Projects
Enhanced Spectroscopy
The excitation of surface plasmon modes leads to incredible near-field localization of light! This confinement can be used to enhance the spectroscopy of surface adsorbed molecules. One special case is the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The SERS enhancements can be orders of magnitude greater than normal Raman spectroscopy. This allows the possibility of single-molecule (sm) detection. We have explored sm-SERS levels from the theoretical (numerical simulations) and experimental fronts, including sensor-based applications
Plasmonic Photocatalysis
The plasmonic excitation may lead to strong internal gradients of electric field. It has been reported that such internal energy can excite high energy electron-hole pairs, the so-called hot carriers (HC). We are exploring the capability of plasmonic nanostructures for the probabilities of HC generation aiming at applications regarding sunlight energy conversion into chemical products of interest.
Plasmonics Design
Plasmonic properties of nanostructures can be explored by the extensive use of numerical simulations. We are currently applying classical electrodynamics tools such as Generalized Mie theory (GMT), Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA), Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) and Boundary Element Method (BEM). All such investigations take different inputs (nanoparticle shape, composition, dielectric environment, interactions, etc) allowing the simulation of electromagnetic field distributions, absorption and scattering spectra. Such simulations have been used to explain experimental observations and design materials for applications. To this aim, we are employing machine learning tools to map the input parameters into output plasmonic properties.
