USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Jake Fontana

Jawad Naciri

Banahalli R Ratna

Nicholas J Greybush

Jeffrey R Deschamps

Alberto Piqué

Steven R Flom

Carissa M Soto

Nicholas A Charipar

Ronald W Rendell

An apparatus having: a vessel for containing a suspension of a liquid and solid particles; a tube having a narrowed portion to draw the suspension from the vessel into the tube when a gas flows through the tube; an aerosol generator coupled to the tube for forming an aerosol from the suspension; a dehydrator coupled to the aerosol generator for removing the liquid from the aerosol forming a dried aerosol; a multiple-pass spectroscopic absorption cell coupled to the dehydrator to pass the dried aerosol into the absorption cell; and a Fourier transform spectrometer coupled to the absorption cell to measure an absorption spectrum of the dried aerosol.

Apparatus for generating and optically characterizing an aerosol

Application of an electric field to nanorods can control their alignment, thus providing techniques for ultra-fast switching and optical modulators, for example those that might serve as display indicators.

Plasmonic nanoparticles as pixels and sub-microsecond switches

Metallic nanorods are welded together in a controllable fashion. A suspension of metallic nanorods coated with an anionic polymer is contracted with linking molecules each comprising a liquid crystal with at least two available carboxylic acid moieties. The nanoparticles to self-assemble into dimers. Irradiation of the dimers with femtosecond radiation forms a metallic junction between them and welds the dimers into fused dimers.

Programmable assembly and welding of metallic nanoparticles into discrete nanostructures

Coating gold nanorods with silver and then SiOenables tuning of the plasmon resonance wavelength and renders them amenable to functionalization for stability in nonpolar solvents.

Au&#x2014;Ag nanorods in nonpolar solvents

A monolayer film of nanoparticles can formed from a fluid mixture by combining nanoparticles dispersed in water with a water-miscible organic solvent and a molecular ligand comprising a head group with affinity for the nanoparticle, and introducing the fluid mixture to a substrate in the presence of an air/fluid interface, thereby causing a monolayer film of nanoparticles to form on the substrate. Such monolayers films can include metallic nanoparticles such as gold, and possess substantially uniform spacing over at least a one centimeter length scale. The films are metasurfaces effective to cause a range of linear refractive index of from around unity at 700 nm to 10 at 1500 nm. Such metasurfaces might find utility, for example, as ultrafast (picosecond scale) switches at wavelengths useful for telecommunications.

Optical applications of nanosphere metasurfaces

A genetically modified cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) protein capsid serves as a scaffold for metal nanoparticles, preferably gold nanospheres, of 15 nm to 35 nm, creating plasmonic nanoclusters. The self-assembled nanoclusters gave rise to a 10-fold surface-averaged enhancement of the local electromagnetic field. Other viral capsids or virus-like proteins may also serve as such scaffolds.

Metamaterial optical elements self-assembled on protein scaffolds

A method of forming a monolayer film of nanoparticles includes forming a fluid mixture by combining nanoparticles dispersed in water with a water-miscible organic solvent and a molecular ligand comprising a head group with affinity for the nanoparticle, and introducing the fluid mixture to a substrate in the presence of an air/fluid interface, thereby causing a monolayer film of nanoparticles to form on the substrate. Such monolayers films can include metallic nanoparticles such as gold, and possess substantially uniform spacing over at least a one centimeter length scale.

Growing community of inventors

Alexandria, VA, United States of America

Jake Fontana