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7 pages; International audience; An engineering approach towards combined photonic band gap properties and magnetic functionalities, based on independent nanoscale engineering of two different materials at different length scales, is conceptually presented, backed by simulations, and experimentally confirmed. Large (>200 nm)monodisperse nanospheres of transparent silica self-assemble into a photonic crystal with a visible band gap, which is retained upon infiltration of small (

Coating gold colloids with a well controllable silica shell is finding many applications in the fields of bioconjugation and photonic crystals. In this work, we report on ravine-structured surface morphology changes on silica-coated gold (Au@SiO 2 ) colloids as observed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterizations. These Au@SiO 2 colloids were prepared in the direct Stober synthetic route and the silica-shell thickness was varied between 20 to 100 nm. An aggregation mechanism is proposed to successfully model the silica-shell growth on the gold nanoparticles (NPs) and explain the formation of the ravine-structured surface of the Au@SiO 2 colloids. Furthermore, it is found that the ravine-structured surface strongly influences the formation of the Au@SiO 2 colloidal crystal films. The improved understanding of the surface morphology changes provides a suitable methodology for tailoring the growth of the core–shell structured colloids and assembling them into highly ordered colloidal crystal films.

Following the impact of a single femtosecond light pulse on nickel nanostripes, material deformations—or “nanobumps”—are created. We have studied the dependence of these nanobumps on the length of nanostripes and verified the link with plasmons. More specifically, local electric currents can melt the nanostructures in the hotspots, where hydrodynamic processes give rise to nanobumps. This process is further confirmed by independently simulating local magnetic fields, since these are produced by the same local electric currents.

12 pages, 11 figures, 9 tables.-- et al., A series of chromophoric salts has been prepared in which electron-rich 4-(dimethylamino)phenyl groups are connected via polyenyl chains to electron-accepting N-methylpyridinium or 3-methylbenzothiazolium units. These compounds have been characterized by using various techniques, including electronic absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. Single-crystal X-ray structures have been determined for several salts, all of which crystallize centrosymmetrically. Molecular quadratic nonlinear optical (NLO) responses have been determined using femtosecond hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) at 1300 and 800 nm and via Stark (electroabsorption) spectroscopic studies on the intense, visible π → π* intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) bands. Large red shifts in the ICT transitions on replacing a pyridinium with a benzothiazolium unit indicate that the latter acts as a more effective electron acceptor. Both HRS and Stark measurements show that the static first hyperpolarizability β0 increases with polyene chain extension in both types of chromophore, and the benzothiazolium salts have larger NLO responses than their pyridinium analogues. The results of time-dependent density functional theory calculations using a polarizable solvent continuum model agree with the observation that β0 increases with chain lengthening, but the observed superiority of the benzothiazolium acceptor is not predicted either in the ICT energies or β0 values. Coupled perturbed Hartree−Fock and semiempirical INDO/S calculations similarly fail to reproduce this principal conclusion from the experimental studies., We thank the EPSRC for support (Grant GR/M93864) and the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-V, G.0297.04), the University of Leuven (GOA/2006/3), the Belgian Government (IUAP P5/3)), MCyT-FEDER (BQU2005-01368) and Gobierno de Aragon-Fondo Social Europeo (E39).