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Optical nanoantennas and gold atoms

26.05.2021

In an attempt to get around this limitation, researchers are developing metal nanoantennas that concentrate light into a tiny volume to greatly amplify any signal coming from the same nanoscale region. Nanoantennas are the backbone of nanoplasmonics, a field that has a profound impact on biosensing, photochemistry, solar energy harvesting, and photonics.

Now, researchers at the ETH Lausanne, led by Prof. Christoph Galland of the School of Basic Sciences, have found that when green laser light strikes a gold nanoantenna, its intensity locally increases to the point that it "knocks" the gold atoms out of their equilibrium position. which maintains the integrity of the overall structure. The gold nanoantenna also amplifies very weak light scattered by newly formed atomic defects, making it visible to the naked eye.

Thus, this nanoscale dance of atoms can be observed as orange and red flashes of fluorescence, which are signatures of atoms undergoing rearrangement. "Such atomic-scale phenomena would be difficult to observe in situ, even using very sophisticated electron or X-ray microscopes, because clusters of gold atoms emitting flashes of light are buried inside a complex environment among billions of other atoms," says Galland.

The unexpected results raise new questions about the exact microscopic mechanisms by which weak continuous green light can set some gold atoms in motion.

"Answering these will be the key to bringing optical nanoantennas from the lab to the application world - and we're working on that," said Wen Chen, first author of the study.

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