Chemistry in Pictures: Seeing double

This disorienting series of triangles is a bird’s-eye view of metal nanopyramids. Each pair contains one iron pyramid and one of silver, which overlap in just the right way so that they interact with the type of electromagnetic radiation used in telecommunications. Krishna Prasad Koirala, a graduate research assistant in the lab of Gerd Duscher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, built these puny pyramids by depositing metal vapors onto plastic beads and then etching the beads away. While known models can’t explain way they interact with light, he thinks the behavior has to do with the silver pyramids inducing currents and creating magnetic effects that change how the iron interact with radiation. As a result, he says, these structures could be used in magnetic sensors or multiplexers—communication devices used to combine multiple signals.

Credit: Krishna Prasad Koirala. Read the paper in ACS Applied Nanomaterials (2021 DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.1c00547)

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