We report plasmonically coupled light-sensitive skins of nanocrystal monolayers that exhibit sensitivity enhancement and spectral range extension with plasmonic nanostructures embedded in their photosensitive nanocrystal platforms. The deposited plasmonic silver nanoparticles of the device increase the optical absorption of a CdTe nanocrystal monolayer incorporated in the device. Controlled sep...

The photoluminescence intensity of silicon quantum dots is enhanced in a polarization-selective way by coupling to elongated Ag nanoparticles. The observed polarization dependence provides direct proof that the PL enhancement is due to electromagnetic coupling of the silicon quantum-dot emission dipoles with dipolar plasmon modes of the Ag nanoparticles. The polarization selectivity demonstrate...

We have recently developed a novel dual window scheme for processing spectroscopic OCT images to provide spatially resolved true color imaging of chromophores in scattering samples. Here we apply this method to measure the extinction spectra of plasmonic nanoparticles at various concentrations for potential in vivo applications. We experimentally demonstrate sub-nanomolar sensitivity in the mea...

Nanometer-sized gaps between plasmonically coupled adjacent metal nanoparticles enclose extremely localized optical fields, which are strongly enhanced. This enables the dynamic investigation of nanoscopic amounts of material in the gap using optical interrogation. Here we use impinging light to directly tune the optical resonances inside the plasmonic nanocavity formed between single gold nano...

Electromagnetic coupling between plasmonic resonances in metallic nanoparticles allows for engineering of the optical response and generation of strong localized near-fields. Classical electrodynamics fails to describe this coupling across sub-nanometer gaps, where quantum effects become important owing to non-local screening and t...

We report the synthesis of Ag-ZnO hybrid plasmonic nanostructures with enhanced photocatalytic activity by a facile wet-chemical method. The structural, optical, plasmonic and photocatalytic properties of the Ag-ZnO hybrid nanostructures were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), photoluminescence (PL) an...

This review focuses on nanofabrication tools, based on soft lithography, which can generate a wide range of noble-metal structures with exceptional optical properties. These techniques offer a scalable and practical approach for producing arrays of complementary plasmonic structures (nanoholes and nanoparticles) and, in addition, expand the possible architectures of plasmonic materials because ...

DNA nanotechnology provides a versatile foundation for the chemical assembly of nanostructures. Plasmonic nanoparticle assemblies are of particular interest because they can be tailored to exhibit a broad range of electromagnetic phenomena. In this Letter, we report the assembly of DNA-functionalized nanoparticles into heteropentamer clusters, which consist of a smaller gold sphere surrounded b...

We have fabricated titanium dioxide based dye-sensitized solar cells that incorporate corrosion-protected silver nanoparticles as plasmonic optical elements of the photoelectrode. The thickness of the TiO(2) layer separating the dye from the nanoparticles has been systematically varied using atomic layer deposition. Over the range of TiO(2) coating thicknesses examined (2 to 8 nm) there is clea...

In this paper, we present an innovative sensing nanomaterial for an interference localized surface plasmon resonance (iLSPR) sensor. The iLSPR is based on plasmonic gold nanoparticles with photonic thin-film multilayers of porous aluminum oxide (Al(2)O(3)) and aluminum (Al) on a substrate. With a controllable transparent Al(2)O(3) layer and a highly reflective Al layer, our new nanomaterial was...