University of Pennsylvania Assigned Patent

The Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), has been assigned a patent (8,254,227) developed by Nader Engheta, Wayne, PA, and Alessandro Salandrino, Philadelphia, PA, for "frequency-modulated coding and data recording and storage using plasmonic nanostructures."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A frequency-modulated coding and data recording and storage device that uses plasmonic-dielectric nanostructures of concentric two-layer core-shell design to store data includes a flat transparent substrate having a top surface divided into cells with side dimension d on the order of tens of nanometers and a core-shell plasmonic-dielectric nanostructure disposed in each cell. Each plasmonic nanostructure of concentric core-shell has a predetermined ratio of radii and a predetermined aspect ratio such that when an infrared or visible wavelength signal is applied to each said core-shell plasmonic-dielectric nanostructure a peak scattering amplitude of the applied signal is at different plasmonic resonance frequencies for core-shell plasmonic-dielectric nanostructures with different ratio of radii and different aspect ratios. The sampled values of a signal to be recorded are Assigned to each cell and the ratio of radii and/or aspect ratios of the core-shell plasmonic-dielectric nanostructures in the Assigned cells are selected to provide a corresponding plasmonic resonant frequency."

The patent application was filed on May 10, 2006 (11/914,275).