Materials World Network: Nano-structured materials from nanoparticle- and block copolymer assemblies for nanophotonics and optoelectronics

在这里，我们打算研究具有明确的几何结构和连接性的新型金属基纳米结构粒子和复合材料的合成和表征。这种材料是由核壳结构的含金属纳米颗粒(NPs)和以金属纳米颗粒和嵌段共聚物(BCS)为结构导向剂的纳米复合材料通过模块化的自下而上的方法获得的。拟议计划的目的是了解基本的化学、热力学和动力学形成原理，使一般和相对便宜的湿化学方法能够有效地创造具有新的性能轮廓的多尺度功能金属材料，这可能使纳米光子学/等离子体学/超材料领域发生革命性的变化，通过纳米尺度对底层结构进行大范围的控制。拟议的研究包括合成所有必要的有机/聚合物和无机成分，使用各种散射、光学和电子显微镜技术表征组装结构，以及深入研究它们的光学性质，包括模拟和建模工作，并致力于主要的新型光学形式，如亚波长成像、用于传感的宏观尺寸的高灵敏度热点阵列和亚波长波导。虽然我们建议的工作主要集中在非磁性材料和所制备化合物的线性光学性质的评估上，但关键的一点是，我们的目标是能够在更广泛的材料系统中推广的合成方法。该计划的最后一个重点是解决一个特别有针对性的开发领域，在那里我们将把特定的等离子体结构集成到混合太阳能电池中，并表征和优化等离子体增强的电荷的光生发电和随后的太阳能电池效率。如果成功，这将导致新一代或新类别的光伏技术，即等离子体太阳能电池。

Here we propose to investigate the synthesis and characterization of novel classes of metal-based nano-structuredparticles and composites with well-defined geometry and connectivity. The materials are obtained by a modular bottom-upapproach of metal-containing nanoparticles (NPs) with core-shell architecture as well as nanocomposites from metal NPsand block copolymers (BCs) as structure-directed agents. The aim of the proposed program is to understand theunderlying fundamental chemical, thermodynamic and kinetic formation principles enabling general and relativelyinexpensive wet-chemistry methodologies for the efficient creation of multiscale functional metal materials with noveloptical property profiles that may revolutionize the field of nanophotonics/plasmonics/ metamaterials, enabled by nmscalecontrol over the underlying structure over large dimensions. The proposed research includes synthesis of allnecessary organic/polymer and inorganic components, characterization of assembly structures using various scattering,optical and electron microscopy techniques, as well as thorough investigations of their optical properties includingsimulation and modeling efforts, and work towards major novel optics in the form of sub-wavelength imaging, highlysensitive hot-spot arrays over macroscopic dimensions for sensing, and sub-wavelength waveguiding. While the mainfocus of our proposed work lies on non-magnetic materials and the assessment of linear optical properties of thefabricated compounds, a crucial point is that we are aiming at synthesis approaches that can be generalized over a widerclass of materials systems. A final thrust of the program addresses a particularly topical exploitation area, where we willintegrate specific plasmonic structures into hybrid solar cells and characterize and optimize plasmon enhancedphotogeneration of charges and subsequent solar cell efficiency. If successful this will lead to a new generation, or classof photovolatics, namely plasmonic solar cells.