A professor of the Chemistry and Pharmacology department at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, Achim Hartschuh has received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
The value of the grant was nearly € 1.5 million for a five year period. Starting Grants are normally awarded to support outstanding researchers who have made innovative discoveries in the past and show great promise for future projects.
Hartschuh, a member of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM) and LMU's Center for NanoScience (CeNS) was awarded the grant for his project, New tools for nanoscale optical spectroscopy - Functional imaging of single nanostructures using antennas. Hartschuh stated that the project’s main objective is to develop advanced methods that find applications in optical microscopy and also in nanostructure study. These methods help in real-time monitoring of light-induced processes occurring in individual nanostructures.
This method uses a principle followed by optical antenna and combines it with methods used in laser spectroscopy. When an optical antenna is exposed to laser, its metal tips direct the incident light beam into a very narrow area. Thus, they can be utilized in amplification of weak signals obtained from single nanostructures, thereby enabling easy detection and characterization of nanostructures. By combining the two techniques, data having increased temporal and spatial resolution can be obtained. Such high resolutions are vital for in-depth study of the chemical and physical characteristics of nanostructures.
Hartschuh aims to analyze single-dimensional nanotubes and nanowires as they play a key role in advanced applications in photovoltaics, optoelectronics, and nanoelectronics fields.
Source: http://www.uni-muenchen.de/index.html