New feature of light discovered by a research team 2024

New feature of light discovered by a research team

An improved solar power system, light-emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers, and other technical breakthroughs may result from a previously unknown way that light interacts with materials, as revealed by a research team led by chemists at the University of California, Irvine.
The researchers, along with associates from Kazan Federal University in Russia, detail their discovery that photons in silicon can acquire significant momentum when restricted to nanoscale areas, akin to electrons in solid materials, in a publication that was just published in the journal ACS Nano.

The second most common element on Earth is silicon, which serves as the foundation for contemporary electronics. “Poor optical characteristics have prevented its use in optoelectronics, though, as it is an indirect semiconductor,” said senior scientist and adjunct chemistry professor Dmitry Fishman of UC Irvine.

Although silicon does not naturally release light in large quantities, he claimed that when exposed to visible light, porous and nanostructured silicon can produce measurable light. Although the exact cause of the light has been disputed, scientists have been aware of this phenomena for decades.
“Arthur Compton found in 1923 that gamma photons can interact powerfully with bound or free electrons due to their considerable velocity. This contributed to the demonstration of the dual nature of light—that of a wave and a particle—which earned Compton the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics, according to Fishman.
“In our experiments, we showed that the momentum of visible light confined to nanoscale silicon crystals produces a similar optical interaction in semiconductors.”

It is necessary to take another trip back to the early 20th century in order to understand the origin of the interaction. The 1930 Nobel Prize winner in physics, C.V. Raman, an Indian physicist, tried to reproduce the Compton experiment using visible light in 1928. But the significant difference in momentum between visible photons and electrons presented him with a tough challenge.

Despite this setback, Raman’s research into inelastic scattering in liquids and gases resulted in the discovery of the vibrational Raman effect, which is today known as Raman scattering. Spectroscopy is a vital technique for spectroscopic studies of materials.

“A type of electronic Raman scattering is responsible for our finding of photon momentum in disordered silicon,” co-author Eric Potma, a chemistry professor at UC Irvine, stated. “But unlike conventional vibrational Raman, electronic Raman involves different initial and final states for the electron, a phenomenon previously only observed in metals.”
The researchers created silicon glass samples for their trials in their lab, varying in clarity from amorphous to crystal. They wrote an array of straight lines on a 300 nanometer-thick silicon film by scanning it with a closely focused continuous-wave laser beam.

The process created a uniform cross-linked glass in regions where the temperature did not rise above 500 degrees Celsius. Where the temperature rose over 500 C, a semiconductor glass that was heterogeneous in nature emerged. The researchers were able to see how thermal, optical, and electrical characteristics changed on a nanoscale scale thanks to this “light-foamed film”.

“This work challenges our understanding of light and matter interaction, underscoring the critical role of photon momenta,” Fishman stated.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

“This recently realized property of light will undoubtedly open up a new realm of applications in optoelectronics,” Potma continued. The phenomena will increase the effectiveness of solar energy conversion equipment and materials that emit light, even those that were previously thought to be unsuitable for this purpose.”

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Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Electron-photon momentum matching enhances interaction in disordered systems, a feature that was previously only connected to high-energy gamma photons in classical Compton scattering. In the end, our work lays the groundwork for the expansion of traditional optical spectroscopies beyond their typical uses in chemical analysis. For example, traditional vibrational Raman spectroscopy can now be applied to structural studies, providing data that ought to be closely related to photon momentum.

Research team discovers new property of light (msn.com)