Nieder Group
Nieder’s Ultrfatast Bio- and Nanophotonics group is engaged in exploring light-matter interactions and control within three primary domains. Firstly, advanced bioimaging and sensing involves the use of nanofunctionalised surfaces and particles with ultrafast laser technology to achieve innovative imaging and sensing capabilities in terms of resolution and multiparameter functional imaging. The group collaborates with researchers and innovators to apply novel techniques for therapeutic advancements or enhanced diagnostic tools. Secondly, in quantum photonics, the focus is on comprehending and using the emission of single quantum emitters in 2D materials or 3D crystals. These emitters could play a pivotal role if seamlessly integrated into controllable photonic platforms. Finally, the emphasis in photonic integrated devices is on developing photonic integrated chips and advanced characterisation tools to provide new paradigms in neuromorphic and quantum computation and enabling nanotechnologies for biosensing and quantum information technologies.
Research lines:
- Advanced Bioimaging and Sensing
- Photonic Integrated Devices
- Quantum Photonics-Enhanced Technologies
We are using optical labels to track smart drug delivery systems, and other innovative nanomaterials in interaction with cells and biological tissues using advanced fluorescence and nonlinear spectroscopy e.g. to measure intracellular temperature.
We use and develop new imaging techniques such as super-resolution microscopy techniques and light sources, such as quantum and plasmonic LEDs.
Our femtosecond laser sources can be used for laser-based micro-nanofabrication, e.g. of photonics crystals or 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering using two photon polymerisation.
Nonlinear multi-photon FLIM imaging modes are developed for deep tissue and cell metabolic studies.

Join the Ultrafast Bio- and Nanophotonics group!
We invite motivated students from the Bioengineering, Physics, Chemistry and related areas to contact us for possibilities to conduct research internships or #master projects in our group!
Highly motivated PhD candidates and postdocs with nanophotonics research experience, please contact jana.nieder@inl.int for further information on funding opportunities (e.g. #FCT grants, #Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship grants and others) to join the team.
Projects
Publications
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Smart Polymeric 3D Microscaffolds Hosting Spheroids for Neuronal Research via Quantum Metrology
ADVANCED HEALTHCARE MATERIALS, 2025Electroluminescence in n-type GaAs unipolar nanoLEDs
OPTICS LETTERS, 2025Impact of Surface Passivation on the Efficiency and High-Speed Modulation of III-V GaAs/AlGaAs Nanopillar Array LEDs
ACS PHOTONICS, 2025Light-induced negative differential resistance and neural oscillations in neuromorphic photonic semiconductor micropillar sensory neurons
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 2025Spiking rate and latency encoding with resonant tunneling diode neuron circuits and design influences
PHYSICAL REVIEW APPLIED, 2025Hybrid DNA Origami - Graphene Platform for Electrically-Gated Nanoscale Motion
ADVANCED MATERIALS INTERFACES, 2025 -
Correction to "Cellular Interaction of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Polymer and Hydrogel 3D Microscaffold Templates" (vol 14,Pg 13013-13024,2022)
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024DNA Hybridization Kinetics Observed at the Single-Molecule Level Using Graphene Near-Field Effects
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY A, 2024Functionalized Nanodiamonds for Targeted Neuronal Electromagnetic Signal Detection
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024III-V semiconductor nanowires and nanopillar arrays for an Insect Vision Inspired Neuromorphic On-Chip Platform
2024 IEEE PHOTONICS CONFERENCE, IPC 2024, 2024Neuromorphic spiking flip-flop memory and spike-encoding with photonic-electronic RTD neurons
2024 IEEE PHOTONICS CONFERENCE, IPC 2024, 2024Photonic-electronic spiking neuron with multi-modal and multi-wavelength excitatory and inhibitory operation for high-speed neuromorphic sensing and computing
NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING, 2024Programmable Optical Synaptic Linking of Neuromorphic Photonic-Electronic RTD Spiking Circuits
ACS PHOTONICS, 2024Spiking Flip-Flop Memory in Resonant Tunneling Diode Neurons
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 2024Ultrafast Temporal Integration and Pattern Recognition with Photonic-Electronic RTD Spiking Neurons
2024 IEEE PHOTONICS CONFERENCE, IPC 2024, 2024Considering Grayscale Process and Material Properties for Robust Multilevel Diffractive Flat Optics
PHOTONICS, 2024Free-standing millimeter-range 3D waveguides for on-chip optical interconnects
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 2024 -
Substrate microtopographies induce cellular alignment and affect nuclear force transduction
