they are constrained by the diffraction limit of light. However, it is possible to circumvent this limit with metal-based plasmonic structures. In his thesis "Quantum Dot Plasmonic Waveguides, Resonators and Spasers" at the Optical Materials Engineering Laboratory of Prof. David Norris, Dr. Stephan Kress developed a quantum dot spaser, a novel type of laser capable of breaking the diffraction limit and generating nanoscale light.
Kress will use the prize money to continue his research at Harvard University. Its goal is to develop rewritable metasurface optics in the mid-infrared range. He would like to improve the understanding of light on the nanoscale and potentially revolutionize mid-infrared optics which among others are used to analyze the gases in our atmosphere.