Plasmonic Nanogel: Structure, Rheology, and Optical Properties

The invention of plasmonic nanogels (PNG) opens up the field of nanotechnology to a wide variety of applications such as, enhanced light trapping in solar cells, design of smart glasses, chemical detection, and optofluidic devices. In this work, it was determined that, the synthesis of a nanoparticle-micelle network in a fluid state is performed with the ability to suspend metal nanoparticles in a gel-like solution in a stable fashion. Furthermore, the stable suspension of the nanoparticles in the fluidic system allows the user to easily tune the PNG’s optical and rheological properties by controlling the concentration of the nanoparticles and salts within the PNGs. Ultimately, the control of such properties enables the PNG to be used for many desirable applications

Plasmonic Nanogels with Robustly Tunable Optical Properties

Low viscosity fluids with tunable optical properties can be processed to manufacture thin film and interfaces for molecular detection, light trapping in photovoltaics and reconfigurable optofluidic devices. In this work, self-assembly in wormlike micelle solutions is used to uniformly distribute various metallic nanoparticles to produce stable suspensions with localized, multiple wavelength or broad-band optical properties. Their spectral response can be robustly modified by varying the species, concentration, size and/or shape of the nanoparticles. Structure, rheology and optical properties of these plasmonic nanogels as well as their potential applications to efficient photovoltaics design are discussed