Tuning Optical Properties of Plasmonic Aerosols through Ligand-Solvent Interactions.

Plasmonic nanoparticles are highly tunable light-harvesting materials with a wide array of applications in photonics and catalysis. More recently, there has been interest in using aerosolized plasmonic nanoparticles for cloud formation, airborne photocatalysts, and molecular sensors, all of which take advantage of the large scattering cross sections and the ability of these particles to support intense local field enhancement ("hot spots"). While extensive research has investigated properties of plasmonic particles in the solution phase, surfaces, and films, aerosolized plasmonics are relatively unexplored.

Transition from Molecular Vibrations to Phonons in Atomically Precise Cadmium Selenide Quantum Dots.

We use micro-Raman spectroscopy to measure the vibrational structure of the atomically precise cadmium selenide quantum dots CdSeXL, CdSeXL, and CdSeXL. These quantum dots have benzoate (X) and n-butylamine (L) ligands and tetrahedral (T) shape with edges that range from 1.7 to 2.