Functional nanostructured plasmonic materials: Fabrication, simulation, imaging and sensing applications
Le résumé fourni par la source
Surface plasmons, due to their extreme sensitivity to changes in refractive index \noccurring at a metal/dielectric interface and their ability to significantly enhance \nelectromagnetic fields near a metal, offer exciting opportunities for real-time, fully label \nfree forms of chemical/biological detection and field-enhanced applications including \nsurface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), and photovoltaics. Novel classes of \nplasmonic crystals fabricated with precisely controlled arrays of subwavelength metal \nnanostructures provide a promising platform for the sensing and imaging of surface \nbinding events with micrometer spatial resolution over large areas. Soft lithography, one \nfamily of unconventional nanofabrication methods, provides a robust, cost-effective route \nfor generating highly uniform, functional nanostructures over large areas with molecular \nscale resolution. This dissertation describes the development and utility of several classes \nof functional, nanostructured plasmonic materials with predictable optical properties. A \nnovel, low-cost optical sensor with atomic scale sensitivity at visible wavelength range \nwas developed by tuning the optical response of a plasmonic crystal to visible \nwavelengths through optimization of the distribution and thickness of the thin metal film. \nSensing and imaging of various surface binding events were studied to demonstrate their \nutility for label-free detection. Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) calculations were \ncarried out to model the optical response of the system and gain insight into the physics \nof the system. New classes of plasmonic crystals were developed using new materials and \nfabrication methods, in concert with rational design of the device form factor guided by \nboth experiment and computational electrodynamics simulations.
Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.