Govorov Quoted in Materials Today about Ceramic Nanoparticles

Distinguished Professor Alexander Govorov

Dr. Alexander Govorov, Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Ohio University, was quoted in a Materials Today story headlined “Ceramic nanoparticles turn light around.”

Nanomaterials whose optical properties change in response to a magnetic field could have a central role in spintronics, magnetooptics, magnetochemisty, and chiral catalysis. But, until recently, materials combining optical properties and chiral asymmetry – structures that are mirror images of each other like left and right hands – have been based on transition metal complexes. Now researchers have come up with a simple alternative: ceramic Co₃O₄ nanoparticles coated with amino acids [Yeom et al., Science 359 (2018) 309]….

Alexander Govorov of Ohio University agrees that the newly discovered combination of chiral and magnetic properties in a single nanoparticle could be useful in chiral bio-recognition and sensing that is controlled by an external magnetic field.

“The interesting finding here is that these bi-functional nanocrystals are both chiral and magnetic,” he points out. “The chirality comes from the small attached biomolecules (or ligands) while the magnetism is a property of the crystal nanoparticles. This combination of bio- and solid-state materials in one nanocrystal is appealing.”

Read the story at Materials Today.