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Optomechanics goes molecular

Nature Nanotechnology volume 11, pages 114–115 (2016)Cite this article

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A theoretical framework that interprets Raman scattering as an optomechanical process can be used to understand, and guide, experiments in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a technique capable of detecting and chemically identifying single molecules in the vicinity of nanostructured metal surfaces. In a typical Raman process, a photon is inelastically scattered from a molecule, exchanging energy with its vibrations and carrying away its molecular fingerprint encoded in the loss or gain of energy. In SERS1, this signal is thought to be enhanced due to localized plasmonic fields created by the nanostructured surface, which boosts the electric field of both the incident and scattered light; there is also thought to be a chemical contribution to the enhancement, which is connected with the adsorption of the molecules to the metallic interface. Over the past few years, the quality of SERS substrates has improved rapidly and has been accompanied by notable advances in measurement techniques. This has led to a number of experimental results2,3 that escape interpretation within standard theoretical formalisms. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Christophe Galland, Tobias Kippenberg and colleagues at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne now suggest that a framework derived from the seemingly unrelated domain of cavity optomechanics can be used to interpret SERS and shed light on these latest results4.

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Figure 1: Cavity optomechanics in the classical and molecular regimes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mikołaj K. Schmidt and Javier Aizpurua are at the Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV/EHU) and Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 5, Donostia-San Sebastián 20018, Spain,

    Mikołaj K. Schmidt & Javier Aizpurua

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  1. Mikołaj K. Schmidt
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  2. Javier Aizpurua
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Correspondence to Javier Aizpurua.

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Schmidt, M., Aizpurua, J. Optomechanics goes molecular. Nature Nanotech 11, 114–115 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.287

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