About the Seminar
Most plasmonic metals studied to date are composed of either Cu, Ag, and Au. The former two can pose significant challenges related to oxidation, the latter is often perceived as cost-prohibitive, and all three are rare. Recently, much attention has been focused on earth-abundant Al, which is an excellent plasmonic in the UV. This talk will briefly discuss colloidal Al nanoparticles as a plasmonic material, then report results on a new composition: magnesium. Mg nanoparticles are remarkably active plasmonics across the UV, Vis and NIR, as shown optically and with STEM-EELS. Surprisingly, they are stable in air for weeks owing to a self-limiting oxide layer. Colloidal Mg has potential on its own as a plasmonic structure, and can also be used as a scaffold for additional surface chemistry, sensing, and hybrid photocatalysts.
About the Speaker
Emilie Ringe earned her B.A./M.S. summa cum laude in chemistry, then Ph.D. in chemistry and materials science at Northwestern University in 2012. She became the Gott Research Fellow at Trinity Hall as well as a Newton International Research Fellow (Royal Society) in the Electron Microscopy group in the Materials Science and Metallurgy Department at the University of Cambridge, UK. In 2014, she was hired as an assistant professor at Rice University, where she established the Electron Microscopy Center and received funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (YIP), NSF, ACR-PRF, 3M, and the US/Israel Binational Science Foundation.
In 2018, she moved to England to take up a lectureship in multi-scale, multi-dimensional imaging of natural and synthetic materials at the University of Cambridge, joint between the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and the Department of Earth Sciences. She received an ERC Starting grant (1.6M Euros) to pursue her studies of Earth-abundant plasmonics. She has been elected fellow of Gonville & Caius College, is an associate member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and serves on the editorial board of Materials Chemistry Frontiers.
