Albert Polman (born 21 April 1961,
Groningen) is a Dutch physicist and former director of the
AMOLF research laboratory in
Amsterdam.
Polman received his
master's degree in
physics (1985) and his
Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering (1989) from the
University of Utrecht. From 1989 to 1991 he was a post-doctoral staff researcher at
AT&T Bell Laboratories (
Murray Hill, New Jersey). Since 1991 he has been associated with
AMOLF, first as a group leader, since 1999 also as a department head. In 2005 he initiated the Center for Nanophotonics at AMOLF; in 2006 he was appointed as director of AMOLF. Polman was one of the initiators of the Amsterdam nanoCenter, a regional facility for nanofabrication founded in 2003. From March 2003 to February 2004 he was on sabbatical leave at
Caltech, where he was a research associate in the group of Prof. H.A. Atwater.[1][2]
Polman is one of the pioneers of the research field of
nanophotonics: the control, understanding, and application of
light at the
nanoscale. He is best known for inventing optical doping, i.e., the incorporation and optical activation of optically active
ions in
thin-film materials by
ion implantation.[3] Polman's research group at AMOLF specializes in fundamental studies at the interface between optical physics and
materials science.
Polman's group invented angle-resolved
cathodoluminescence imaging spectroscopy, a super-resolution method that can create images with a resolution of up to 10 nanometers. As of 2011, this technology has become commercially available.[6][7]
de Waele, René; Koenderink, A. Femius; Polman, Albert (2007). "Tunable Nanoscale Localization of Energy on Plasmon Particle Arrays". Nano Letters. 7 (7). American Chemical Society (ACS): 2004–2008.
Bibcode:
2007NanoL...7.2004D.
doi:
10.1021/nl070807q.
ISSN1530-6984. also featured in Nature 447, July 2007.