Plasmonic Technology
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Left to right: Syed Mubeen and Joun Lee, postdoctoral researchers in chemistry; Nirala Singh, chemical engineering graduate student; Professor Martin Moskovits.
22
femtoseconds (~ 1014 seconds) before
also included chemistry postdoctoral
appropriate nanostructured design so
they relax.
researcher Joun Lee, chemical engi-
that before these electrons decay as
To get an idea of just how briefly
neering graduate researcher Nirala
heat you use them to do useful chem-
these electrons stay hot, imagine a
Singh, materials engineer Stephen
ical reactions,” Mubeen said.
stretch of beach that’s 20 feet long by
Kraemer, and chemistry professor
The result is an array of gold
20 feet wide by five feet deep. That’s one
Galen Stucky — turned to the very
nanorods, each rod measuring 80 to
second. Ten grains of sand would be
tiny world of nanostructures.
100 nm in diameter and 500 nm in
comparable to 10 femtoseconds.
“These hot electrons tend to travel 6
length. Ten billion of these nanoreac-
“The question was, can you capture
~10 meters per second, which means
tors can occupy one square centimeter.
these electrons effectively and put
they could travel at least a few tenths
Six hundred of them lined up side by
them to useful work?” said Mubeen. To
of a nanometer before decaying as heat.
side would span the diameter of an
do this, the Moskovits team — which
The challenge was to come up with an
average (clean) human hair.
Convergence