Abstract
The design and realization of metallic nanostructures with tunable plasmon resonances has been greatly advanced by combining a wealth of nanofabrication techniques with advances in computational electromagnetic design. Plasmonics — a rapidly emerging subdiscipline of nanophotonics — is aimed at exploiting both localized and propagating surface plasmons for technologically important applications, specifically in sensing and waveguiding. Here we present a brief overview of this rapidly growing research field.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Raether, H. R. Surface Plasmons on Smooth and Rough Surfaces and on Gratings (Springer, New York, 1988).
Maier, S. Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications (Springer, New York, 2007).
Bohren, C. F. & Huffman, D. R. Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles (Wiley, New York, 1983).
Kreibig, U. & Vollmer, M. Optical Properties of Metal Clusters (Springer, Berlin, 1995).
Grady, N. K., Halas, N. J. & Nordlander, P. Influence of dielectric function properties on the optical response of plasmon resonant metallic nanoparticles. Chem. Phys. Lett. 399, 167–171 (2004).
Kelly, K. L., Coronado, E., Zhao, L. L. & Schatz, G. C. The optical properties of metal nanoparticles: The influence of size, shape, and dielectric environment. J. Phys. Chem. B 107, 668–677 (2003).
Mock, J. J., Smith, D. R. & Schultz, S. Local refractive index dependence of plasmon resonance spectra from individual nanoparticles. Nano Lett. 3, 485–491 (2003).
Underwood, S. & Mulvaney, P. Effect of the solution refractive index on the color of gold colloids. Langmuir 10, 3427–3430 (1994).
Grabar, K. C., Freeman, R. G., Hommer, M. B. & Natan, M. J. Preparation and characterization of Au colloid monolayers. Anal. Chem. 67, 735–743 (1995).
Hulteen, J. C. & Van Duyne, R. P. Nanosphere lithography: A materials general fabrication process for periodic particle array surfaces. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 13, 1553–1558 (1995).
Bastys, V., Pastoriza-Santos, I., Rodríguez-González, B., Vaisnoras, R. & Liz-Marzán, L. M. Formation of silver nanoprisms with surface plasmons at communication wavelengths. Adv. Funct. Mater. 16, 766–773 (2006).
Nikoobakht, B. & El-Sayed, M. A. Preparation and growth mechanism of gold nanorods (NRs) using seed-mediated growth method. Chem. Mater. 15, 1957–1962 (2003).
Sun, Y. G. & Xia, Y. N. Shape-controlled synthesis of gold and silver nanoparticles. Science 298, 2176–2179 (2002).
Oldenburg, S. J., Averitt, R. D., Westcott, S. L. & Halas, N. J. Nanoengineering of optical resonances. Chem. Phys. Lett. 288, 243–247 (1998).
Jackson, J. B. & Halas, N. J. Silver nanoshells: Variations in morphologies and optical properties. J. Phys. Chem. B 105, 2743–2746 (2001).
Sun, Y., Mayers, B. & Xia, Y. Metal nanostructures with hollow interiors. Adv. Mater. 15, 641–646 (2003).
Wang, H., Brandl, D. W., Le, F., Nordlander, P. & Halas, N. J. Nanorice: A hybrid plasmonic nanostructure. Nano Lett. 6, 827–832 (2006).
Landes, C. F., Link, S., Mohamed, M. B., Nikoobakht, B. & El-Sayed, M. A. Some properties of spherical and rod-shaped semiconductor and metal nanocrystals. Pure Appl. Chem. 74, 1675–1692 (2002).
McLellan, J. M., Siekkinen, A. R. & Xia, Y. The SERS activity of a supported Ag nanocube strongly depends on its orientation relative to laser polarization. Nano Lett. 7, 1013–1017 (2007).
Prodan, E. & Nordlander, P. Plasmon hybridization in spherical nanoparticles. J. Chem. Phys. 120, 5444–5454 (2004).
Mie, G. Articles on the optical characteristics of turbid media, especially colloidal metal solutions. Ann. Phys. (Leipz.) 25, 377–445 (1908).
Aden, A. L. & Kerker, M. Scattering of electromagnetic waves from two concentric spheres. J. App. Phys. 22, 1242–1246 (1951).
Draine, B. T. & Flatau, P. J. Discrete-dipole approximation for scattering calculations. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 11, 1491–1499 (1994).
Futamata, M., Maruyama, Y. & Ishikawa, M. Local electric field and scattering cross section of Ag nanoparticles under surface plasmon resonance by finite difference time domain method. J. Phys. Chem. B 107, 7607–7617 (2003).
Oubre, C. & Nordlander, P. Optical properties of metallodielectric nanostructures calculated using the finite difference time domain method. J. Phys. Chem. B 108, 17740–17747 (2004).
Hayes, C. L. & Van Duyne, R. P. Plasmon-sampled surface-enhanced Raman excitation spectroscopy. J. Phys. Chem. B 107, 7426–7433 (2003).
Liao, H., Nehl, C. L. & Hafner, J. H. Biomedical applications of plasmon resonant metal nanoparticles. Nanomedicine 1, 201–208 (2006).
