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By Jessica Gillies
Van Veggel performs optical tests with a tunable laser
Frank van Veggel’s work may not be visible to the naked eye, but it could change the way we see things.
Van Veggel is a professor in the University of Victoria’s chemistry department and an international leader in the design and study of new photonic, or light-emitting, materials. We use photonic materials every day in devices such as computers, cellphones and printers and in devices such as laser pointers.
“In general, chemistry is very hidden, so people often don’t see how pervasive it is in our lives. From shampoos to medicine to cars, chemistry is everywhere,” says van Veggel, who has been the Canada Research Chair in Supramolecular Photonic Materials since 2002. The chair was recently renewed for a second term.
Supramolecular refers to the interactions between different molecules, in contrast to the interactions within a single molecule.
“For example, DNA is a supramolecular structure because it is made up of two molecules combined in one helix,” says van Veggel, whose research lab houses state-of-the-art instruments and computer equipment used to analyse photonic materials.
In the coming years, van Veggel plans to expand his research into light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and optical amplifiers, which increase the intensity of optical signals.
“LEDs convert electricity into light, and that’s what we sometimes use in electronic displays,” he says. Right now, displays on devices such as flat-screen TVs and cellphones use materials that are very stable but expensive to produce. Van Veggel’s research aims to create less expensive blue LEDs using newly designed polymers.
Polymers, such as plastics, are large organic molecules formed by combining many smaller molecules in a regular pattern.
“Polymers are attractive because they are relatively cheap and easy to make,” says van Veggel. “But blue light in an inexpensive, polymer-based LED is still a challenge because some materials decompose to the point where they don’t produce blue light anymore. We want to make new materials that are stable and give blue imaging. We’ve already shown that it can be done.”
Optical amplifiers are used in telecommunications to boost signals, and they have the potential to create smaller, cheaper and faster devices.
“Right now, the chips in computers run on electricity, and data are stored through the use of electricity. But, in principle, we can do all our computing with photons, with light, and that’s potentially a lot faster than anything we have at the moment.”
Van Veggel is particularly interested in the health applications of photonic materials, including new biolabels, which can be used to detect diseases such as cancer. Biolabels are markers used by biologists to look at how cells interact with each other in living organisms.
For example, when there are suspected cancer cells that are more than three millimetres deep in the skin, visible light can’t penetrate that far. But infrared light can.
“The idea is to make a nanoparticle—a particle with a dimension of one billionth of a metre—that has the desired optical properties, and attach it to an antibody that is specific to the cancer cells we’re looking for,” says van Veggel. “When we inject the biolabel we’ll get light from a certain part of the tissue, and that tells us there are cancer cells there. It’s as non-invasive as possible.”
Van Veggel’s research is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the BC Knowledge Development Fund and industry partners.
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