Episode 3: Gold nanoparticles self-assemble into pinwheel superlattices

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Jiahui Li, a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign about designing structures out of gold nanoparticles. When the nanoparticle structure takes the shape of a pinwheel, different types of light interact with the structure differently due to its chirality. Different wavelengths might be transmitted depending on whether the light’s polarization is rotating clockwise or counterclockwise, which could make this structure useful for filtering light in optical applications. This work was published in a recent issue of Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05384-8).