Haes, A. & Van Duyne, R. P. A unified view of propagating and localized surface plasmon resonance biosensors. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 379, 920–930 (2004).
Taton, T. A., Mirkin, C. A. & Letsinger, R. L. Scanometric DNA array detection with nanoparticle probes. Science 289, 1757–1760 (2000).
Novotny, L. & Hecht, B. Principles of Nano-Optics (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2006).
Jeanmaire, D. L. & Van Duyne, R. P. Surface raman spectroelectrochemistry: Part 1. Heterocyclic, aromatic and aliphatic amines adsorbed on the anodized silver electrodes. J. Electroanal. Chem. 84, 1–20 (1977).
Albrecht, M. G. & Creighton, J. A. Anomalously intense Raman spectra of pyridine at a silver electrode. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 99, 5215–5217 (1977).
Kneipp, K. et al. Single molecule detection using surface enhanced Raman scattering. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1667–1670 (1997).
Nie, S. & Emory, S. R. Probing single molecules and single nanoparticles by surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Science 275, 1102–1106 (1997).
Lal, S., Grady, N. K., Goodrich, G. P. & Halas, N. J. Profiling the near field of a plasmonic nanoparticle with Raman-based molecular rulers. Nano Lett. 6, 2338–2343 (2006).
Talley, C. E. et al. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering from individual Au nanoparticles and nanoparticle dimer substrates. Nano Lett. 5, 1569–1574 (2005).
McFarland, A. D., Young, M. A., Dieringer, J. A. & Van Duyne, R. P. Wavelength-scanned surface-enhanced Raman excitation spectroscopy. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 11279–11285 (2005).
Jennings, C. & Aroca, R. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering from copper and zinc phthalocyanine complexes by silver and indium island films. Anal. Chem. 56, 2033–2035 (1984).
Michaels, A. M., Jiang, J. & Brus, L. Ag nanocrystal junctions as the site for surface-enhanced Raman scattering of single rhodamine 6G molecules. J. Phys. Chem. B 104, 11965–11971 (2000).
Drachev, V. P. et al. Adaptive silver films for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of biomolecules. J. Raman Spectrosc. 36, 648–656 (2005).
Nordlander, P., Oubre, C., Prodan, E., Li, K. & Stockman, M. I. Plasmon hybridization in nanoparticle dimers. Nano Lett. 4, 899–903 (2004).
Rechberger, W. et al. Optical properties of two interacting gold nanoparticles. Opt. Comm. 220, 137–141 (2003).
Atay, T., Song, J.-H. & Nurmikko, A. V. Strongly interacting plasmon nanoparticle pairs: From dipole-dipole interaction to conductively coupled regime. Nano Lett. 4, 1627–1631 (2004).
Gunnarsson, L. et al. Confined plasmons in nanofabricated single silver particle pairs: Experimental observations of strong interparticle interactions. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 1079–1087 (2005).
Romero, I., Aizpurua, J., Bryant, G. W. & de Abajo, F. J. G. Plasmons in nearly touching metallic nanoparticles: Singular response in the limit of touching dimers. Opt. Express 14, 9988–9999 (2006).
Wang, H. et al. Symmetry-breaking in individual plasmonic nanoparticles. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 10856–10860 (2006).
Brandl, D. W., Mirin, N. A. & Nordlander, P. Plasmon modes of nanosphere trimers and quadrumers. J. Phys. Chem. B 110, 12302–12310 (2006).
Jackson, J. B. & Halas, N. J. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering on tunable plasmonic nanoparticle substrates. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 101, 17930–17935 (2004).
Jackson, J. B., Westcott, S. L., Hirsch, L. R., West, J. L. & Halas, N. J. Controlling the surface enhanced Raman effect via the nanoshell geometry. Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 257–259 (2003).
Wang, H., Le, F., Kundu, J., Nordlander, P. & Halas, N. J. Nanoshell arrays as multifunctional surface enhanced Raman/IR spectroscopic substrates. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn (in the press).
Wang, H. et al. Controlled texturing modifies the surface topography and plasmonic properties of Au nanoshells. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 11083–11087 (2005).
Zhang, W. et al. Nanoscale roughness on metal surfaces can increase tip-enhanced Raman scattering by an order of magnitude. Nano Lett. 7, 1401–1405 (2007).
Neacsu, C. C., Dreyer, J., Behr, N. & Raschke, M. B. Scanning-probe Raman spectroscopy with single-molecule sensitivity. Phys. Rev. B 73, 193406 (2006).
Pettinger, B. Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). Top. Appl. Phys. 103, 217–240 (2006).
Verma, P., Inouye, Y. & Kawata, S. Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering: Physics and Applications – Topics in Applied Physics (eds Kneipp, K., Moskovits, M. & Kneipp, M.) 241–262 (Springer, Berlin, 2006).
Domke, K. F., Zhang, D. & Pettinger, B. Toward Raman fingerprints of single dye molecules at atomically smooth Au(111). J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 14721–14727 (2006).
Maier, S. A. et al. Plasmonics - A route to nanoscale optical devices. Adv. Mater. 13, 1501–1505 (2001).
