Penn Physicists Observe “Campfire Effect” in Blinking Nanorod Semiconductors

Marija Drndic
Media contact: Evan Lerner, elerner@upenn.edu

June 22, 2011

Nanorods 1200pxSingle nanoparticles are known to emit light intermittently, or ‘blink’, but the mechanisms describing this phenomenon are not fully understood. Penn physicists led by Prof. Marija Drndic, in collaboration with Swarthmore College and New York University, demonstrated that, for small clusters of blinking nanoparticles, the number of particles within a cluster dramatically influences blinking time in a kind of “campfire effect”.

Their research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

[ read more ]

Nature_Comm