Imaging the charge transport in arrays of CdSe nanocrystals

A novel method to image charge is used to measure the diffusion coefficient of electrons in films of CdSe nanocrystals at room temperature. This method makes possible the study of charge transport in films exhibiting high resistances or very small diffusion coefficients.Comment: 4 pages, 4 jpg figure

Levy statistics and anomalous transport in quantum-dot arrays

A novel model of transport is proposed to explain power law current transients and memory phenomena observed in partially ordered arrays of semiconducting nanocrystals. The model describes electron transport by a stationary Levy process of transmission events and thereby requires no time dependence of system properties. The waiting time distribution with a characteristic long tail gives rise to a nonstationary response in the presence of a voltage pulse. We report on noise measurements that agree well with the predicted non-Poissonian fluctuations in current, and discuss possible mechanisms leading to this behavior.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Collective Fluorescence Enhancement In Nanoparticle Clusters

Many nanoscale systems are known to emit light intermittently under continuous illumination. In the fluorescence of single semiconductor nanoparticles, the distributions of bright and dark periods (\u27on\u27 and \u27off\u27 times) follow Levy statistics. Although fluorescence from single-quantum dots and from macroscopic quantum dot ensembles has been studied, there has been little study of fluorescence from small ensembles. Here we show that blinking nanorods (NRs) interact with each other in a cluster, and the interactions affect the blinking statistics. The on-times in the fluorescence of a NR cluster increase dramatically; in a cluster with N NRs, the maximum on-time increases by a factor of N or more compared with the combined signal from N well-separated NRs. Our study emphasizes the use of statistical properties in identifying the collective dynamics. The scaling of this interaction-induced increase of on-times with number of NRs reveals a novel collective effect at the nanoscale

Fluorescence Blinking Statistics From CdSe Core And Core/Shell Nanorods

We report fluorescence blinking statistics measured from single CdSe nanorods (NRs) of seven different sizes with aspect ratios ranging from 3 to 11. This study also included core/shell CdSe/ZnSe NRs and core NRs with two different surface ligands producing different degrees of surface passivation. We compare the findings for NRs to our measurements of blinking statistics from spherical CdSe core and CdSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals (NCs). We find that, for both NRs and spherical NCs, the off-time probability distributions are well described by a power law, while the on-time probability distributions are best described by a truncated power law, P(tau(on)) similar to tau(-alpha)(on)e(on)(-tau)(/tau c). The measured crossover time, tau(c), is indistinguishable within experimental uncertainty for core and core/shell NRs, as well as for core NRs with different ligands, for the same core size, indicating that surface passivation does not affect the blinking statistics significantly. We find that, at fixed excitation intensity, 1/tau(c) increases approximately linearly with increasing NR aspect ratio; for a given sample, 1/tau(c) increases very gradually with increasing excitation intensity. Examining 1/tau(c) versus the single-particle photon absorption rate for all samples indicates that the change in NR absorption cross section with sample size can account for some but not all of the differences in crossover time. This suggests that the degree of quantum confinement may be partially responsible for the aspect ratio dependence of the crossover time

Microelectromagnetic ferrofluid-based actuator

Computer simulations were used to investigate the performance of a microscale ferrofluid-based magnetic actuator developed for liquid dispensing in microfluidic channels. The actuation was based on the movement of a ferrofluid plug in a magnetic field gradient generated by on-chip effectively infinite parallel conductors. The movement, positioning, and retaining of ferrofluid plugs with different lengths at various locations along a microfluidic channel were investigated for two cases. In case (a), the magnetic field gradient was generated by a single conductor; when the ferrofluid reached its equilibrium position, the current was switched off and the nearest neighbor conductor was energized. A similar, consecutive on/off current switching was performed for case (b), where a set of conductors was energized simultaneously

Novel Ferromagnetic Atom Waveguide with in situ loading

Magneto-optic and magnetostatic trapping is realized near a surface using current carrying coils wrapped around magnetizable cores. A cloud of 10^7 Cesium atoms is created with currents less than 50 mA. Ramping up the current while maintaining optical dissipation leads to tightly confined atom clouds with an aspect ratio of 1:1000. We study the 3D character of the magnetic potential and characterize atom number and density as a function of the applied current. The field gradient in the transverse dimension has been varied from < 10 G/cm to > 1 kG/cm. By loading and cooling atoms in-situ, we have eliminated the problem of coupling from a MOT into a smaller phase space.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Guiding Neutral Atoms with a Wire

We demonstrate guiding of cold neutral atoms along a current carrying wire. Atoms either move in Kepler-like orbits around the wire or are guided in a potential tube on the side of the wire which is created by applying an additional homogeneous bias field. These atom guides are very versatile and promising for applications in atom optics.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR

Atom Chips

Atoms can be trapped and guided using nano-fabricated wires on surfaces, achieving the scales required by quantum information proposals. These Atom Chips form the basis for robust and widespread applications of cold atoms ranging from atom optics to fundamental questions in mesoscopic physics, and possibly quantum information systems