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Updated: Aug 29, 2026

Utilization of Plasmonic and Photonic Crystal Nanostructures for Enhanced Micro- and Nanoparticle Manipulation
Published on: September 27, 2011
Attractive potential around a thermionically emitting microparticle
G L Delzanno1, G Lapenta, M Rosenberg
1Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, and Burning Plasma Research Group, Diparmento di Energetica, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy.
Abstract:
We present a simulation study of the charging of a dust grain immersed in a plasma, considering the effect of thermionic electron emission from the grain. It is shown that the orbit motion limited theory is no longer reliable when electron emission becomes large: screening can no longer be treated within the Debye-Huckel approach and an attractive potential well can form, leading to the possibility of attractive forces on other grains with the same polarity. We suggest to perform laboratory experiments where emitting dust grains could be used to create nonconventional dust crystals or macromolecules.
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