Harvard University, Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences, Jun. 2009. Capasso Lab. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Peking University, Beijing, P. R. China B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Jun. 2004. Department of Electronics

Yu studies the interaction between light and structured active materials at the nanometer scale and builds novel devices including lasers, detectors, and active components for controlling light. He has found that nanostructured materials usually turn out to be superb solutions for the generation, control, and detection of infrared waves with long wavelengths. For example, quantum cascade lasers, the most popular coherent infrared light sources, are made of semiconductor superlattices, which comprise a stack of nanometer-thick semiconductors, the thinnest layer being only a few atoms thick.

Z. Li, M.-H. Kim, C. Wang, Z. Han, S. Shrestha, Adam C. Overvig, M. Lu, A. Stein, A. M. Agarwal, M. Lončar, and N. Yu, “Controlling propagation and coupling of waveguide modes using phase-gradient metasurfaces,” Nature Nanotechnology (2017) Z. Li, Y. Zhou, H. Qi, Q. Pan, Z. Zhang, N. N. Shi, M. Lu, A. Stein, C. Y. Li, S. Ramanathan, and N. Yu, “Correlated perovskites as a new platform for super broadband tunable photonics,” Advanced Materials vol. 28, 9117–9125 (2016). H.-T. Chen, A. J. Taylor, and N. Yu, “A review of metasurfaces: physics and applications,” Reports on Progress in Physics vol. 79, 076401 (2016) Zhang, M. Kim, F. Aieta, A. She, T. Mansuripur, I. Gabay, M. Khorasaninejad, D. Rousso, X. Wang, M. Troccoli, N. Yu, and F. Capasso, “High efficiency near diffraction-limited mid-infrared flat lenses based on metasurface reflectarrays,” Optics Express vol. 24, 18024 (2016) N. N. Shi, C.-C. Tsai, F. Camino, G. D. Bernard, N. Yu*, R. Wehner*, “Keeping cool: Enhanced optical reflection and radiative heat dissipation in Saharan silver ants,” Science vol. 349, 298–301 (2015) (*co-corresponding authors) N. Yu and F. Capasso, “Optical metasurfaces and prospect of their applications including fiber optics,” IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology vol. 33, 2344 (2015) N. Yu and F. Capasso, “Flat optics with designer metasurfaces,” Nature Materials vol. 13, 139–150 (2014)