Sensing – Catalysis – Nanoscale Heating: Perspectives from academia and industry
Reactive Plasmonics (RPLAS) researchers were joined by representatives from industry this week to showcase potential applications of the hot-electron plasmonics.
The day started with talks on catalysis with Professor Stefan Maier giving an overview of nanophotonic approaches for energy-efficient chemical reactions. Dr Wayne Dickson then discussed scalable and reactive nanophotonics nanostructures.
Following on there were talks on nanoscale heat. Ryan Bower started by giving a presentation about refractory matierals, photo-acoustics and thermometery, and Dr Luke Nicholls talked about electron temperature.
Finally there were talks on sensing, Professor Rupert Oulton presented hot-electron photodetectors and RPLAS principal investigator Professor Anatoly Zayats then disscussed plasmonic nanostructures for gas sensing.
The showcase also had digital posters for each theme that were circulated in advance. You can view short presentations for each poster at the bottom of the page.
[envira-gallery slug=”hot-electron-applications-technologies”]
Catalysis:
The impact on thermally activated chemical reactions is clear; greener chemistry with massive energy savings is achievable, with the possibility to activate novel reaction pathways on the horizon.
Sensing:
Hot electrons within opto-electronic devices also point to new “band-gap” free methods of photodetection; breaking the principle that specific materials must be tailored to detect certain colours of light.
Nanoscale Heat:
Our ability to shape metals with nanoscale features means that we can localise heat on similar dimensions. This enables technology to focus and deliver heat with exquisite temporal and spatial precision.