| Particles that are mere nanometers in size are at the forefront of scientific research today. They come in many different shapes: rods, spheres, cubes, vesicles, S-shaped worms and even donut-like rings. What makes them worthy of scientific study is that, being so tiny, they exhibit quantum mechanical properties not possible with larger objects. | |
| Researchers at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, have contributed to a recently published Nature Communications paper (“Uniaxial transition dipole moments in semiconductor quantum rings caused by broken rotational symmetry”) that reports the cause behind a key quantum property of donut-like nanoparticles called “semiconductor quantum rings.” This property may find application in quantum information storage, communication, and computing in future technologies. |
| “If you illuminate a two-dimensional photon emitter with a laser, you expect them to emit light along two axes, but what you expect is not necessarily what you get. To our surprise, these two-dimensional rings can emit light along one axis.” — Xuedan Ma, assistant scientist, Center for Nanoscale Materials | |
| In this project, the CNM researchers collaborated with colleagues from the University of Chicago, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Ottawa and National Research Council in Canada. |
Image Credit: Argonne National Laboratory
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