Flickering nanometre-scale disorder in a crystal lattice tracked by plasmonic flare light emission

Cloudy Carnegie, Mattin Urbieta, Rohit Chikkaraddy, Bart Nijs, Jack Griffiths, William M. Deacon, Marlous Kamp, Nerea Zabala, Javier Aizpurua and Jeremy J. Baumberg ()
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Cloudy Carnegie: University of Cambridge
Mattin Urbieta: FCT/ZTF, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
Rohit Chikkaraddy: University of Cambridge
Bart Nijs: University of Cambridge
Jack Griffiths: University of Cambridge
William M. Deacon: University of Cambridge
Marlous Kamp: University of Cambridge
Nerea Zabala: FCT/ZTF, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
Javier Aizpurua: Materials Physics Center CSIC-UPV/EHU and Donostia International Physics Center DIPC, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal
Jeremy J. Baumberg: University of Cambridge

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The dynamic restructuring of metal nanoparticle surfaces is known to greatly influence their catalytic, electronic transport, and chemical binding functionalities. Here we show for the first time that non-equilibrium atomic-scale lattice defects can be detected in nanoparticles by purely optical means. These fluctuating states determine interface electronic transport for molecular electronics but because such rearrangements are low energy, measuring their rapid dynamics on single nanostructures by X-rays, electron beams, or tunnelling microscopies, is invasive and damaging. We utilise nano-optics at the sub-5nm scale to reveal rapid (on the millisecond timescale) evolution of defect morphologies on facets of gold nanoparticles on a mirror. Besides dynamic structural information, this highlights fundamental questions about defining bulk plasma frequencies for metals probed at the nanoscale.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-14150-w

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