Alex Travesset doesn't have a shiny research lab filled with the latest instruments that probe new nanomaterials and measure their special properties.
No, his theoretical work explaining what's happening inside those new nanomaterials is all about computer models, equations and figures. And so, when he joins a project, the Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy who's also affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory might contribute many dense pages showing how nanoparticles assemble.
Case in point: Travesset's "Chiral Tetrahedra" calculations and illustrations that are part of a research paper just published by the journal Nature. Those calculations show how controlled evaporation of a solution containing tetrahedron-shaped gold nanoparticles on a solid silicon substrate can assemble into a pinwheel-shaped, two-layered structure.
It turns out the nanostructure is chiral, meaning it's not identical to its mirror image. (The classic example is a hand and its reflection. The thumbs end up on opposite sides and so one hand can't be superimposed on the other. That's chirality.)
Travesset said producing a stable nanostructure with chiral properties is a big deal.
Researchers have been trying to assemble chiral nanostructures for nearly 20 years—about as long as researchers have been studying nanostructures. Such structures could lead to specially engineered materials with "unusual optical, mechanical and electronic characteristics," according to the Nature paper.
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