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

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Solar Energy, Photovoltaics)
Not Energy Related

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Physics)
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor SA Maier
Department of Physics (the Blackett Laboratory)
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 August 2009

31 January 2013

42 months

£1

No relevance to Underpinning Sectors

London

Physical Sciences

Professor SA Maier, Department of Physics (the Blackett Laboratory), Imperial College London

Dr hjs Snaith, Oxford Physics, University of Oxford

Here we propose to investigate the synthesis and characterization of novel classes of metal-based nano-structured particles and composites with well-defined geometry and connectivity. The materials are obtained by a modular bottom-up approach of metal-containing nanoparticles (NPs) with core-shell architecture as well as nanocomposites from metal NPs and block copolymers (BCs) as structure-directed agents. The aim of the proposed program is to understand the underlying fundamental chemical, thermodynamic and kinetic formation principles enabling general and relatively inexpensive wet-chemistry methodologies for the efficient creation of multiscale functional metal materials with novel optical property profiles that may revolutionize the field of nanophotonics/plasmonics/ metamaterials, enabled by nm-scale control over the underlying structure over large dimensions. The proposed research includes synthesis of all necessary 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 including simulation and modeling efforts, and work towards major novel optics in the form of sub-wavelength imaging, highly sensitive hot-spot arrays over macroscopic dimensions for sensing, and sub-wavelength waveguiding. While the main focus of our proposed work lies on non-magnetic materials and the assessment of linear optical properties of the fabricated compounds, a crucial point is that we are aiming at synthesis approaches that can be generalized over a wider class of materials systems. A final thrust of the program addresses a particularly topical exploitation area, where we will integrate specific plasmonic structures into hybrid solar cells and characterize and optimize plasmon enhanced photogeneration of charges and subsequent solar cell efficiency. If successful this will lead to a new generation, or class of photovolatics, namely plasmonic solar cells

11/11/11