The Optics & Photonics Technology Lab (OPT Lab) has longstanding activities in micro-optics. Micro-fabrication technologies like photolithography, resist processing, and reactive ion etching are used to manufacture refractive and diffractive micro-optical elements, birefringent optics (liquid crystal devices), as well as nano-scale optics (subwavelength structures, photonic crystals, near field microscopy).

Building on a number of past and present research projects concerning optical and photonic nanostructures, the OPT Lab has developed a number of capabilities spanning the design, fabrication, and characterization of nanostructured optical and photonic devices. Collectively, these capabilities permit the investigation of a wide range of nanoscale optical effects, which facilitates both an improved understanding of optical phenomena on the nanoscale as well as an accelerated approach to producing optical and photonic devices for practical applications.