Plasmonics in the clouds

Scientists have experimentally realized a plasmonic aerosol by efficiently transitioning liquid suspensions of gold nanorods into the gas phase and simultaneously measuring their optical spectra. They demonstrated that these aerosols are optically homogeneous, thermodynamically stable, with wide wavelength tunability (by controlling the aspect ratio of the nanorods) and have extremely large sensitivities to their environment. This novel plasmonic material could potentially open the door to many interesting applications ranging from geoengineering, vacuum microelectronics, molecular diagnostics, nanomedicines, nanojet printing and nonlinear optics.