We present an improvement in the electrical properties of silica nanotubes by coating metal nanoparticles on their surfaces. The silica nanotubes are formed from bacterial flagella bio-templates having a tubular structure. Successive depositions of metal nanoparticles on the silica nanotubes are performed through easily functionalized silica surfaces. The results show uniform metal nanoparticle...

Metal nitrides have been proposed to replace noble metals in plasmonics for some specific applications. In particular, while titanium nitride (TiN) and zirconium nitride (ZrN) possess localized plasmon resonances very similar to gold in magnitude and wavelength, they benefit from a much higher sustainability to temperature. For this reason, they are foreseen as ideal candidates for applications...

A UV pulsed laser writing technique to fabricate metal nanoparticle patterns on low-cost substrates is demonstrated. We use this process to directly write nanoparticle gas sensors, which operate via quantum tunnelling of electrons at room temperature across the device. The advantages of this method are no lithography requirements, high precision nanoparticle placement, and room temperature proc...

We investigate relaxation dynamics of a quantum dipole emitter (QDE), e.g., a molecule or quantum dot, located near a metal nanoparticle (MNP) exhibiting a dipolar localized surface plasmon (LSP) resonance at the frequency of the QDE radiative transition. It is shown that under the condition of the QDE-MNP characteristic relaxation time being much shorter than that of the QDE in free-space but ...

Pt activated SnO2 nanoparticle clusters were synthesized by a simple solvothermal method. The structure, morphology, chemical state and specific surface area were analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and N2-sorption studies, respectively. The SnO2 nanoparticle cluster matrix consists of tens of thousands of Sn...

We demonstrate an efficient eigendecomposition method for analyzing the guided modes in metal nanoparticle chains. The proposed method has the advantage of simultaneously showing the dispersion relation and the mode quality. It can also separate the material properties from the geometrical properties. Its efficiency therefore does not depend on the complexity of the material polarizability. We ...

This work examines the recent developments in non-traditional catalyst-assisted chemical vapour deposition of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with a view to determining the essential role of the catalyst in nanotube growth. A brief overview of the techniques reliant on the structural reorganization of carbon to form CNTs is provided. Additionally, CNT synthesis methods based upon ceramic, noble metal, ...

The adsorption of three- and four-atom Ag and Pd clusters on the alpha-Al(2)O(3) (0001) surface is explored with density functional theory. Within each adsorbed cluster, two different cluster-surface interactions are present. We find that clusters simultaneously form both ionic bonds with surface oxygen and intermetallic bonds with surface aluminum. The simultaneous formation of disparate elect...

We conduct a theoretical study of the bistable optical response of a nanoparticle heterodimer comprised of a closely spaced semiconductor quantum dot and a metal nanoparticle. The bistable nature of the response results from the interplay between the quantum dot's optical nonlinearity and its self-action (feedback) originating from the presence of the metal nanoparticle. The feedback is governe...

Size exclusion chromatography and centrifugation separation protocols were developed and compared for isolating enriched fractions of phenylethynyl-bridged metal nanoparticle dimers and trimers from the monomeric particle starting material. Both methods enabled the isolation of enriched fractions of a desired array without causing significant sample aggregation or replacement of the phenylethyn...