Coupled Plasmonic Resonances in Gold Nanoparticles for Bio-Chemical Sensing

Mr. Rithvik Gutha (UAH)

Nanotechnology offers tremendous opportunities in solving some of humanities top problems for the next two decades. At the heart of such efforts lie the challenges of realizing an ultrasensitive bio-chemical sensor which could help detect many diseases in early stages among other applications. In this talk, I will present some of the outcomes of my research at Nanophotonics and Quantum Devices Lab at UAH in regard to design and fabrication of plasmonic structures that have presented new limits and scales of bio-chemical sensing. I will present various plasmonic detection techniques which involves light scattering either from a single nanoparticle (NP) or collectively from an array of NPs. The results suggest, the spacing between the NPs in an array plays an important role in deciding which sensing technique the sensor chooses to work in, either localized surface plasmon resonances technique which utilizes light scattering from single NP or surface lattice resonances technique which utilizes light scattering from an array of perfectly placed NPs. I further talk about how the complex metastructures built by using simple nanoparticles as building blocks offer unique and new plasmonic detection frontiers which can further improve the sensitivity of our bio-chemical sensors.