Achievement

An interdisciplinary research team led by IGERT faculty member Elaine Li, including trainee Daniel Ratchford, in collaborations with scientists at Argonne National Lab, have shed new light into the fundamental interactions between semiconductor nanoparticles (in this case a CdSe/ZnS quantum dot) and gold nanoparticles. By using atomic force microscopy nanomanipulation, they constructed a hybrid nanostructure consisting of a single Au nanoparticle and a single CdSe/ZnS quantum dot. Moreover, by tuning the distance between the metallic and semiconductor nanoparicles with nanometer precision, they can control the inter-particle interaction and therefore control the optical properties of the hybrid nanostructure. The interdisciplinary research result was published in Nano Letters 11 (3): 1049-1054 (2011).