Design and Development of Plasmonic Functional Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Plasmonics, a highly topical subsection of Photonics, is recognised as the cutting edge of next-generation photonic technology, being at the boundary of optics, condensed matter physics, nanotechnology and material sciences.

A surface plasmon is a quantum electromagnetic phenomenon arising from the interaction of light with typically free electrons at a metal–dielectric interface. Under certain conditions, the energy carried by the photons is transferred to collective excitations of free electrons, either creating localised surface plasmons (SPs) or propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) at that interface.

Plasmonics takes advantage of the coupling of light to charges and allows breaking the diffraction limit for the localisation of light into subwavelength dimensions, enabling strong field enhancements.

The development of improved plasmonic systems, including advanced and active control over their physical properties (so called active Plasmonics), will accelerate and transform a sizeable number of industries with a range of disruptive enabling technologies. New plasmonic systems can form the basis to launch new and better products in a wide range of applications, e.g., in the fields of life sciences, ICT, communications systems, solar harvesting and high efficiency systems. This enabling technology will improve areas including imaging, sensing, light emission, harnessing and harvesting of light beyond the current state of the art.

The ultimate goal in this regard is the generation of novel materials which show improved or even unprecedented photonic, but also electronic, thermal and mechanical characteristics compared to conventional materials: Plasmonic Functional Materials.

Such functional materials can be predicted and analysed using sophisticated frequency domain finite element methods (FEM) of finite difference time domain (FDTD) computational methods and can be generated using a combination of bottom–up and top–down nanotechnology techniques. One of the primary directions within this field is to generate new functional structures and materials and to look for new avenues for fabricating such plasmonic nanostructures.

Prof. Dominic Zerulla
Guest Editor

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