Plasmon-Driven Processes
Plasmons, the oscillation of free electron in phase with light, essentially triggers a series of physicochemical processes when excited. The hot carriers generated therein can be harnessed for chemistry or can be dissipated as heat. These two effects always come in pairs and hard to distinguish. The rationale here is to discriminate the right mechanism for different scenarios and apply this process for nanochemistry and nanofabrication.
Laser-Directed Growth & Fab
Laser beam with high intensity gradient and high power density can generate localized thermal, force, and even chemical effects, which can be utilized for nanofabrication and nanomanipulation. In this topic, we mainly focus on how to use lasers to control, fabricate and assemble nanostructures and nanomaterials with well-defined features and understand how the forces and chemistry involve.
Colloidal Plasmonics
Hybrid plasmonic nanoparticles, which carry functional polymer patches, can essentially provide unique building blocks for self-assembly of exotic plasmonic nanostructures. But the challenge is to achieve multi-responsive and multi-stable state of assemblies so that they can switch back and forth. In such a way, you can program colloidal assemblies and make colloidal machines.
