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Dear Colleagues,

Nanotechnology has gone beyond the limits that could be predicted a few years ago. Nanophotonic structures have come to such subtle details that allow to control the direction and polarization of light, both in the infrared and in the visible interval, through ultra-thin lenses or artificial materials with a negative index of refraction. These results have been obtained thanks to the development of the new generation electron beam and ion beam lithography machines with a top-down approach. The fields that have been benefit from this technology were the Plasmonic with increasingly small and precise nano-metal antennas and the Nano-Optics that arrive to identify single molecules. Nevertheless, the production of nanostructured materials on large surfaces and with low cost requires a different bottom-up approach that has been developed by self-assembling techniques. This is a very promising field that is still undergoing strong development. In particular were realised nanostructures as nano-spheres, dimers, nanowires, nanorods, chiral nano-helix and other self-assembled metal or semiconductor nanoparticles antennas, but also 3D crystals by using eutectic composites or colloidal phases or different copolymers. May be, the highest expression of such techniques is the DNA origami that opened the way to very exciting large amount of applications.

In this Special Issue we would like to review all the different self-assembly techniques with their applications in the fields of Plasmonics and Nano-Optics from nanoantennas, light manipulation, sensors, bio-sensensors and so on. In addition, we would like to present new contributions with papers devoted to recent results in this promising and rich field, in order to take a look at future developments of bottom-up approach.

If you feel that your contribution fit with the aim of this Special Issue, you are kindly invited to participate to this project.

Dr. Alessandro Belardini
Prof. Dr. Tomasz Szoplik
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Self assembly
Nanophotonics
Plasmonics
Nano-optics
Bottom-Up approach

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 4337 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Facile Fabrication of Micro/Nano Hierarchical SERS Sensor via Anisotropic Etching and Electrochemical Treatment for Malachite Green Detection

by Chu-Yu Huang and Chih-Hung Chien

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(23), 5237; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9235237 - 02 Dec 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3926

Abstract

We propose a facile method to produce micro/nano hierarchical surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active substrates using simple steps and inexpensive costs. The proposed SERS substrate is a silicon pyramid array covered by a nanostructured gold film (AuNS @ SiPA). Through finite element method (FEM) simulation, we showed that many strong local electric field enhancements (hot spots) were formed between the nano-gap of gold nanostructures. In addition, the micron-scale pyramid structure not only increases the sensing surface area of the sensor, but also helps trap light. By combining these micro and nano structures, the proposed micro/nano hierarchical SERS sensor exhibited high sensitivity. Experimental results confirmed that the AuNS @ SiPA substrate has high sensitivity. The SERS signal enhancement factor obtained from the Rhodamine 6G (R6G) probe molecules was as high as 1 × 10⁷ and the SERS substrates were found to be able to detect a very low concentration of 0.01 nM malachite green (MG) solution. Therefore, this study provides a novel and practical method for fabricating SERS substrates that can facilitate the use of SERS in medicine, food safety, and biotechnology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bottom-up Approach and Self-Assembled Nano-Structures for Plasmonics and Nano-Optics Applications)

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Review

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10 pages, 2007 KiB

Open AccessReview

Self-Organized Conductive Gratings of Au Nanostripe Dimers Enable Tunable Plasmonic Activity

by Maria Caterina Giordano, Matteo Barelli, Giuseppe Della Valle and Francesco Buatier de Mongeot

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(4), 1301; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app10041301 - 14 Feb 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2058

Abstract

Plasmonic metasurfaces based on quasi-one-dimensional (1D) nanostripe arrays are homogeneously prepared over large-area substrates (cm²), exploiting a novel self-organized nanofabrication method. Glass templates are nanopatterned by ion beam-induced anisotropic nanoscale wrinkling, enabling the maskless confinement of quasi-1D arrays of out-of-plane tilted gold nanostripes, behaving as transparent wire-grid polarizer nanoelectrodes. These templates enable the dichroic excitation of localized surface plasmon resonances, easily tunable over a broadband spectrum from the visible to the near- and mid-infrared, by tailoring the nanostripes’ shape and/or changing the illumination conditions. The controlled self-organized method allows the engineering of the nanoantennas’ morphology in the form of Au-SiO₂-Au nanostripe dimers, which show hybridized plasmonic resonances with enhanced tunability. Under this condition, superior near-field amplification is achievable for the excitation of the hybridized magnetic dipole mode, as pointed out by numerical simulations. The high efficiency of these plasmonic nanoantennas, combined with the controlled tuning of the resonant response, opens a variety of applications for these cost-effective templates, ranging from biosensing and optical spectroscopies to high-resolution molecular imaging and nonlinear optics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bottom-up Approach and Self-Assembled Nano-Structures for Plasmonics and Nano-Optics Applications)

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