Achievement

Robert Wadams (Rutgers, Materials Science and Engineering) has recently published ground-breaking work on the integration of plasmonic nanoparticles into organic photovoltaic solar cells, as a means of enhancing photon to electric current conversion efficiency. His work, focused on understanding the growth mechanisms in gold nanorods, was conducted in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory, shows that tuning the gold nanorod aspect ratio can produce marked improvements in organic photovoltaic devices. He and his collaborators have developed a heuristic model of seed-mediated gold nanorod growth that shows early growth is dominated by epitaxial micellar adsorption onto the developing crystalline facets of the seed. The epitaxial passivation is the driving force for anisotropic growth and ultimately determines the final morphology of the nanorod. This work was published in the journal, Chemistry of Materials.