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Flickering nanometre-scale disorder in a crystal lattice tracked by plasmonic flare light emission

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Carnegie, Cloudy 
Urbieta, Mattin 
Griffiths, Jack 

Abstract

Abstract: The dynamic restructuring of metal nanoparticle surfaces is known to greatly influence their catalytic, electronic transport, and chemical binding functionalities. Here we show for the first time that non-equilibrium atomic-scale lattice defects can be detected in nanoparticles by purely optical means. These fluctuating states determine interface electronic transport for molecular electronics but because such rearrangements are low energy, measuring their rapid dynamics on single nanostructures by X-rays, electron beams, or tunnelling microscopies, is invasive and damaging. We utilise nano-optics at the sub-5nm scale to reveal rapid (on the millisecond timescale) evolution of defect morphologies on facets of gold nanoparticles on a mirror. Besides dynamic structural information, this highlights fundamental questions about defining bulk plasma frequencies for metals probed at the nanoscale.

Description

Keywords

Article, /639/301/1005/1007, /639/301/357/354, /639/925/927/1021, /639/624/399/1098, /140/125, /132, /132/124, /119/118, article

Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723

Volume Title

11

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group UK
Sponsorship
RCUK | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/N016920/1, EP/L027151/1, EP/L015978/1)