Plasmon-Driven Chemical Reaction and Characterization

In metallic nanoparticles, localized surface plasmon polaritons are excited under illumination, with the effect of concentrating the incident electromagnetic field at the nanoparticle surface, effectively corresponding to a confinement of light well beyond the classic diffraction limit. The aims of this project are to exploit plasmon-driven effects in order to: i) locally promote chemical reactions, enhancing reaction rates and product selectivity at the micro/nanoscale; ii) to locally enhance the electric field by enabling to achieve high sensitivity and resolution in particular in Raman spectroscopy. This second methodology will be applied for the characterization of novel 2-dimensional (2D) materials, which have complementary properties to those of graphene.
The student will produce substrates with metallic nanostructures in several ways and will conduct crystallization experiments as well as Raman measurements on different systems, from organic molecules to polymers and 2D materials.
The final goal is to use plasmonic-driven effects to realize structures with controlled order or properties at the nanoscale and to characterize new 2D materials with nanoscale resolution.