Prof. Ringe collaborated with Naomi Halas and her team at Rice to elucidate the plasmonic behavior of Al nanocrystals using dark field microscopy, EELS, and cathodoluminescence!
The article was just accepted in Nano Letters
The STEM & TEM images, and the EELS data was acquired by Prof. Ringe on a FEI Titan (FEI Nanoport, Eindhoven, the Netherlands), and analyzed using the Hyperspy software.
Electron microscopy and spectroscopy of Al nanocrystals. a) Raw, low-loss, LSPR and Al bulk plasmon data of a 166 nm particle from the positions shown in the inset. b) EELS spectral components extracted by non-negative matrix factorization for the particle in (a). c) EELS maps representing the spatial distribution of the LSPR corresponding to the spectra in (b). d) core-loss EELS of a 166 nm Al nanocrystal at multiple positions showing the O-K peak (indicated by the arrow), and (inset) background-subtracted O-K intensity map. Scale bars = 50 nm.