A collaborative research group led by Professor Akiyuki Nakato of the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology has succeeded for the first time in the world in capturing the shape of nanosheets dispersed in water by using optical tweezers technology.
Nanosheets are very thin sheet-like particles with a thickness on the order of nanometers.Due to its shape, nanosheets are thought to lead to the enhancement of solar cells, touch panels, and electronic devices (electronic skin) that are attached to the skin in the future.Understanding the shape of the nanosheets themselves is important for this application, but little is known about the shape of the "freshly made" nanosheets present in colloids.
Therefore, the research group used optical tweezers and optical microscope technology together to grasp the exact shape of the nanosheets dispersed in water.As a result, it was confirmed that there were few flat-shaped nanosheets, and that many nanosheets had a curved shape that had not been expected so far.In addition, it became clear that flat and curved structures are stable in liquids.Based on these discoveries, if nanosheets are accumulated in a liquid, a complex structure will be formed naturally, and if only bent nanosheets are accumulated, a porous structure will be constructed and a wide surface will be obtained. It was speculated that it would be possible to obtain the materials to have.
Nanosheets are expected to be applied to new materials in a wide range of fields, from medical treatment to batteries, and this result is expected to spread to many researches.
Paper information:[Langmuir] Microscope Observation of Morphology of Colloidally Dispersed Niobate Nanosheets Combined with Optical Trapping
