LED lights and technology are being used more often in today’s society. Compared to traditional illumination they are far more reliable and efficient, in the sense that they last longer, are environmentally friendly, and most importantly, they reduce energy waste. Studies show that they use 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than your average light source. Current white LEDs (WLEDs) present an efficacy of 150-175 lm/W, but to work towards the US Department of Energy target of 225 lm/W by 2025, it is necessary to develop new structures and designs for phosphors in WLEDs. Typical phosphors for WLEDs remain dispersed in polymer matrices such as silicones or epoxies which have low thermal conductivity and thus prevent efficient heat dissipation, limiting the phosphor performance due to thermal degradation. Additionally, the particles do not provide good absorption due to a small absorption cross section for incident blue light. Nanowires are 1-dimensional nanostructures, which due to their unique geometry, can confine light in dimensions smaller than the wavelength of light, leading to enhanced optical properties. Even when scaled for volume differences, nanowires can absorb up to an order of magnitude greater than quantum dots due to a greater surface area. One such structure of interest is a core-multishell nanowire, in which a plasmonic core material can be added to enhance both the absorption and emission of a semiconductor shell. The metallic core and the removal of the need of the polymer matrix also reduces thermal degradation. Finally, the tunability of the plasmon response by changing the dimensions of the nanowires means that these core-multishell nanowires can be used as phosphors for the WLEDs to improve the efficiency and color rendering.

Raheem Carless is an undergraduate student studying at Roxbury Community College in Boston. He recently finished his first year, majoring in Engineering. He is currently part of the NCN URE program working with Professor Yang Chen and her team on the Optical properties of Single Co-axial Nanowires.

NCN Undergraduate Research Experience 2019

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Raheem Carless (2019), "3 min Research Talk: Plasmonic Core-Multishell Nanowires for Optical Applications," https://nanohub.org/resources/31340.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. nanophotonics
2. nanowires
3. ncndev
4. optical properties
5. polymers
6. solid-state lighting
7. undergraduate research