3D technique reveals vibrations of gold nanocrystals

The film, which was made using 3D imaging pioneered at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL, reveals information about the composition of gold. The findings are published in Science.

Jesse Clark, from the LCN and lead author of the paper said, ‘Just as the sound quality of a musical instrument can provide great detail about its construction, so too can the vibrations seen in materials provide important information about their composition and functions.’

‘It is absolutely amazing that we are able to capture snapshots of these nanoscale motions and create movies of these processes. This information is crucial to understanding the response of materials after perturbation.’

Scientists found that the vibrations were unusual because they start off at exactly the same moment everywhere inside the crystal. It was previously expected that the effects of the excitation would travel across the gold nanocrystal at the speed of sound, but they were found to be much faster.