COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: DMREF: Designing Plasmonic Nanoparticle Assemblies For Active Nanoscale Temperature Control By Exploiting Near- And Far-Field Coupling

With the support of the DMREF Program and the Division of Chemistry, Professor David J. Masiello from the University of Washington, Professor Stephan Link from Rice University, and Professor Katherine A.

Willets from Temple University are developing methods to theoretically design and experimentally realize a new class of periodic 1D and 2D thermal metamaterials.

Thermal energy, or heat, flows naturally from hot to cold, making it difficult to create localized thermal “hot spots” even when heat is applied to a single location.

Said differently, the degree of spatial correlation between the heat power supplied and the temperature change that it induces is likely to be small. Touching a hot pan’s lid provides a simple and all too familiar example of this effect.

As a material’s size is reduced to 10-100s of nanometers, or about 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, depositing and maintaining thermal energy within a small region of space becomes even more challenging. Yet, the ability to control heat flow and thus temperature at both nanoscale (