Optical properties of monolayer protected metal nanoparticles (research costs)
Main funder
Funder's project number: 303753
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 140 000,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/09/2016
Project end date: 31/08/2018
Summary
In this project, we are exploring, explaining, and designing optical properties of atomically-precise metal nanoparticles (NPs) and their assemblies with a special focus on plasmonics. The general goal is to achieve atomic-level understanding of optical processes in these systems, and to use the obtained insight to design nanoparticle assemblies with desired electronic, optical, and plasmonic properties. One of the main goals is to understand quantum mechanics of plasmonic coupling which happens through a molecule in a nanoparticle dimer.
To achieve these goals, we use a special kind of metal nanoparticles called monolayer-protected clusters (MPC). MPCs are ideal for connecting experimental observations with theoretical simulations: 1) they are small containing from tens to hundreds of metal atoms, 2) their atomic structure is well-defined similar to a molecule, and 3) wet-chemistry syntheses of completely monodisperse MPCs exists. Therefore, we can synthesize and characterize nanoparticles and their assemblies, build accurate atomistic models of these systems, and simulate their experimentally observed properties using molecular dynamics and ab initio methods, namely, density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT. This allows a direct comparison of experimental results with simulations and vice versa providing detailed insight at atomic level.
The obtained knowledge opens new possiblilities for fundamental research in the fields quantum plasmonics, plasmon-enhanced optical spectrocopies, and ultra-fast spectrocopy of plasmonics, as well as for advanced nanotechnological sensing and imaging applications.
To achieve these goals, we use a special kind of metal nanoparticles called monolayer-protected clusters (MPC). MPCs are ideal for connecting experimental observations with theoretical simulations: 1) they are small containing from tens to hundreds of metal atoms, 2) their atomic structure is well-defined similar to a molecule, and 3) wet-chemistry syntheses of completely monodisperse MPCs exists. Therefore, we can synthesize and characterize nanoparticles and their assemblies, build accurate atomistic models of these systems, and simulate their experimentally observed properties using molecular dynamics and ab initio methods, namely, density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT. This allows a direct comparison of experimental results with simulations and vice versa providing detailed insight at atomic level.
The obtained knowledge opens new possiblilities for fundamental research in the fields quantum plasmonics, plasmon-enhanced optical spectrocopies, and ultra-fast spectrocopy of plasmonics, as well as for advanced nanotechnological sensing and imaging applications.
