Professor Seo Young-deok of Chemical Engineeiring, The world's first discovery of nanoparticle photovoltaic phenomenon
- 공과대학
- Hit5095
- 2021-01-24
Professor Seo Young-deok of the Department of Chemical Engineering/Polymer Engineering, World's first discovery of nanoparticle photovoltaic phenomenon with a series of light amplification reactions – Nature's cover decoration
- Professor Seo Young-deok (Professor of Chemical Engineering/Polymer's College of Vocal Studies-Professor of Chemical Studies) and the US/Poland Joint Research Team;
Selected as Cover Article dated January 14, 2021 by Nature magazine (IF=42.8), the world's most prestigious magazine.
- It is expected to advance commercialization of new technologies in the future by utilizing optical nanoparticles such as bio-medical field, advanced IoT field, and renewable energy field.
- Co-authored by: Seo Young-deok, professor of vocal and chemical engineering at Department of Chemical Engineering/Polymer Engineering (Director of GRL Project) and P. James Schuck, professor of Columbia University (Director of GRL Project)
- Exclusive first author: Lee Chang-hwan, Ph.D. student at Columbia University in the U.S. (visited by Professor Seo Young-deok's laboratory from May to August 2020).
- Co-author: Nam Sang-hwan Research Institute (Korea Chemical Research Institute)
The world's first discovery of "Photon Avalanche", which shoots small light energy into nanomaterials, causes a chain of amplification reactions of light in the material and releases larger light energy, was selected as a cover paper for Nature.
○ In general, when light energy is absorbed, some of the materials are consumed by heat energy, and the rest are released by light of less energy than the first absorbed light. Unlike this, in most substances, a downward transformation occurs, in some elements, an upward transformation occurs. In other words, it absorbs light from a small amount of energy and emits light from a larger amount of energy.
○ UpConversion Nano Particle (UCNP) allows small infrared rays to be used as a light source, so there is less noise and does not damage the sample because it uses small energy because light does not reach foreign substances other than the sample to be measured. Due to these advantages, upward conversion materials are likely to be used in next-generation bio-medical technologies, IoT technologies, and renewable energy technologies, so research has been actively conducted recently.
○ However, up-conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are currently not commercialized because their photo-conversion efficiency* is very low at less than 1%. This is the first time that a special upward-transforming nanoparticle, "light-burning nanoparticle," has been found to solve these obstacles. The photovoltaic nanoparticles found by the research team can increase the light conversion efficiency by 40%, which is very higher than 1% of the existing upward conversion nanoparticles.
* The amount of light emitted compared to the amount of light entered (the century of light). In other words, strong century light has a large amount of light, and weak century light has a small amount of light.
A team of researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering/Polymer Engineering, Seo Young-deok, College of Vocal and Chemical Research, found that when elements called "Tm" are synthesized into nanoparticles with specific atomic structure, light can be reduced to weak but light can be amplified inside the material. The research team newly named the "Avalanche Nano Particle" (ANP), considering that the nanoparticles that cause these optical chain amplification reactions are similar to those of light causing avalanches. It is titled "Giant Nonlinear Optical Response from Photon-Avalanche Nanoparticles" and was selected in the cover paper of Nature£ (I.F.=42.8) dated 14 January 2021 in British time.
○ This phenomenon discovered by the research team is a nonlinear optical phenomenon in which once light is absorbed multiple times by nanoparticles, a chain of amplification of light occurs in the atomic lattice structure that makes up the nanoparticles, releasing the light of greater energy back into a strong force. Therefore, even a small laser pointer-level energy light can be pecked into a light nanoparticle and released by converting a strong century of light to a larger energy source. With the discovery of this new phenomenon, the team succeeded in observing a very small 25 nm material that is hard to see with light at high super-resolution*.
* There is a limit to the resolution of materials that can be seen by light. Matter with visible light wavelengths of 400 nm to 700 nm or less is very difficult to see at high resolution, and the optical field, which allows the size of 400 nm or less to be seen as light, is called ultra-resolution nanoscopy imaging. This field is http://dongascience.donga.com/news/view/5283, which won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and has significant significance in modern optics. The research team presented in this paper by implementing ultra-high resolution nanoscopy imaging more simply using the local fluorescence emission effect of photovoltaic nanoparticles.
○ In a follow-up study, Professor Seo Young-deok and Professor P. James Schuck of Columbia University will co-founded the world-renowned Gordon Research Conference for the first time in the U.S. in late June this year.
Professor Seo Young-deok said, "The discovery of nanoparticle luminosity" is likely to be used as a new technology in the future as it can be widely used in all industries and technologies that utilize light."
○ This study was conducted with the support of the Korea Research Foundation's Global Laboratory (GRL) support project and the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy's Industrial Technology Innovation project.