Optical and electrochemical properties of metallic nanostructures

我们计划的主要目标是了解涉及分子吸附在金属纳米结构的过程。这种方法需要电化学和光谱方法的结合。电化学用于驱动和控制分子过程。“原位”光谱学用于识别表面物质并推断其取向。纳米结构的金、银和铜表面特别令人感兴趣，因为它们可以在金属-介电界面支持表面等离子体波。表面等离子体共振导致光场强烈的纳米级聚焦，称为热点。这种增强的局部电磁场转化为对吸附在热点中的分子的光谱响应的极大增加。这是表面增强拉曼散射（SERS）等一系列增强光谱方法的现象学基础。我们的团队一直致力于将这些增强的光谱技术应用于电化学问题的研究。此外，支持这种现象的纳米结构金属衬底的制造和评估也是我们计划的重要组成部分。表面电化学过程在许多技术应用中无处不在。因此，这些研究工作提供的见解与对实际过程的基本理解有关。此外，纳米技术、纳米电化学和新兴等离子体领域（与表面等离子体波的操纵有关）的出现为该计划提供了额外的意义。

The main objective of our program is to understand processes involving molecules adsorbed at metal nanostructures. The approach requires the combination of electrochemical and spectroscopic methods. Electrochemistry is used to drive and control the molecular processes. "In situ" spectroscopy is used to identify the surface species and infer their orientation. Nanostructured Au, Ag and Cu surfaces are of particular interest, because they can support surface plasmon waves at metal-dielectric interface. Surface plasmon resonances lead to intense nanoscale focusing of the light field, know as hot spots. This enhanced local electromagnetic field is translated into an extremely increase in the spectroscopic response for molecules adsorbed in the hot spots. This is phenomenological basis for a series of enhanced spectroscopic methods, such as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Our group has been contributing to the application of these enhanced spectroscopic techniques to the study of electrochemical problems. Moreover, the fabrication and evaluation of nanostructured metallic substrates that support this phenomenon is also an important component of our program. Surface electrochemical processes are ubiquitous in several technological applications. Therefore, the insights offered by these research efforts are relevant to the fundamental understanding of practical processes. Moreover, the advent of nanotechnology, nanoelectrochemistry and the emerging field of plasmonics (which is related to the manipulation of surface plasmon waves) provides additional significance to this program.