Shawn Yu Lin | |
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![]() Shawn Yu Lin on the occasion of a faculty awards ceremony at RPI in Troy NY (2004). | |
Born | October 21, 1959 Hualien, Taiwan |
Nationality | Taiwan, U.S. |
Alma mater | Princeton University |
Known for | Pioneering contributions to photonics and photonic crystals |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Photonics and photonic crystals |
Institutions | IBM Research (1992-1994) Sandia (1994-2004) RPI (2004-present) |
Doctoral advisor | Daniel C. Tsui |
Shawn Yu Lin (born in 1959 in Taiwan) is a Taiwanese American physicist, researcher, and educator who made pioneering contributions to the field of photonics and photonic crystals. He authored more than 250 technical papers. [1]
After graduating from high school in Hualien, Taiwan, Lin attended NTU (Taipei, Taiwan) and received a B.S. in Physics in 1982. Subsequently, he attended UNC-Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) and received an M.S. in Physics in 1986. Subsequently, he attended Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey) and received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1992.
In 1992, Lin joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, as a Post-doctoral Fellow. In 1994, Lin joined Sandia, Albuquerque, NM, initially as a Member-of-Technical-Staff and later became a Distinguished Member-of-Technical-Staff. Lin also served as Research Professor (Physics) at Iowa State University, Ames, IA (2000-2004), Adjunct Professor (Material Science and Engineering) at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA (2002-2004), and Visiting Scientist (Electrical Engineering) at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (2003-2004). In 2004, he joined RPI, Troy, NY, as a Chaired Professor of Physics. [2]
Since photonic crystals were first proposed in 1987, researchers have attempted to build practical three-dimensional photonic crystals (PCs). Lin and co-workers took photonic crystals down into the nano-realm using advanced semiconductor processing. In 1998, he developed the first large scale, 3-dimensional photonic crystal having a complete photonic band gap. In the same year, he demonstrated the first diffraction-less guiding and bending of light in a photonic crystal with a bending radius less than the wavelength. In 2015, Lin's research was reported as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics. [3]
In 2002, Lin created the first all-metallic photonic crystal. Upon thermal excitation, the photonic crystal reshapes the blackbody radiation spectrum and produces a coherent thermal emission. Extending this finding, Lin demonstrated that the intense photon field inside the crystal can be amplified through a non-equilibrium plasmonic excitation, leading to an order-of-magnitude enhancement of light emission beyond that predicted by the Planck blackbody radiation law. [4] [5] [6]
In 2007, Lin developed a meta material that constitutes “the blackest material known to science” (quote from Sir John Pendry). [7] [8] Rather than examining a single nanotube, Lin studied the collective behavior of millions of nanotubes arranged in a "nano-forest." The blackest material was shown to absorb 99.97% of incident light, a Guinness world record. [9] [10] A perfectly black material is the pinnacle of stealth technology because it cannot be seen.