CNR NANO - Istituto Nanoscienze Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

- 30.09.2011 - FIRB project for Young Researcher awarded to NEST
CNR researcher Marco Polini's project PLASMOGRAPH: Plasmons and Terahertz devices in graphene has been funded by MIUR through the highly competitive call of FIRB Futuro in Ricerca 2010. The call was addressed to young scientists who had an original and strong scientific plan in order to help them build a research group and develop their ideas. Dr. Polini's project PLASMOGRAPH targets the fundamental physical properties of "plasmons" in few-layer graphene-based systems. The final aim is to exploit these collective electron-density oscillations for resonant photoconductive detection in the terahertz (THz) range. THz photodetectors can be employed in homeland-security-related applications, e.g. in security systems at airports for discovering dangerous substances, but also in environmental-related applications, e.g. in gas spectrometers for air-quality control in public institutions, whereby traces of threat chemicals have to be detected against a spectral background. The project, funded for about 800K euros, will be carried on with fellow researchers in Pisa NEST Center (dr. Tredicucci and dr. Pellegrini) and in the Physics Department of the University of Calabria (dr. Daniela Pacilé).

Info marco.polini@nano.cnr.it