Researchers from Brown University and the University of Michigan have achieved something that scientists had only imagined until now. By carefully arranging tiny particles of silver into custom-built structures, they created and stabilized a previously elusive state of matter that had existed only in theoretical models.
The work, published in Science, captures an intermediate structural state that appears during a transformation between two common crystal arrangements found in metals. In addition to revealing new details about how these transformations occur, the newly created material displays unusual optical behavior that could eventually be useful for quantum computing and other quantum information technologies.
More broadly, the research demonstrates a new strategy for designing materials from the bottom up by assembling specially engineered nanoparticles into entirely new structures with customized properties.
"Our work is a little bit like kids playing with LEGO blocks," said Ou Chen, an associate professor of chemistry at Brown and a corresponding author of the research. "We synthesize unique nanoscale building blocks and stack them into interesting structures. In this case, we were able to stabilize these theorized transitional structures and demonstrate important quantum optical properties."
