Maria José LO FARO

Maria Josè Lo Faro graduated in Physics of Condensed Matter cum laude at the University of Catania in 2013. She consolidated her experience in the field of nanostructures for integrated silicon photonics during her Ph.D. at the University of Catania. She was a visiting researcher at the Kastler-Brossel Lab (ENS-Paris), where she investigated light propagation in random media by wavefront shaping in S. Gigan’s group. In 2017, she was a Postdoc in the Institute for Chemical and Physical Processes (IPCF- CNR) in Messina working in the field of optical nanostructured biosensors and in 2018 she moved to the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM-CNR) in Catania, where she investigated the use of Si nanostructures for lasing. Since November 2018, she has been a research fellow at the Physics Dept. at UNICT, where she is currently working on synthesizing and characterizing functional luminescent materials.

Research interest:

My main research interest is the synthesis of silicon nanostructures realized through low-cost processes compatible with the Si industrial technology, aimed to control their optical and structural properties through the fine-tuning of their growth parameters (Semiconductor Science and Technology 2017). Special attention is paid to light management in disordered fractal systems to control their light scattering and emission according to their structure (Light Sci. Appl. 2016, Nat. Photonics 2017). My research activity is also focused on the study of quantum-confined nanostructures emitting at room temperature for integrated Si microphotonics applications (Scientific Reports 2015, Nano Letters 2019) by using photo, electro, and cathode-luminescence techniques. Indeed, I am also involved in the synthesis and characterization of visible-infrared multiwavelength light sources operating at room temperature by combining different functional materials (Nanomaterials 2018, Nanomaterials 2019) to be integrated with CMOS technology and whose optical response can be tuned by varying their fractal designs. My interest is also in the realization of low-cost, Si-based optical sensors based on luminescent functionalized platforms for the selective detection of proteins, DNA, and exosomes (ACS Photonics 2018, ACS Sensors 2018, Nanotechnology 2016). Recently, I have been studying the realization of optical nanomaterials for optical targeting and imaging for biomedical applications  (Nanomaterials 2019).