Plasmonics and metamaterials have emerged within the last two decades and have brought tremendous new opportunities to control light at scales previously though impossible. With the development of nanoscale fabrication techniques, the dimension of plasmonic metamaterial devices has been shrunk into the sub-10 nanometer scales, where new phenomena and applications emerge. In this talk, I will discuss three completely different nanoplasmonic topics at sub-10nm scales: (1) new super resolution imaging technologies, i.e. Metamaterial Assisted Illumination Nanoscopy (MAIN) and Metamaterial Assisted Photobleaching Microscopy (MAPM). (2) Light generation through inelastic electron tunneling junctions. (3) extreme nonlinearities from quantum metal films. Potential future applications in all three topics will be discussed as well. 

Zhaowei Liu is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCSD. He received his BS and MS from Physics in Nanjing University in 1998 and 2001 respectively. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MEMS/Nanotechnology) from UCLA in 2006, and was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher in NSF Nanoscale Science & Engineering Center (NSEC) and Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. In 2008 he joined the faculty at UCSD. His previous work was selected as top 100 science stories of 2007 by Discovery Magazine, and top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008 by Time Magazine. His current research interest covers a broad spectrum of fields, including of nanophotonics, imaging and sensing, bio-photonics, nonlinear optics, metamaterials, plasmonics, energy, light sources and detectors, and micro/nanofabrication. He is a recipient of the 2010 Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the UCSD 2010 Hellman Faculty Fellowship Award, the 2013 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, and the 2013 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award. He is also the invited participant for the Frontiers of Science 2010 by National Academy of Science and the Frontiers of Engineering 2014 by National Academy of Engineering. He has been elevated to OSA Fellow in 2016.