The work for this project will be undertaken in the Nanostructures Laboratory of ISIS, a new multidisciplinary institute at ULP, one of the premier research universities in France. The research themes of the laboratory are at the interface of physics, chemistry and material science using state of the art nanofabrication techniques. It has a wealth of experience with the preparation and characterisation of nanostructured materials, nanotechnology, surface plasmons, molecular excited states, etc.

The group made a key discovery, the so-called extraordinary (or enhanced) optical transmission through subwavelength apertures mediated by surface plasmons where the transmitted light intensity is orders of magnitude larger than expected from theory. This has generated considerable interest around the world because of the scientific and technological implications. This discovery plus the more recent demonstration by the group of beaming of light from such structures and the related fundamental know-how will be used in several of the work packages of the project.

Description of resources

For this project, the most important piece of equipment at ULP is a dual focused ion beam (FIB)/ scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a scanning transmission electron microscope detector (STEM). This state of the art FIB/SEM/STEM equipment with nanometer resolution allows the texturing and structuring of any substrate and the depositon of insulating and conducting materials, characterization of the samples, etc. Other equipment available in the laboratory which will be used for this project include an STM/AFM with a nanomanipulator, a 2D imaging/spectrograph mounted on an optical microscope for spectral characterization and directional emission of everything from individual subwavelength sources to large arrays, spectrophotometers, metal evaporators, etc.

Relevant Publications

T.W. Ebbesen, H.J. Lezec, H.F. Ghaemi, T. Thio and P.A. Wolff, “Extraordinary Optical Transmission through Sub-Wavelength Hole Arrays” Nature 391, 667-69 (1998).

L. Martin-Moreno, F.J. Garcia-Vidal, H.J. Lezec, K.M. Pellerin, T. Thio, J.B. Pendry and T.W. Ebbesen “Theory of Extraordinary Optical Transmission through Subwavelength Hole Arrays” Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1114 (2001).

H.J. Lezec, A. Degiron, E. Devaux, R.A. Linke, L. Martin-Moreno, F.J. Garcia-Vidal, T.W. Ebbesen “Beaming Light from a Subwavelength Aperture”, Science 297, 820-23 (2002).

A. Degiron, H.J. Lezec, N. Yamamoto and T.W. Ebbesen, “Optical transmission;n properties of a single subwavelength aperture in a real metal”, Optics Comm. 239, 61-66 (2004).

W.L. Barnes, W.A. Murray, J. Dintinger, E. Devaux, H. Lezec and T.W. Ebbesen, “Surface plasmons and their role in the enhanced transmission of light through periodic arrays of sub-wavelength holes in a metal film”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 107401 (2004)

© 2006 Plasmon Enhanced Photonics