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The Fifth International Conference on Advances in AFIN 2013 August 25 - 31, 2013 - Barcelona, Spain |
| Tutorials |
T1.
Plasmonics: Application-oriented fabrication
by Dr. Victor Ovchinnikov, Aalto University, Finland
T2.
Software Defined Networking and Architectures
by Prof. Dr. Eugen Borcoci, University Politehnica Bucuresti, Romania
DETAILS
T1.
Plasmonics: Application-oriented fabrication
by Dr. Victor Ovchinnikov, Aalto University, Finland
Plasmonics is a field of science that investigates different types of plasmons. Plasmons are quanta of plasma oscillations, i.e. charge (electron) density fluctuations, which are generated and propagate in conductive media. Studies on surface plasmons in macroscale level have begun since 1900s. Recently, plasmonics has attracted significant interest, in particular due to localized surface plasmons, i.e. electromagnetic excitation that exists on the surface of nanostructures. This manifests the second birth of plasmonics that became possible due to multiple reasons. The first was the availability of novel fabrication methods provided by nanotechnology. Another reason was the development of highly sensitive tools for optical characterization. The third was advanced level of computer simulations along with the high processing power. Finally, the fast plasmonic progress was driven by number of potential applications, such as metamaterials, various plasmon enhanced spectroscopies, superlenses, solar cells, sensors with low detection limit, etc. In this work, we focus on metal nanostructures, as their plasmonic properties are the strongest. However, the fabrication of metal nanostructures is more challenging in comparison with semiconductors. Consequently, the present work addresses the applications of metal plasmonic nanostructures with respect to the fabrication feasibility.
This tutorial starts from a short review of electromagnetic properties of metals and related theoretical models. After that, surface plasmon polaritons on metal/insulator interface and different methods of their excitation are discussed. The main part of theoretical consideration is devoted to localized surface plasmons on metal nanostructures. They give rise to resonance oscillations in visible and near infrared regions with strong amplification of local electric field. Then, different approaches for the fabrications of plasmonic nanostructures are presented. They are classified in two groups depending on pattern generation that can be either lithography- or non-lithography based. The first group includes phase shift mask and interference lithography, while beam writing techniques and self-assembling methods belong to the second group. The next step is a pattern transfer to metal that is accomplished by direct etching, lift off, nanosphere lithography, shadow masks (templates), chemical synthesis, nanoimprint, and electroplating. At the moment, there is no single commonly approved fabrication method for plasmonic nanostructures, and, therefore, application oriented fabrication is crucial for future plasmonic devices.
The motivation of the tutorial is the vast number of publications and applications on plasmonics that require basic understanding of fabrication methods and their applicability. I believe that improved understanding of basic fabrication concepts will benefit multiple fields of research, such as physics, chemistry, medicine, biology, pharmacology, microfabrication, electronics, optics both in academy and industry. The tutorial is meant for graduate and postgraduate students, researcher and scientists.
T2.
Software Defined Networking and Architectures
by Prof. Dr. Eugen Borcoci, University Politehnica Bucuresti, Romania
This tutorial will present an overview of recent architectural proposals and technologies, studied in research groups but also included in industry development, aiming to bring more flexibility and efficiency to IP networking and even to whole Internet architecture. Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture and its associate OpenFlow technology is an important emergent approach, where the control plane and data planes are decoupled. Network intelligence is more centralized, thus offering a better and also flexible control of the resources, quality of services, etc., due to the possibility to have an overall image of the system in the control plane and also by allowing programmability of the network resources. It is hoped that operators will get more freedom and speed in developing their services, without waiting long time for new releases of vendors’ networking equipment. Although it seems to be very attractive e.g. for data centers but not only, SDN exposes also many research challenges and open issues, both from architectural and deployment point of view. Degree of centralization and relationship with scalability and reliability are examples. The tutorial discusses such aspects.
An extension of the SDN concepts is proposed in so-called Software Defined (Internet) Architecture, where the idea is also to decouple the architecture from infrastructure as to lower the barriers to architectural evolution. The SDIA approach tries to exploit SDN concepts but also traditional technologies (e.g., MPLS, software forwarding, etc.) in order to obtain evolvable architectures. Both approaches SDN and SDIA intend to be still evolutionary in contrast with “clean slate” ones which are disruptive. Therefore, their possible cooperation in terms of objectives is explored in the tutorial. Sample examples of systems applying the SDN concepts are also given.
