Meeting Day 5: Thursday, August 21

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The 2014 International Materials Research Congress wound down slowly to its conclusion on Thursday, but not before Manual E. Brito of the University of Yamanashi, Japan, gave a final, comprehensive Plenary Lecture on solid oxide fuel cells. Several technical symposia continued to have speakers, with full audiences to hear about their research. A few of these talks are described in this final newsletter of the 2014 IMRC.

Start making plans to attend next year’s Congress in Cancun, which promises to be even bigger and better than this year’s highly successful meeting. You’ll learn a lot in a beautiful setting and have some fun at the same time. Until then, adios!

Technical Program

Symposium 1A: Science of Atomic Clusters, Nanoparticles, and Their Assemblies

Au Concave Nanocubes and Their Potential Application in Molecular Detection by SERS
Ana González, Instituto de Fisica, BUAP, Mexico

Starting with 5-nm diameter Au nanoparticles, Ana González grew these “seeds” into Au nanocubes of small (18 nm), medium (34 nm), and large (61 nm) nanocubes. The medium and large nanocubes had concave surfaces. In the case of the medium nanocubes the concavity was restricted to the center of a cube face; for large nanocubes the concavity also affected the edges of the cube. When irradiated with laser light of wavelengths 633 nm and 785 nm, the medium nanocubes produced larger Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) signals when compared to the large nanocubes.

Using numerical analysis, González measured the “profundity of concavity” of the nanocube surfaces. She found that the greater the number of faces of the cube containing concave depressions, the longer the wavelength of the surface resonance. In addition to the number, the depth of concavities also proved to be important. For shallower concavities, a third-degree polynomial accurately describes the shift in surface plasma resonance. González concluded that the medium-sized synthetic Au concave nanocubes are a good option to be used in SERS applications.