JOURNAL OF THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS, 2023Artificial optoelectronic spiking neuron based on a resonant tunnelling diode coupled to a vertical cavity surface emitting laser
NANOPHOTONICS, 2023Brain-inspired nanophotonic spike computing: challenges and prospects
NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING, 2023Optically-triggered deterministic spiking regimes in nanostructure resonant tunnelling diode-photodetectors
NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING, 2023Room-temperature electroluminescence and light detection from III-V unipolar microLEDs without p-type doping
OPTICA, 2023Tunable presynaptic weighting in optoelectronic spiking neurons built with laser-coupled resonant tunneling diodes
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS D-APPLIED PHYSICS, 2023 -
3D Polymer Architectures for the Identification of Optimal Dimensions for Cellular Growth of 3D Cellular Models
POLYMERS, 2022Room-temperature emitters in wafer-scale few-layer hBN by atmospheric pressure CVD
FLATCHEM, 2022Spike propagation in a nanolaser based optoelectronic neuron
OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS, 2022Cellular Interaction of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Polymer and Hydrogel 3D Microscaffold Templates
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2022Design and manufacture of an all-polymeric integrated multimode interferometer for visible photonics
OPTICS EXPRESS, 2022Emerging Optical Materials, Devices and Systems for Photonic Neuromorphic Computing feature issue (vol 12, pg 1214, 2022)
OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS, 2022Emerging Optical Materials, Devices and Systems for Photonic Neuromorphic Computing: introduction to special issue
OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS, 2022Optimizing PMMA solutions to suppress contamination in the transfer of CVD graphene for batch production
BEILSTEIN JOURNAL OF NANOTECHNOLOGY, 2022Resonant Tunneling Diode Nano-Optoelectronic Excitable Nodes for Neuromorphic Spike-Based Information Processing
PHYSICAL REVIEW APPLIED, 2022Spectral imaging and nucleic acid mimics fluorescence in situ hybridization (SI-NAM-FISH) for multiplex detection of clinical pathogens
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, 2022Spectral imaging and nucleic acid mimics fluorescence in situ hybridization (SI-NAM-FISH) for multiplex detection of clinical pathogens
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, 2022Spectral-temporal luminescence properties of Colloidal CdSe/ZnS Quantum Dots in relevant polymer matrices for integration in low turn-on voltage AC-driven LEDs
OPTICS EXPRESS, 2022Surface Passivation of III-V GaAs Nanopillars by Low-Frequency Plasma Deposition of Silicon Nitride for Active Nanophotonic Devices
ACS APPLIED ELECTRONIC MATERIALS, 2022Two-photon polymerization simulation and fabrication of 3D microprinted suspended waveguides for on-chip optical interconnects
OPTICS EXPRESS, 2022 -
Subwavelength neuromorphic nanophotonic integrated circuits for spike-based computing: challenges and prospects
Proc. SPIE 11804, Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) 2021, 118040D (2 September 2021), 2021Oscillator Finite-Difference Time-Domain (O-FDTD) electric field propagation model: integrated photonics and networks
EPJ Web of Conferences (2021), 255, p. 01005. DOI: 10.1051/epjconf/202125501005, 2021All-Dielectric Synthetic-Phase Metasurfaces Generating Practical Airy Beams
ACS NANO, 2021Bursting and Excitability in Neuromorphic Resonant Tunneling Diodes
PHYSICAL REVIEW APPLIED, 2021Design and Fabrication of 3D Interconnects for Photonic Neuronal Networks Using Two-Photon Polimerization
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS (CLEO), 2021Highly-efficient GaAs/AlGaAs Nanopillars and NanoLEDs via SiNx Surface Passivation
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2021Lipid Nanosystems and Serum Protein as Biomimetic Interfaces: Predicting the Biodistribution of a Caffeic Acid-Based Antioxidant
NANOTECHNOLOGY SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS, 2021Photonic polymeric structures and electrodynamics simulation method based on a coupled oscillator finite-difference time-domain (O-FDTD) approach
OPTICS EXPRESS, 2021Room-temperature Near-infrared Electroluminescence in n-type GaAs Unipolar microLEDs
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS (CLEO), 2021Room-temperature Near-infrared Electroluminescence in n-type GaAs Unipolar microLEDs
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS (CLEO), 2021Spike propagation in a nanolaser-based optoelectronic neuron
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2021Towards an Excitable Microwave Spike Generator for Future Neuromorphic Computing
2021 16TH EUROPEAN MICROWAVE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS CONFERENCE (EUMIC 2021), 2021Ultra broadband few cycle laser pulses for simultaneous multi-color fluorescence microscopy applications via the SyncRGB-FLIM method
ADVANCES IN MICROSCOPIC IMAGING III, 2021Ultra-broadband few-cycle laser pulses for advanced multi-color FLIM-microscopy
