UNM Newsroom / News / Assistant professor receives prestigious National Science Foundation award

Terefe Habteyes

Terefe Habteyes

Assistant Professor Terefe Habteyes of UNM's Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Microscope Images

Microscope Images

(l.) The scanning electron micrscope image shows two gold nanobars with about a 10 nm gap between them. The near-field optical image (r.) shows the localization of the electric field between the two gold nanostructures when the nanostructures are excited with light. The intensity of the localized field can be 100 – 1,000 times higher than the intensity of the excitation light. As a result, when molecules or other semiconductor materials are placed in the concentrated electric field, they experience much stronger interaction than they would in the absence of the plasmonic nanostructures.

Habteyes Research Group

Habteyes Research Group

(l. to r.) Graduate students Hamed Kookhaee, Jenny Carolyn Sanchez, Bijesh Kafle, Tefera Tesema, Assistant Professor Terefe Habteyes, graduate student Sharmin Haq and undergraduate student Marisa Poveda.

Optics Table

As a chemist, Habteyes uses laser light in many of his experiments, requiring advanced optics setups like the one seen here.

Quantum Dots

The quantum dots emit light at 660 nm wavelength when excited. For the same material, the emission wavelength can be tuned broadly in the visible region simply by changing the size of the quantum dots. This tunability of wavelength is important for solar cell application as the wavelength of the sun light covers broad spectral region.

Students at work

Students at work

Graduate students Tefera Tesema (r.) and Jenny Carolyn Sanchez (l.) prepare a quantum dot solution.

Laser light

Green light is focused on the quantum dot solution. The green light excites the quantum dots and when the quantum dots return to their ground state, they emit red light as shown in the photograph.

Assistant professor receives prestigious National Science Foundation award

By Aaron Hilf January 30, 2017

Categories: Latest News Chemistry CHTM Research

Tags: research

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