Halas Research Group

Nanoengineered Photonics and Plasmonics

Rice University

Recent publications:

William Schmid^, Aleida Machorro-Ortiz^, Qian Ye, Peter Nordlander, Pratiksha D. Dongare, Naomi J. Halas & Alessandro Alabastri. Resonant energy transfer for membrane-free, off-grid solar thermal humidification–dehumidification desalination,  Nature Water 2025

Oara Neumann, Yilong Ju, Andres B Sanchez-Alvarado, Guodong Zhou, Weiwu Jiang, Bhagavatula Moorthy, Melissa A Suter, Ankit Patel, Peter Nordlander, Naomi J Halas. Machine learning–enhanced surface-enhanced spectroscopic detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the human placenta,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2025, 122, 7, e2422537122

Jaekwan Kim, Christian R. Jacobson, Naomi J. Halas, and Ian A. Tonks. Controlling Cubic versus Octahedral Morphology in Plasmonic Aluminum Nanoparticle Synthesis with Titanocene Catalysts: A Systematic Study,  ACS Catalysis 2024, 14, 18429−18435

Our group is focused on four principal missions:

• 1. to design new optically active nanostructures driven by function

  2. to develop and implement new nanofabrication strategies to build, orient, and pattern these nanostructures into new materials and devices

  3. to characterize and understand the physical properties of these optically active nanostructures, devices and materials

  4. to prototype the use of optically active nanostructures in applications of potential technological and broad societal interest

A major goal of our research program is to produce PhD research scientists with significantly expanded skill sets and expertise who can develop new solutions to research and engineering problems beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.  For more information, click on the links in the sidebar.