Dr William P Wardley

I am a post-doctoral research fellow with a particular interest in the design, fabrication and characterisation of photonic and plasmonic nanostructure.

I am currently working on the Molecular Photonics Breadboard project, a multidisciplinary project between Sheffield, Bristol and Exeter universities. This project aims to investigate the interactions between the properties of arrays of plasmonic metal nanostructures and excitonic materials via strong coupling, with the aim of achieving long-range transport of these excitations. My main research activities include the design and fabrication of metallic nanostructure, using nanofabrication techniques, as well as the design and use of optical characterisation tools.

I completed my PhD at King’s College London, on the fabrication and characterisation of plasmonic metamaterials for the UV. Following this I was a post-doc for 18 months in the photonics and nanotechnology group at KCL, continuing my work on UV plasmonics and working on the fabrication of nanostructures and metamaterials on alternate substrates, such as the end of an optical fibre or the curved surface of a lens. Following this, I moved to the Natural and Artificial Photonic Structures group, at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga, Portugal. There I worked on bio-derived and bio-inspired photonic structures, such as iridescent chloroplasts found in begonia leaves and nanoporous silica exoskeletons of diatom micro-algae.