Research

Optical tweezers and Laser cooling

Laser cooling is a technique to reduce the temperature of an object by applying laser beams. The interaction between cooled nanoparticle and biological samples will create a brand-new research area of biological laser refrigeration, enabling intracellular organelles cooling. However, cooling of nanoparticle in aqueous solution has so far been limited by current optical tweezers technology and cooling mechanism. Our team is interested in developing the bio-refrigeration technology. The emerging artificial intelligence optical tweezers together with a new type of nanoscale cooling probe Lanthanide-doped fluoride nanoparticles (Ln-NPs) will overcome the above limitation.

Super resolution imaging

Super-resolution microscopy techniques can bypass the optical diffraction limitation to visualise cellular structures, biomolecular distributions and biological processes. Using super-resolution microscopy to resolve dynamic biological information such as traction forces and diffusion constant is an emerging research field. However, it is challenging to achieve in-depth imaging with sub-100nm resolution inside the tissue, as deep tissues have high scattering and absorption for both excitation and emission light. Our team focus on developing in-depth super-resolution imaging by applying novel nanomaterial and the technologies for computational optics. We are also interested in transferring and designing on-chip super-resolution imaging technology.

Nanoscale optical characterisation

Investigating the photo-properties of novel nanomaterials and designing specific photonic technologies based on these properties become important and promises to create new opportunities for the next generation biophotonics technology. More powerful technologies to inspect the interaction of subcellular objects will continue to be a goal of research. Our team has revolved around fluorescent properties of nanomaterials, and the development of technologies for biophotonics and nanomaterials characterisation. Employing the super-resolution technology and the time-resolved photoluminescence microscopy, we are studying the photo-response of nanomaterial with high temporal and spatial resolution.

Computational imaging

Computational imaging generates images from both physical data measurements and computational processes by algorithms. It has superior parameters beyond a traditional optical system, such as imaging with higher dimensions, or imaging when a direct imaging record is impossible. Our research fields include Single-pixel/Ghost imaging, Super-resolution Imaging, Diffuser Camera, Computational Spectrometer/Hyperspectral Imaging, Fiber Imaging, Wavefront Shaping, Scattering Imaging, and other Novel Imaging Methods.