Dipartimento di Chimica

Luciano Galantini è lieto di invitarvi al seminario:

Chirality in Plasmonic Gold Nanoparticle

di Ki Tae Nam, Seoul National University (South Korea)

Il seminario avrà luogo in Aula La Ginestra ed. Cannizzaro (CU014) martedì 17 Ottobre alle ore 15.00.

 

Abstract

From small molecules to entire organisms, evolution has refined biological structures at the nanoscale, microscale and macroscale to be chiral—that is, mirror dissymmetric. Chiral nanoscale materials can be designed that mimic, refine and advance biological chiral geometries, to engineer optical, physical and chemical properties for applications in photonics, sensing, catalysis and biomedicine. The idea that inorganic materials can be chiral seems to be counterintuitive. In this talk, I will discuss about a new mechanism that can generate chiral nanomaterials based on the interaction between chiral peptides and high index plane of metal surface. The enantioselective interaction of chiral molecules and high-Miller-index facets can break the mirror symmetry of the metal nanocrystals. I will also discuss about interesting optical properties of these chiral gold plasmonic nanoparticles that was synthesized by the peptides and amino acid. The resulting 432 symmetric chiral morphology result in the highest dissymmetry factor (g) and the efficient coupling with other materials. I believe that this synthetic approach for the chirality control of inorganic nanomaterials can have a lot of potential to maximize the light-matter interaction, resulting in many optical, electronic and biological applications.

Short Bio

Professor Ki Tae Nam received his B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He got the “outstanding PhD thesis award” from MIT. His PhD thesis was about the “virus-based battery” that has been highlighted as the first demonstration of virus based electrochemical devices. During his postdoc (2007-2010) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he studied peptide mimetic polymer to assemble two dimensional structures. Since 2010, His group at SNU continue to pioneer the research area of bioinspired material science to make new functional materials for energy and optical applications. Recent innovations include the development of CO2 utilization chemistry and the peptide based synthesis of chiral nanomaterials. In 2022, He received the POSCO Chung-am Award that is one of the most prestigious award in Korea. He is also  a member of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (Y-KAST).