Plasmonics – Not a New Rock Group

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

A good deal of what we see in life is counter-intuitive – things like pushing forward on the control stick when the airplane stalls and is headed downhill already.  Plasmonic metamaterials as designed by University of Pennsylvania scientists have counter-intuitive properties, such as breaking light that strikes them into surface plasmon polaritons with shorter wavelengths than the original incident light. This quantum-like reaction occurs when, “Light hitting a metamaterial is transformed into electromagnetic waves of a different variety—surface plasmon polaritons, which are shorter in wavelength than the incident light. This transformation leads to unusual and counterintuitive properties that might be harnessed for practical use. Moreover, new approaches that simplify the fabrication process of metamaterials are under development. This work also includes making new structures specifically designed to enable measurements of the materials’ novel properties. Furthermore, nanotechnology applications of these nanostructures are currently being researched, including microscopy beyond the diffraction limit.” Scattering,rather than gathering light rays, seems counter-intuitive, but the scattering …