2021 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2021Magnetic Field Mapping Around Individual Magnetic Nanoparticle Agglomerates Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond
PARTICLE & PARTICLE SYSTEMS CHARACTERIZATION, 2021 -
Efficient light extraction in subwavelength GaAs/AlGaAs nanopillars for nanoscale light-emitting devices
OPTICS EXPRESS, 2020NanoLEDs for energy-efficient and gigahertz-speed spike-based sub-lambda neuromorphic nanophotonic computing
NANOPHOTONICS, 2020NanoLEDs for energy-efficient and gigahertz-speed spike-based sub-λ neuromorphic nanophotonic computing
NANOPHOTONICS, 2020CLeANFIT - Contact-Less Axial Nearfield-Based Fluorescence Imaging Topography: A Method for 3D Micro- and Nanotopography Characterization
ADVANCED MATERIALS INTERFACES, 2020Multi-beam two-photon polymerization for fast large area 3D periodic structure fabrication for bioapplications
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 2020Physical Limits of NanoLEDs and Nanolasers for Optical Communications
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, 2020Image sensors for digital photography: a short course for undergraduates. I: Optics
OPTICA PURA Y APLICADA, 2020Prediction of paclitaxel pharmacokinetic based on in vitro studies: Interaction with membrane models and human serum albumin
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICS, 2020Mapping intracellular thermal response of cancer cells to magnetic hyperthermia treatment
NANOSCALE, 2020Electrical Behavior of Liquid Crystal Devices with Dielectric Nanoparticles
JOURNAL OF NANOMATERIALS, 2020Environmentally friendly luminescent solar concentrators based on an optically efficient and stable green fluorescent protein
GREEN CHEMISTRY, 2020Fabrication and characterization of luminescent Pr3+ doped fluorapatite nanocrystals as bioimaging contrast agents
JOURNAL OF LUMINESCENCE, 2020Fabrication and characterization of luminescent Pr3+ doped fluorapatite nanocrystals as bioimaging contrast agents
JOURNAL OF LUMINESCENCE, 2020Mode-field switching of nanolasers
APL PHOTONICS, 2020Prediction of paclitaxel pharmacokinetic based on in vitro studies: Interaction with membrane models and human serum albumin
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICS, 2020Polimerización de Dos Fotones, una tecnología interdisciplinar: de la innovación en investigación biomédica a los dispositivos fotónicos integrados
Revista Española de Física, 2020, 34-2 , 23-28, 2020 -
Graphene setting the stage: tracking DNA hybridization with nanoscale resolution
2D MATERIALS, 2019Differences in the optical properties of valve and girdle band in a centric diatom
INTERFACE FOCUS, 2019Few-cycle laser for the in vitro study of cellular bioenergetics during therapeutic treatment with the anticancer drug Doxorubicin in its free and liposomal nanocarrier form
2019 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2019Few-cycle laser for the in vitro study of cellular bioenergetics during therapeutic treatment with the anticancer drug Doxorubicin in its free and liposomal nanocarrier form
2019 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2019GFP fluorescence peak fraction analysis based nanothermometer for the assessment of exothermal mitochondria activity in live cells
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 2019Increasing Two-Photon Polymerization Fabrication Speed of 3D Structures for Cell Interaction Studies
2019 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2019Liquid crystal tunable claddings for polymer integrated optical waveguides
BEILSTEIN JOURNAL OF NANOTECHNOLOGY, 2019Resonant Tunneling Diode Photonics
Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2019Strong Enhancement of Light Extraction Efficiency in Sub-wavelength AlGaAs/GaAs Vertical-emitting Nanopillars
2019 CONFERENCE ON LASERS AND ELECTRO-OPTICS EUROPE & EUROPEAN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS CONFERENCE (CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC), 2019SyncRGB-FLIM: synchronous fluorescence imaging of red, green and blue dyes enabled by ultra-broadband few-cycle laser excitation and fluorescence lifetime detection
BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS, 2019Phasor-assisted nanoscopy reveals differences in the spatial organization of major nuclear lamina proteins
BIOCHIMICA ET BIOPHYSICA ACTA-MOLECULAR CELL RESEARCH, 2019 -
Photochromic control of a plasmon-quantum dots coupled system
NANOSCALE, 2018Plug and Play Anisotropy-Based Nanothermometers
ACS PHOTONICS, 2018Structure-based optics of centric diatom frustules: modulation of the in vivo light field for efficient diatom photosynthesis
NEW PHYTOLOGIST, 2018Nonvolatile Reconfigurable Phase-Change Metadevices for Beam Steering in the Near Infrared
ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS, 2018The UV filtering potential of drop-casted layers of frustules of three diatom species
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 2018Purcell Effect in the Stimulated and Spontaneous Emission Rates of Nanoscale Semiconductor Lasers
IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, 2018



