Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
Nanotechnology is a booming area of research not only at QUT but also at other leading institutes throughout the world due to its potential to reshape the communications, health, defence, manufacturing and environmental sectors. The high level of interest in all things nano is driven by the unique optical properties produced when structures have their dimensions reduced to the nanometre scale.
Gold nanoparticles have proven to be excellent photocatalysts capable of decomposing environmentally harmful materials in air and fluids under low intensity visible light illumination. It is thought that the root cause of this degradation is the localised surface Plasmon, a free electron oscillation that can create intense localised electric fields that are 1000 times larger than what occur in bulk gold.
Strangely though, when the system is modelled with realistic Plasmon lifetimes and incident light photon fluxes, it appears that the energy from a single visible photon is causing the decomposition of a molecule that would usually require the energy equivalent to a UV photon. There are a number of interesting questions to pursue in this area:
- Is photocatalytic activity a result of plasmon effects or is it thermal?
- Regardless of the underlying photocatalytic mechanism, can we use the accepted plasmonic model and spectroscopic approaches to determine the temperature of the nanoparticles?
- Study level
- Honours
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Contact
- Please contact the supervisor.
Associate Professor Esa Jaatinen
Professor Huai Yong Zhu
