Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology

Living Edition
| Editors: Bharat Bhushan

Harnessing Disorder at the Nanoscale

  • Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora
  • Andrea Fratalocchi
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6178-0_101015-2
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Synonyms

Anderson localization; Coupled mode theory; Disordered plasmonics; Dissipative cavity; Product of random matrices; Random matrix theory

Definition

In nanotechnology, any fabrication process naturally introduces disorder and randomness at the nanoscale. Disorder is typically unwanted in applications, as it is associated with unpredictable degrees of freedom that are difficult to control. However, it can be demonstrated that disorder supports fascinating and counterintuitive phenomena, which can be harnessed at the nanoscale for the realization of specific functionalities.

Introduction

It is a common perception that the presence of disorder influences negatively the properties of a physical system. Nevertheless, there are several cases in which disorder plays a positive role and can be exploited to develop novel applications. In general, the introduction of disorder significantly increases the complexity of the system under examination, but, as is often seen in nature, an...

Keywords

Transfer Matrix Open Cavity Surface Plasmon Polaritons Localization Length Random Matrix Theory 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora
    • 1
  • Andrea Fratalocchi
    • 1
  1. 1.PRIMALIGHT, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)ThuwalSaudi Arabia