MRS Fall Meeting notes

The week after Thanksgiving, I traveled to Boston to present at the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting.  My talk was Monday morning, and my poster was Thursday evening -- in between, I watched as many presentations as I could! What I noticed was a distinct lack of activity regarding LEDs ... in fact, in the sessions I was viewing, devices were altogether less well-represented than in the past. Instead, people are focusing on the physics of light emission and absorption.  There were many talks about plasmon resonance and coupling it to semiconductor nanostructures -- this is something that's always been in the background at the MRS, but this time it was surely the highlight of the nanocrystal-oriented sessions.  There were also quite a few presentations on charging, blinking, and multiple exciton dynamics in nanocrystals. I guess I have some new topics to learn about!