The researcher's self-assembly method requires nothing more than a bit of mixing and drying. To form the clusters, the particles are first coated with a polymer, and a droplet of them is then evaporated on a water-repellent surface. In the process of evaporation, the particles pack together into small clusters. Using polymer spacers to separate the nanoparticles, the researchers were able to controllably achieve a two nanometer gap between the particlesfar better resolution than traditional top-down methods allow.
Two types of resulting optical circuits are of considerable interest. A trimer, comprising three equally-spaced particles, can support a magnetic response, an essential property of invisibility cloaks and materials that exhibit negative refractive index.
"In essence, the trimer acts as a nanoscale resonator that can support a circulating loop of current at visible and near-infrared frequencies," says Fan. "This structure functions as a nanoscale magnet at optical frequencies, something that natural materials cannot do."
Heptamers, or packed seven particle structures, exhibit almost no scattering for a narrow range of well-defined colors or wavelengths when illuminated with white light. These sharp dips, known as Fano resonances, arise from the interference of two modes of electron oscillations, a "bright" mode and a non-optically active "dark" mode, in the nanoparticle.
"Heptamers are very efficient at creating extremely intense electric fields localized in nanometer-size regions wh
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| Contact: Michael Patrick Rutter mrutter@seas.harvard.edu 617-496-3815 Harvard University Source:Eurekalert |