plasmonics tagged posts

Passive technology on roofs and facades could greatly reduce HVAC energy consumption. Engineers have developed smart material technology that, with the flip of a switch, can alternate between harvesting heat from sunlight and allowing an object to cool. The window-like device has no moving parts and could be a boon for HVAC savings, potentially cutting energy usage by nearly 20% in the United States alone.

As anyone who has ever parked a car in t...

Illustration of nanosized device made of two joined silver single crystals that generate light by inelastical electron tunneling. Artwork by Steven Bopp

Using advanced fabrication techniques, engineers have built a nanosized device out of silver crystals that can generate light by efficiently ‘tunneling’ electrons through a tiny barrier. The work brings plasmonics research a step closer to realizing ultra-compact light sources for high-speed, optical data processing and other on-chip applications.

The device emits light by a quantum mechanical phenomenon known as inelastic electron tunneling. In this process, electrons move through a solid barrier that they cannot classically cross...

Squeezing light into nano-size volumes is enabled by surface plasmon resonance, a phenomenon that causes molecules to be trapped near the film, making them available for study under powerful microscopes. Credit: Justus Ndukaife/Vanderbilt University

An award-winning Vanderbilt University researcher used plasmonics to develop a new kind of nanotweezers that can rapidly trap and detect molecules, viruses and DNA – a device transformative for medicine that also has color printing applications. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Justus Ndukaife and his Purdue University collaborators poked holes in gold film smaller than the wavelength of light...

Circularly polarized light passed through silicon nanorods creates a multilayer image. Lower right inset: SEM image of the material. Credit: WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Silicon holograms harness the full visible spectrum to bring holographic projections one step closer. We can’t yet send holographic videos to Obi-Wan Kenobi on our droid, but researchers at A*STAR, Singapore, have got us a little bit closer by creating holograms from an array of silicon structures that work throughout the visible spectrum.

Many recent advances in hologram technology use reflected light to form an image; however the hologram made by Dong Zhaogang and Joel Yang from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering uses transmitted light...