Localised surface plasmon resonance endows plasmonic nanostructures with unique, powerful properties such as photoluminescence enhancement, which is a phenomenon based on the interaction between light and a metal nanostructure. In particular, photoluminescence modulation and enhancement are of importance to many research fields such as photonics, plasmonics and biosensing. In this minireview, w...

Atomic-scale finite element procedure for modeling of self-positioning nanostructures is developed. Our variant of the atomic-scale finite element method is based on a meshless approach and on the Tersoff interatomic potential function. The developed algorithm is used for determination of equilibrium configuration of atoms after nanostructure self-positioning. Dependency of the curvature radius...

We describe a systematic and efficient method of determining pseudo-atom positions and potentials for use in nanostructure calculations based on bulk empirical pseudopotentials (EPMs). Given a bulk EPM for binary semiconductor X, we produce parameters for pseudo-atoms necessary to passivate a nanostructure of X in preparation for quantum mechanical electronic structure calculations. These passi...

Hollow/porous nanoparticles, including nanocarriers, nanoshells, and mesoporous materials have applications in catalysis, photonics, biosensing, and delivery of theranostic agents. Using a hierarchical template synthesis scheme, we have synthesized a nanocarrier mimicking a golf ball, consisting of (i) solid silica core with a pitted gold surface and (ii) a hollow/porous gold shell without sili...

The self-organization of macromolecules with a complex architecture is studied extensively in the last years, with the aim to nanostructure surfaces. Linear diblock copolymers with mutual antagonistic groups are a simple, much investigated system, since the respective block lengths determine the size of the nanostructure[1]. Yet little is known about the equilibrium structure when the forces fr...