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Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment

The outstanding properties of silicon nanoparticles have been extensively investigated during the last few decades. Experimental evidence and applications of their theoretically predicted permanent electric dipole moment, however, have only been reported for silicon nanoclusters (SiNCs) for a size o...

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Autores principales: Jardali, Fatme, Tran, Jacqueline, Liège, Frédéric, Florea, Ileana, Leulmi, Mohamed E., Vach, Holger
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10421055/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37570492
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13152169
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author Jardali, Fatme
Tran, Jacqueline
Liège, Frédéric
Florea, Ileana
Leulmi, Mohamed E.
Vach, Holger
author_facet Jardali, Fatme
Tran, Jacqueline
Liège, Frédéric
Florea, Ileana
Leulmi, Mohamed E.
Vach, Holger
author_sort Jardali, Fatme
collection PubMed
description The outstanding properties of silicon nanoparticles have been extensively investigated during the last few decades. Experimental evidence and applications of their theoretically predicted permanent electric dipole moment, however, have only been reported for silicon nanoclusters (SiNCs) for a size of about one to two nanometers. Here, we have explored the question of whether suitable plasma conditions could lead to much larger silicon clusters with significantly stronger permanent electric dipole moments. A pulsed plasma approach was used for SiNC production and surface deposition. The absorption spectra of the deposited SiNCs were recorded using enhanced darkfield hyperspectral microscopy and compared to time-dependent DFT calculations. Atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy observations completed our study, showing that one-to-two-nanometer SiNCs can, indeed, be used to assemble much larger ”superclusters” with a size of tens of nanometers. These superclusters possess extremely high permanent electric dipole moments that can be exploited to orient and guide these clusters with external electric fields, opening the path to the controlled architecture of silicon nanostructures.
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spelling pubmed-104210552023-08-12 Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment Jardali, Fatme Tran, Jacqueline Liège, Frédéric Florea, Ileana Leulmi, Mohamed E. Vach, Holger Nanomaterials (Basel) Article The outstanding properties of silicon nanoparticles have been extensively investigated during the last few decades. Experimental evidence and applications of their theoretically predicted permanent electric dipole moment, however, have only been reported for silicon nanoclusters (SiNCs) for a size of about one to two nanometers. Here, we have explored the question of whether suitable plasma conditions could lead to much larger silicon clusters with significantly stronger permanent electric dipole moments. A pulsed plasma approach was used for SiNC production and surface deposition. The absorption spectra of the deposited SiNCs were recorded using enhanced darkfield hyperspectral microscopy and compared to time-dependent DFT calculations. Atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy observations completed our study, showing that one-to-two-nanometer SiNCs can, indeed, be used to assemble much larger ”superclusters” with a size of tens of nanometers. These superclusters possess extremely high permanent electric dipole moments that can be exploited to orient and guide these clusters with external electric fields, opening the path to the controlled architecture of silicon nanostructures. MDPI 2023-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC10421055/ /pubmed/37570492 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13152169 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Jardali, Fatme
Tran, Jacqueline
Liège, Frédéric
Florea, Ileana
Leulmi, Mohamed E.
Vach, Holger
Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title_full Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title_fullStr Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title_full_unstemmed Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title_short Electric Field-Induced Nano-Assembly Formation: First Evidence of Silicon Superclusters with a Giant Permanent Dipole Moment
title_sort electric field-induced nano-assembly formation: first evidence of silicon superclusters with a giant permanent dipole moment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10421055/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37570492
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13152169
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