Furthermore difficult numerical simulations are needed to predict their optical properties. Both requirements, fabrication and prediction, complicate a cost-efficient exploitation of nanoparticle plasmonics in optoelectronic devices. Here we show that silver nanoparticles deposited under exposure to visible light arrange in a way that the resulting structure shows an optimized interaction with that light. This way, the light not only controls the nanoparticle alignment with an estimated accuracy of well below 20 nm during deposition from the liquid phase, but also defines the optical properties of the growing structure, and therefore complicated prediction is not needed.

Kevin McHugh, now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University and the lead researcher on the project, said he's baffled by the idea that his project involves tracking chips. "There's no microchips at all," he said. "I don't even know where that comes from. All the quantum dots [do is] produce light."