Below is the image of the place where I used to sit and drink coffee with my friends in front of the library. There are these amazing stellated structures.
Donna Marcus’ Delphinus constellation sculptures
These stars structures not only serve aesthetic purpose but also a solution to solve many existing industrial and scientific problems.
From my favorite coffee place to my origami folding hobby to my research
There are many ways to make star structure.
A perk of being a graduate student is having access to special tools. I can make (synthesize) a star so small that folding an origami structure at this size is an impossible task.
Below is image of an icosahedron origami I made, which took me less time than the nanostar origami. To make a star structure at nanoscale, seed-mediated method was used to transform from a smaller icosahedral nanoparticle (seed), which can only be "seen" with a transmission electron microscope (TEM).
From everyday decorations to practical solution
These nanostructures are highly symmetrical, which provide more uniform plasmonic coupling and enhancement of the intrinsic Raman signal.
Direct application of these plasmonic structures was reported in one of my research work (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smtd.201900611).
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