‘Surprisingly Strong’ Light and Heat from Nanogaps Between Plasmodic Electrodes” (Rice University Study)

Thanks to a reader for sending a link to an article by Mike Williams of Rice University posted on Phys.org titled “Physicists see surprisingly strong light, high heat from nanogaps between plasmonic electrodes”

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-physicists-surprisingly-strong-high-nanogaps.html

According to the article, Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas found that light was emitted in a nanoscale  gap between two gold electrodes (and electrodes of other plasmonic materials).

From the article:

“The researchers formed several metals into microscopic, bow tie-shaped electrodes with nanogaps, a test bed developed by the lab that lets them perform simultaneous electron transport and optical spectroscopy. Gold was the best performer among electrodes they tried, including compounds with -damping chromium and palladium chosen to help define the plasmons’ part in the phenomenon.

[. . .]

“Through the spectrum of the emitted light, the researchers’ measurements revealed those hot carriers are really hot, reaching temperatures above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit while the electrodes stay relatively cool, even with a modest input of about 1 volt.”

The full research report is available at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02121

Someone posted a link to this article on the Journal of Nuclear Physics asking Andrea Rossi if he thought this effect was related to the “Rossi Effect”. Rossi commented: “Thank you for the link. It is interesting. I am not able to answer, because the information is not sufficient to find links to my http://www.researchgate.net/publication/330601653_E-Cat_SK_and_long_range_particle_interactions theoretical system.