SaeJune Park, PhD

Profile

I am the Head of the Terahertz Laboratory and a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Terahertz Electronics in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). I received a PhD in Applied Physics (2018) from Ajou University in South Korea for my work on the development of metasurface biosensors using THz spectroscopy. I have published over 35 journal papers, ~two-thirds of which as first/corresponding author, and have citations over 1,000 and an h-index over 15 according to Google Scholar.

My PhD programme back in South Korea focused on developing dielectric/biological sensors in the THz frequency region using THz time-domain spectroscopy. One of my papers reported microbial sensing for the first time with THz metasurface. I also investigated perovskite’s crystallisation kinetics using THz spectroscopy and studied a phase transition of perovskite film with an abrupt switch in the growth dimensionality.

Then, I moved to the UK and took up a Research Fellow position at the University of Leeds (2018) where I expanded my expertise in on-chip THz spectroscopy. On-chip THz spectroscopy enables the examination of samples/systems with highly confined in-plane THz waves. I demonstrated on-chip THz tuneable plasmonic devices based on a two-dimensional electron gas channel. I also reported a novel technique to measure the THz permittivity of unknown dielectric materials even for an extremely small amount of specimens using resonators integrated with on-chip waveguides.

In 2021, I secured a Lectureship (Assistant Professorship) at QMUL to lead the Terahertz Laboratory. Since I joined QMUL, I have been trying to integrate my experience in free-space THz spectroscopy into on-chip THz devices. For example, I reported a significant enhancement in fingerprint detection of an extremely small amount of lactose using on-chip THz devices. A meta-atom probe integrated with the on-chip THz waveguide was also developed to detect colorectal cancer. I am continuing to work on developing free-space THz applications as well and recently reported a study on selective detection of microplastic particles in water using surface-functionalised THz microfluidic metasurface.

Teaching

• ECS644U Microwave and Millimetrewave Electronics (Module organiser)

Research

Research Interests:

• Free-space/on-chip THz biosensors based on plasmonic/metamaterials
• Physics of low-dimensional materials in THz frequency range
• FEM/FDTD simulations
• More info can be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/qmulthz