Enabling Ultrasensitive Optical Measurements with Plasmonics

金属纳米结构在各种应用中取得了重大进展，从执行逻辑功能的光子器件，医学研究到更好地靶向肿瘤以进一步定位光热治疗，太阳能电池技术到高灵敏度光学传感器。电磁场，如激光，被限制在单个银或金纳米粒子或相互作用粒子的集合附近，显示出依赖于纳米结构的光学几何特性的共振。在适当的实验条件下，激发这种局部共振可以产生几个数量级的电磁场增强，可以用于超高灵敏度光学光谱。它在材料科学和生物材料中的应用是巨大的，提供了提高的空间分辨率和灵敏度，甚至可以检测到单个分子。该研究计划旨在提供解决方案，以实现光谱学中的超高灵敏度测量，并围绕四个主要目标进行阐述：

Metallic nanostructures have enabled critical advances in a variety of applications ranging from photonic devices that perform a logical function, medical research to better target tumors for further localized photothermal treatment, solar cells technology to high sensitivity optical sensors. An electromagnetic field such as a laser light confined in the vicinity of a single silver or gold nanoparticle or an ensemble of interacting particles, displays resonances that are dependent on the opto-geometric properties of the nanostructure. Under the right experimental conditions, the excitation of such local resonance can yield enhancement of the electromagnetic field by several orders of magnitude which can be exploited for ultrahigh sensitivity optical spectroscopy. Its application in materials science and biomaterial is tremendous offering improved spatial resolution and sensitivity at a level down to the detection of a single molecule. This research program aims at providing solutions to enable ultrahigh sensitivity measurements in optical spectroscopy and is articulated along four principal objectives: