Search results for "surface plasmon"
showing 10 items of 393 documents
Near-field beam displacement at surface plasmon resonance
2011
International audience; A finite-size beam exciting a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) in a prism coupling configuration experiences an in-plane displacement that can be used for the characterization of plasmonic components by means of near-field optical microscopy. We first demonstrate experimentally the existence of this displacement by taking near-field images of finite-width metal strips. Next, the properties of this shift are analyzed in detail. We investigate the dynamic of the near-field shift for an incident Gaussian beam as a function of illumination conditions. For beams with a narrow spectrum, we propose a straightforward derivation showing that the displacement depends on the ave…
Absence of mutual polariton scattering for strongly coupled surface plasmon polaritons and dye molecules with a large Stokes shift
2013
The understanding and control of the dynamics of hybrid modes consisting of strongly coupled surface plasmon polaritons and molecular excitations of dye molecules is of great timely interest, as it allows one to tailor interactions between optical signals as needed for active all-optical devices. Here we utilize dye molecules with an especially large Stokes shift to demonstrate the absence of mutual scatterings among the strongly coupled hybrid modes. We employ a quantum mechanical three-level model and show that the hybrid modes decay via dephasing and internal relaxation of the molecules to a fluorescing state of the dye, which can be used as a measure for the decay. Our results provide e…
Plasmon-based free-radical photopolymerization : effect of diffusion on nanolithography processes
2011
This Article interrogates the mechanisms responsible for nanoscale photopolymerization induced by confined and enhanced electromagnetic fields. Surface plasmon dipolar resonance of individual Ag nanoparticles was used as an optical near-field source to locally trigger the reaction of a photopolymerizable formulation. Laser excitation of the nanoparticles embedded in the formulation reproducibly generates polymer features with typical dimensions ranging from 2 nm to a few tens of nanometer. We have determined the physicochemical parameters and mechanisms controlling the spatial extent of the photopolymerization process. We found that the diffusion of the dye is the main process limiting the …
Integrated optic surface plasmon resonance measurements in a borosilicate glass substrate
2008
The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique is a well-known optical method that can be used to measure the refractive index of organic nano-layers adsorbed on a thin metal film. Although there are many configurations for measuring biomolecular interactions, SPR-based techniques play a central role in many current biosensing experiments, since they are the most suited for sensitive and quantitative kinetic measurements. Here we give some results from the analysis and numerical elaboration of SPR data from integrated optics experiments in a particular borosilicate glass, chosen for its composition offering the rather low refractive index of 1.4701 at 633 nm wavelength. These data regard the…
Light trapping by plasmonic nanoparticles
2020
Abstract Metallic nanoparticles sustaining localized surface plasmon resonances are of great interest for enhancing light trapping in thin film photovoltaics. In this chapter, we explore the correlation between the structural and optical properties of self-assembled silver nanostructures fabricated by a solid-state dewetting process on various substrates relevant for silicon photovoltaics and later integrated into plasmonic back reflectors. Our study allows us to optimize the performance of nanostructures by identifying the fabrication conditions in which desirable circular and uniformly spaced nanoparticles are obtained. Second, we introduce a novel optoelectronic spectroscopic method that…
Au-ZnO Nanocomposite Films for Plasmonic Photocatalysis
2015
Nanocomposites based on plasmonic nanoparticles and metal-oxide semiconductors are emerging as promising materials for conversion of solar energy into chemical energy. In this work, a Au–ZnO nanocomposite film with notably enhanced photocatalytic activity is successfully prepared by a single-step process. Both ZnO and Au nanoparticles are synthesized in situ during baking of the film spin-coated from a solution of Zn(CH3COO)2 and HAuCl4. Furthermore, it is shown that this precursor solution can be formulated as a nanoink for the generation of micropatterns by microplotter printing, opening the way for the miniaturization of devices with enhanced properties for photocatalysis, optoelectronic…
Plasmonic nanostructures for light trapping in photovoltaic
Metallic nanoparticles (NPs), sustaining localized surface plasmon resonances, are currently of great interest for enhancing light trapping in thin film solar cells. To be directly applicable in the photovoltaic industry, the NPs fabrication needs to be simple, reliable, low-cost and scalable. As such, self-assembly processes are most commonly used, and Ag is the preferred material, due to its high radiative efficiency and low imaginary permittivity. After exploring the correlation between structural and optical properties of Ag NPs fabricated by solid- state dewetting process on various substrates, we identified the fabrication conditions in which desirable NPs are obtained, but we also e…
CRISPR-Cas12a-Based Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Harboring the E484K Mutation
2021
The novel respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly evolving across the world with the potential of increasing its transmission and the induced disease. Here, we applied the CRISPR-Cas12a system to detect, without the need of sequencing, SARS-CoV-2 genomes harboring the E484K mutation, first identified in the Beta variant and catalogued as an escape mutation. The E484K mutation creates a canonical protospacer adjacent motif for Cas12a recognition in the resulting DNA amplicon, which was exploited to obtain a differential readout. We analyzed a series of fecal samples from hospitalized patients in Valencia (Spain), finding one infection with SARS-CoV-2 harboring the E484K mutation, which was t…
The interaction of recombinant subdomains of the procollagen C-proteinase with procollagen I provides a quantitative explanation for functional diffe…
2006
The procollagen C-proteinase (PCP) is a zinc peptidase of the astacin family and the metzincin superfamily. The enzyme removes the C-terminal propeptides of fibrillar procollagens and activates other matrix proteins. Besides its catalytic protease domain, the procollagen C-proteinase contains several C-terminal CUB modules (named after complement factors C1r and C1s, the sea urchin UEGF protein, and BMP-1) and EGF-like domains. The two major splice forms of the C-proteinase differ in their overall domain composition. The longer variant, termed mammalian tolloid (mTld, i.e., PCP-2), has the protease- CUB1-CUB2-EGF1-CUB3-EGF2-CUB4-CUB5 composition, whereas the shorter form termed bone morphog…
Single Unlabeled Protein Detection on Individual Plasmonic Nanoparticles
2012
The ultimate detection limit in analytic chemistry and biology is the single molecule. Commonly, fluorescent dye labels or enzymatic amplification are employed. This requires additional labeling of the analyte, which modifies the species under investigation and therefore influences biological processes. Here, we utilize single gold nanoparticles to detect single unlabeled proteins with extremely high temporal resolution. This allows for monitoring the dynamic evolution of a single protein binding event on a millisecond time scale. The technique even resolves equilibrium coverage fluctuations, opening a window into Brownian dynamics of unlabeled macromolecules. Therefore, our method enables …