About

Ting Xu is a professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on developing biodegradable fabrics by converting proteins from waste materials into sustainable fibers. She leads a project that aims to address the challenge of textile waste in landfills by creating fibers that can rival the strength and flexibility of natural materials, inspired by protein-based silk woven by spiders. Her work involves breaking down fibers to the molecular level and utilizing advances in nanomaterial synthesis, AI, and machine learning to map protein sequence features to desired material performance. Xu's interdisciplinary approach combines molecular understanding with societal challenges, aiming to create innovative solutions for sustainable fashion and environmental impact.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Optics
• Computer Science
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Quantum mechanics

Selected publications

• Multifunctional metasurfaces enabled by simultaneous and independent control of phase and amplitude for orthogonal polarization states

  Light Science & Applications · 2021 · 365 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Optics
  • Materials science

  Monochromatic light can be characterized by its three fundamental properties: amplitude, phase, and polarization. In this work, we propose a versatile, transmission-mode all-dielectric metasurface platform that can independently manipulate the phase and amplitude for two orthogonal states of polarization in the visible frequency range. For proof-of-concept experimental demonstration, various single-layer metasurfaces composed of subwavelength-spaced titanium-dioxide nanopillars are designed, fabricated, and characterized to exhibit the ability of polarization-switchable multidimensional light-field manipulation, including polarization-switchable grayscale nanoprinting, nonuniform cylindrical lensing, and complex-amplitude holography. We envision the metasurface platform demonstrated here to open new possibilities toward creating compact multifunctional optical devices for applications in polarization optics, information encoding, optical data storage, and security.

  DOI

• Photonic Spin-Multiplexing Metasurface for Switchable Spiral Phase Contrast Imaging

  Nano Letters · 2020 · 354 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Optics
  • Materials science
  • Physics

  As the two most representative operation modes in an optical imaging system, bright-field imaging and phase contrast imaging can extract different morphological information on an object. Developing a miniature and low-cost system capable of switching between these two imaging modes is thus very attractive for a number of applications, such as biomedical imaging. Here, we propose and demonstrate that a Fourier transform setup incorporating an all-dielectric metasurface can perform a two-dimensional spatial differentiation operation and thus achieve isotropic edge detection. In addition, the metasurface can provide two spin-dependent, uncorrelated phase profiles across the entire visible spectrum. Therefore, based on the spin-state of incident light, the system can be used for either diffraction-limited bright-field imaging or isotropic edge-enhanced phase contrast imaging. Combined with the advantages of planar architecture and ultrathin thickness of the metasurface, we envision this approach may open new vistas in the very interdisciplinary field of imaging and microscopy.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Wenqi Zhu

  185 shared

• Pengcheng Huo

  Nanjing University

  153 shared

• Henri J. Lezec

  143 shared

• Yanqing Lu

  120 shared

• Amit Agrawal

  105 shared

• Yuzhang Liang

  101 shared

• Qingbin Fan

  Nanjing University

  87 shared

• Mingze Liu

  Nanjing University

  87 shared

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Peidong Yangh-262
• Jennifer A. Doudnah-230
• Jeffrey R. Longh-189
• John F. Hartwigh-180
• Rasmus Nielsenh-180