The use of plasmon coupling in metal nanoparticles has shown great potential for the optical characterization of many biological processes. Recently, we have demonstrated the use of "plasmon rulers" to observe conformational changes of single biomolecules in vitro. Plasmon rulers provide robust signals without photobleaching or blinking. Here, we show the first application of plasmon rulers to ...

Graphene has proven to be a promising conductive layer in fabricating optical plasmon resonators on insulator substrate using electron beam lithography and has the potential to construct electrically controlled active plasmon resonators. In this study, we investigate the effect of graphene on plasmon resonance using graphene and Au plasmon resonator system as a model at visible and near-infrare...

Plasmon-driven sequential chemical reactions were successfully realized in an aqueous environment. In an electrochemical environment, sequential chemical reactions were driven by an applied potential and laser irradiation. Furthermore, the rate of the chemical reaction was controlled via pH, which provides indirect evidence that the hot electrons generated from plasmon decay play an important r...

We make a step towards quantum nanoplasmonics: surface plasmon fields of a nanosystem are quantized and their stimulated emission is considered. We introduce a quantum generator for surface plasmon quanta and consider the phenomenon of surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (spaser). Spaser generates temporally coherent high-intensity fields of selected surface plasmo...

We suggest using tapered waveguides for compensating losses of surface plasmon-polaritons in order to enhance nonlinear effects at the nanoscale. We study nonlinear plasmon self-focusing in tapered metal-dielectric-metal slot waveguides and demonstrate that, by an appropriate choice of the taper angle, we can effectively suppress the mode attenuation achieving stable propagation of a spatial pl...

We experimentally demonstrate a surface plasmon resonance spectrometer sensor by using an e-beam-patterned super-period gold nanodisc grating on a glass substrate. The super-period gold nanodisc grating has a small subwavelength period and a large diffraction grating period. The small subwavelength period enhances localized surface plasmon resonance, and the large diffraction grating period dif...

It is demonstrated that metallic horseshoe-shaped (also referred to as u-shaped) nanostructures can exhibit a magnetic resonance in the optical spectral range. This magnetic plasmon resonance is distinct from the purely geometric LC resonance occurring in perfectly conducting split rings because the plasmonic nature of the metal plays the dominant role. Similarly to the electrical surface plasm...

Nanophotonic plasmon circuits may play important roles in next-generation information technology as semiconductor-based electronics is approaching the physical limit. The functions of such circuits rely on the rigorous control of plasmon propagation. One important aspect of such control is controlling the conversion of different plasmon modes for designed plasmon routing in complex nanophotonic...

Graphene plasmonics has become a highlighted research area due to the outstanding properties of deep-subwavelength plasmon excitation, long relaxation time, and electro-optical tunability. Although the giant conductivity of a graphene layer enables the low-dimensional confinement of light, the atomic scale of the layer thickness is severely mismatched with optical mode sizes, which impedes the ...