Photonics Research Lab – Part of the Center for Cyber Security at NYUAD

Published in Nature Comm: Applications of Guanidium Nitrate

As part of current work of our group, Dr. Ghada Dushaq in collaboration with the Smart Materials Lab at NYUAD, has published in nature a report describing the potential of ionic organic crystals for applications such as light-weight capacitors, dielectrics, ferroelectric tunnel junctions, and thermistors. The report presents an exhaustive characterization and analysis of single crystals of guanidinium nitrate (GN), a ferroelectric material that undergoes rapid and reversible first-order phase transition around room temperature, and shows extraordinary expansion upon heating.

The potentials for application of single crystals of this material as an electronic material with ferroelectric properties are demonstrated by dielectric, capacitance, conductance, and current measurements.

Read more about this exciting research in Nature Communications volume 13, 2823 (2022).

(Image from Wikimedia commons: Ccoil: Guanidine-nitrate )

Students complete and present their undergraduate capstone project!

Computer engineering students, Salama AlZaabi, Raushan Khullar, and Saoud AlMansoori, have successfully presented their capstone project developed with the PRL group. Their project included the use of machine learning to design an optimized 90-degree hybrid, an indispensable component to demodulate signals in complex data transmission systems. The hybrid allows the separation of a phase-modulated signal into two channels, namely Q and I, that correspond to the real and imaginary parts of the input. Advanced modulation techniques such as Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) rely on this type of element to recover the encoded information.

The use of machine learning in this project allows the replacement of time consuming beam propagation simulations. A baseline of more than 3000 optical simulations is used to train a model that then can be used to run many thousands of iterations of an MMI design in a snap, to find an optimal model.

(video credits: Raushan Khullar, and Saoud AlMansoori & Salama AlZaabi)

Optical Unclonable Functions enhanced using plasmonics

Unclonable functions are useful as watermarks of photonic circuits, and can be used as seeds for pseudorandom generators that are cryptographically secure. In our recent publication, we show how simple photonic devices that include metal nanoparticles can be used as Unclonable Functions thanks to the complex and hard to invert behavior of light interacting with metal layers that generate surface plasmon polariton waves.

Our results were published in Optics Express and they are Open Access! Feel free to check our report here, and you can access measurement data on different devices and different conditions here.

SEM image of different integrated photonic disks and a schematic of the test apporach to define challenges and responses from the devices are used as unclonable functions.

Dr. Dushaq interviewed for Elsevier Connect

Dr. Ghada Dushaq was recently interviewed for Elsevier Connect in the occasion of her reception of the 2021 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award. She describes her current research and the story behind the path that brought her to science and that motivates her everyday.

Read the full story in this link, and learn about the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation award here.

Dr Dushaq to get Women Scientist Award

AAAS Award trophy held by recipient.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is awarding Dr. Ghada Dushaq, post doctoral associate in our group, the 2021 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for Early-Career Women Scientists in the fields of Physical sciences. This distinguished award is a recognition for her academic career, her constant and active participation in scientific communication in the middle east and her thrive for the betterment of sciences in general. But beyond her scientific contributions, her role as a model for young middle eastern girls is a valuable asset in our endeavor to have a better society.

Launched in 2013, the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists reward and encourage women working and living in developing countries who are in the early stages of their scientific careers, having often overcome great challenges to achieve research excellence. Awardees must have made a demonstrable impact on the research environment, both at a regional and international level, and must have received their PhD in the last ten years.

We are very proud of Dr. Dushaq’s work and it honors all the lab members to have a her as a colleague and friend. You can see the ceremony where she will receive the award in the streaming of the AAAS annual meeting using this link, or directly using Google Meetings.

Join us congratulating Dr. Dushaq!

If you missed the award ceremony, you can check it out in this link (look for minute 17:00)

New website!

We are very happy to be using this new website platform! Please come back to this post to check how you can add new entries to the site with all the exciting news you would like to share with the rest of the community and the world.

Meanwhile here is an interesting video:

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