Nanocrystal based Nanophotonic Devices

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "A:Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2018) | Viewed by 3542

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Photonics, Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 10, FI-33720 Tampere, Finland
Interests: novel photonic and plasmonic structures; quantum materials; metamaterials; novel optical and photonic functionalities

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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Photonics, Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 10, FI-33720 Tampere, Finland
Interests: exciton–plasmon coupling; spontaneous and stimulated emission enhancement

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nanoscale crystals offer a powerful platform for device engineers. This can be achieved by tailoring their size, shape, composition, as well as their surfaces, functionalized with molecular ligands of diverse chemistry. At the nanoscale (typically, 2–100 nm), quantum and dielectric confinement effects give rise to the tunable electronic and optical properties of nanocrystals. The nanophotonic devices can be designed by selecting the characteristics of the nanocrystal building blocks and by controlling their bottom-up assembly. Of course, there are several large challenges that researchers and engineers must overcome to fully utilize nanocrystal-based nanophotonic devices, e.g., simulation and design of such devices, and controlling the location of each crystal in nanofabricated structure. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to highlight research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on: (1) developing design and synthesis of new types of nanocrystals as building blocks of photonic devices; and (2) novel designs, modeling and fabrication of all kinds of nanocrystal-based photonic devices.

Prof. Dr. Humeyra Caglayan
Dr. Alireza Rahimi Rashed
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • nanocrystals
  • nanophotonics
  • colloidal nanocrystals
  • plasmonics
  • device components
  • coupling

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 2788 KiB  
Article
Heterodimeric Plasmonic Nanogaps for Biosensing
by Sharmistha Chatterjee, Loredana Ricciardi, Julia I. Deitz, Robert E. A. Williams, David W. McComb and Giuseppe Strangi
Micromachines 2018, 9(12), 664; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi9120664 - 16 Dec 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3255
Abstract
We report the study of heterodimeric plasmonic nanogaps created between gold nanostar (AuNS) tips and gold nanospheres. The selective binding is realized by properly functionalizing the two nanostructures; in particular, the hot electrons injected at the nanostar tips trigger a regio-specific chemical link [...] Read more.
We report the study of heterodimeric plasmonic nanogaps created between gold nanostar (AuNS) tips and gold nanospheres. The selective binding is realized by properly functionalizing the two nanostructures; in particular, the hot electrons injected at the nanostar tips trigger a regio-specific chemical link with the functionalized nanospheres. AuNSs were synthesized in a simple, one-step, surfactant-free, high-yield wet-chemistry method. The high aspect ratio of the sharp nanostar tip collects and concentrates intense electromagnetic fields in ultrasmall surfaces with small curvature radius. The extremities of these surface tips become plasmonic hot spots, allowing significant intensity enhancement of local fields and hot-electron injection. Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) was performed to spatially map local plasmonic modes of the nanostar. The presence of different kinds of modes at different position of these nanostars makes them one of the most efficient, unique, and smart plasmonic antennas. These modes are harnessed to mediate the formation of heterodimers (nanostar-nanosphere) through hot-electron-induced chemical modification of the tip. For an AuNS-nanosphere heterodimeric gap, the intensity enhancement factor in the hot-spot region was determined to be 106, which is an order of magnitude greater than the single nanostar tip. The intense local electric field within the nanogap results in ultra-high sensitivity for the presence of bioanalytes captured in that region. In case of a single BSA molecule (66.5 KDa), the sensitivity was evaluated to be about 1940 nm/RIU for a single AuNS, but was 5800 nm/RIU for the AuNS-nanosphere heterodimer. This indicates that this heterodimeric nanostructure can be used as an ultrasensitive plasmonic biosensor to detect single protein molecules or nucleic acid fragments of lower molecular weight with high specificity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanocrystal based Nanophotonic Devices)
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