Surface Plasmon Resonance in Atomic Layer Deposition Oxide Layers for Heavy-Metal Capture and Resource Recovery

PROBLEM: An ALD oxide layer can protect a plasmonic metal surface while still letting metal ions reach the binding sites, but the oxide thickness controls that trade-off precisely: too thick and the plasmonic field cannot reach the ions; too thin and the metal corrodes during capture or regeneration. A capture design that does not record oxide thickness against DFT predictions and isotherm results cannot be tuned or trusted for recovery.

SOLUTION: IBM Cloud Ideas would host a governed capability registry for plasmon-enhanced ALD capture layers, linking each oxide thickness and composition to its DFT binding prediction, its batch-isotherm validation, and its regeneration and energy-budget record. The workspace would require reuse accounting for every recipe and keep deposition, curing, and regeneration energy visible.

EVIDENCE BASIS: DOCUMENTED — surface plasmon resonance is collective electron oscillation at metal–dielectric interfaces, with field enhancement for sensing; ALD provides angstrom-precise conformal oxide layers; DFT (Hohenberg–Kohn 1964, Kohn–Sham 1965, Nobel 1998) predicts surface-group binding; biosorption follows R−COOH + M2+ ⇌ R−COOM+ + H+ with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Source: Hohenberg–Kohn 1964; Kohn–Sham 1965; standard biosorption textbooks.