US Patent Issued to PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT on March 11 for "Optical device, photoelectric converter, and fuel generator" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,250,838, issued on March 11, was assigned to PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT Co. LTD. (Osaka, Japan).

"Optical device, photoelectric converter, and fuel generator" was invented by Shinya Okamoto (Kyoto, Japan), Atsushi Ishikawa (Osaka, Japan) and Yasuhisa Inada (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical device includes a nanostructure body which induces surface plasmon resonance when irradiated with light, an alloy layer which is in contact with the nanostructure body and which has a lower work function than the nanostructure body, and an n-type semiconductor which is in Schottky contact with the alloy layer. The...