Jay Giblin, a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Ken Kuno, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry recently published a perspective on single nanowire absorption in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Giblin also produced an interestingvideo to accompany the perspective.
The article titled, “Nanostructure Absorption: A Comparative Study of Nanowire and Colloidal Quantum Dot Absorption Cross Sections,” describes the advantages of the nanowire’s asymmetric shape compared to quantum dot devices and nanocrystals, with potential application to photodetectors and photovoltaics.
In the video, Giblin shows how the nanowires are synthesized. One advantage of nanowires, he says, is the ability to tune their absorption and emission properties by varying their diameter. He uses single-molecule microscopy and spectroscopy to determine the absorption and photoluminescence properties of individual nanowires. The video includes a movie of a single cadmium solenoid tripod nanowire that shows how each arm is brightest when the incident polarization is parallel to it. “The future is bright for semiconducting nanowires,” Giblin says.
