Scientists Announce First 3-D Assembly Of Magnetic And Semiconducting Nanoparticles

June 27, 2003 | Source: ScienceDaily

Scientists from Columbia University, IBM and the University of New Orleans today announced a new, three-dimensional designer material assembled from two different types of nanoparticles.

In the June 26 issue of the journal Nature, the team describes the precision chemistry methods developed to tune the particles’ sizes in increments of less than one nanometer and to tailor the experimental conditions so the particles would assemble themselves into repeating 3-D patterns.

The materials are lead selenide, a semiconductor that has applications in infrared detectors and thermal imaging and can be tuned to be more sensitive to specific infrared wavelengths; and magnetic iron oxide, used in magnetic recording media coatings.

The combination of these nanoparticles may have novel magneto-optical properties as well as properties key to the realization of quantum computing. For example, it might be possible to modulate the material’s optical properties by applying an external magnetic field.