14 Jan 2021 Share:
Columbia engineers are the first to have observed avalanches in nanoparticles. Following in the footsteps of photon avalanching (PA) forty years ago, researchers now look forward to the significant impact of the potential technical transformations afforded by newly demonstrated avalanching nanoparticles (ANP).
Image: An illustration of the chain-reaction process that underlies the photon avalanching mechanism Columbia Engineering researchers have realized in their nanoparticles. In this process, the absorption of a single low-energy photon sets off a chain reaction of energy transfers and further absorption events that result in many highly excited ions within the nanoparticle, which then release their energy in the intense emission of many higher-energy photons.
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IMAGE: An illustration of the chain-reaction process that underlies the photon avalanching mechanism Columbia Engineering researchers have realized in their nanoparticles. In this process, the absorption of a single low-energy photon. view more
Credit: Miko?aj ?ukaszewicz/ Polish Academy of Sciences
New York, NY January 13, 2021 Researchers at Columbia Engineering report today that they have developed the first nanomaterial that demonstrates photon avalanching, a process that is unrivaled in its combination of extreme nonlinear optical behavior and efficiency. The realization of photon avalanching in nanoparticle form opens up a host of sought-after applications, from real-time super-resolution optical microscopy, precise temperature and environmental sensing, and infrared light detection, to optical analog-to-digital conversion and quantum sensing.
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IMAGE: At left: Experimental PASSI (photon avalanche single-beam super-resolution imaging) images of thulium-doped avalanching nanoparticles separated by 300 nanometers. At right: PASSI simulations of the same material. view more
Credit: Berkeley Lab and Columbia University
Since the earliest microscopes, scientists have been on a quest to build instruments with finer and finer resolution to image a cell s proteins - the tiny machines that keep cells, and us, running. But to succeed, they need to overcome the diffraction limit, a fundamental property of light that long prevented optical microscopes from bringing into focus anything smaller than half the wavelength of visible light (around 200 nanometers or billionths of a meter) - far too big to explore many of the inner-workings of a cell.