Nanoscale Electronics and Photonics

Catching up With the Şeker Lab: Serendipity and Collaboration

Erkin Şeker, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team have adapted a pre-Columbian era jewelry making process to create the nanoporous gold they use for biomedical applications. “Depletion gilding [purifying gold by removing other elements] would start with an alloy of copper and gold called tumbaga. Artisans would use a chemical reaction to remove the copper and leave behind the gold, which gives the golden finish to the artifacts.

William Putnam: engineering electron-photon interactions at extreme scales

By Rachel Steere

Assistant Professor William “Billy” Putnam joined the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in November 2018. His area of research is in optics and photonics. Specifically, he works on understanding and controlling electron and photon interactions at ultrafast timescales and ultrasmall spatial dimensions.