How Can Heat Be Used Effectively?

In many areas of technology, heat is perceived as an undesirable "by-product". However, controlling the generation of heat, especially by small metal nanostructures, can create a variety of useful applications, which Professor Frank Cichos from the Peter Debye Institute for Soft Matter Physics at Leipzig University, together with colleagues from Marseilles and ETH Zurich, has now summarised in the journal "Nature Materials".


The field of thermoplasmonics allows the generation of heat on the smallest length scales by the excitation of so-called plasmons - that is, collective electron excitations - in tiny metal structures, for example made of gold. ...