Barnes, W. L., Dereux, A. & Ebbesen, T. W. Surface plasmon subwavelength optics. Nature 424, 824–830 (2003).
Dittlbacher, H. et al. Fluorescence imaging of surface plasmon fields. Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 404–406 (2002).
Yin, L. et al. Subwavelength focusing and guiding of surface plasmons. Nano Lett. 5, 1399–1402 (2005).
Charbonneau, R., Berini, P., Berolo, E. & Lisicka-Shrzek, E. Experimental observation of plasmon-polariton waves supported by a thin metal film of finite width. Opt. Lett. 25, 844–846 (2000).
Krenn, J. R. et al. Non-diffraction-limited light transport by gold nanowires. Europhys. Lett. 60, 663–669 (2002).
Lamprecht, B. et al. Surface plasmon propagation in micrsoscale metal stripes. App. Phys. Lett. 79, 51–53 (2001).
Zia, R., Selker, M. D. & Brongersma, M. L. Leaky and bound modes of surface plasmon waveguides. Phys. Rev. B 71, 165431 (2005).
Zia, R., Schuller, J. A. & Brongersma, M. L. Near-field characterization of guided polariton propagation and cutoff in surface plasmon waveguides. Phys. Rev. B 74, 165415 (2006).
Dickson, R. M. & Lyon, L. A. Unidirectional plasmon propagation in metallic nanowires. J. Phys. Chem. B 104, 6095–6098 (2000).
Sanders, A. W. et al. Observation of plasmon propagation, redirection, and fan-out in silver nanowires. Nano Lett. 6, 1822–1826 (2006).
Graff, A., Wagner, D., Ditlbacher, H. & Kreibig, U. Silver nanowires. Euro. Phys. J. D 34, 263–269 (2005).
Knight, M. W. et al. Nanoparticle-mediated coupling of light into a nanowire. Nano Lett. 7, 2346–2350 (2007).
Quinten, M., Leitner, A., Krenn, J. R. & Aussenegg, F. R. Electromagnetic energy transport via linear chains of silver nanoparticles. Opt. Lett. 23, 1331–1333 (1998).
Maier, S. A., Brongersma, M. L., Kik, P. G. & Atwater, H. A. Observation of near-field coupling in metal nanoparticle chains using far-field polarization spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B 65, 193408 (2002).
Maier, S. A., Kik, P. G. & Atwater, H. A. Observation of coupled plasmon-polariton modes in Au nanoparticle chain waveguides of different lengths: Estimation of waveguide loss. Appl. Phys. Lett. 81, 1714–1716 (2002).
Maier, S. A. et al. Local detection of electromagnetic energy transport below the diffraction limit in metal nanoparticle plasmon waveguides. Nature Mater. 2, 229–232 (2003).
Lin, S., Li, M., Dujardin, E., Girard, C. & Mann, S. One-dimensional plasmon coupling by facile self-assembly of gold nanoparticles into branched chain networks. Adv. Mater. 17, 2553–2559 (2005).
Zia, R., Selker, M. D., Catrysse, P. B. & Brongersma, M. I. Geometries and materials for subwavelength surface plasmon modes. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 21, 2442–2446 (2004).
Dionne, J. A., Sweatlock, L. A., Atwater, H. A. & Polman, A. Plasmon slot waveguides: Towards chip-scale propagation with subwavelength-scale localization. Phys. Rev. B 73, 035407 (2006).
Dionne, J. A., Lezec, H. J. & Atwater, H. A. Highly confined photon transport in subwavelength metallic slot waveguides. Nano Lett. 6, 1928–1932 (2006).
Bozhevolnyi, S. I., Volkov, V. S., Devaux, E., Laluet, J.-Y. & Ebbesen, T. W. Channel plasmon subwavelength waveguide components including interferometers and ring resonators. Nature 440, 508–511 (2006).
Zhang, W., Yeo, B. S., Schmid, T. & Zenobi, R. Single molecule tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy with silver tips. J. Phys. Chem. C 111, 1733–1738 (2007).
Acknowledgements
S. Lal acknowledges useful discussions with J. Britt Lassiter and Nathaniel K. Grady. This work was supported by the Robert A. Welch Foundation grants C-1664 and C-1220, and the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant W911NF-04-01-0203. Additional funding was provided by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, The National Science Foundation and National Aeronatics and Space Administration.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lal, S., Link, S. & Halas, N. Nano-optics from sensing to waveguiding. Nature Photon 1, 641–648 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.223
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.223
This article is cited by
-
Hexagonal-shaped graphene quantum plasmonic nano-antenna sensor
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Unrevealing tunable resonant excitons and correlated plasmons and their coupling in new amorphous carbon-like for highly efficient photovoltaic devices
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Metal 3D nanoprinting with coupled fields
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Soft molecularly imprinted nanoparticles with simultaneous lossy mode and surface plasmon multi-resonances for femtomolar sensing of serum transferrin protein
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Exploring Plasma-Induced Transparency: Coupling Plasmonic Waveguides with Resonators for Innovative Nanophotonic Applications
Plasmonics (2023)