金属纳米结构的表面等离子体光学在光催化、纳米集成光子学、光学传感、生物标记、医学成像、太阳能电池,以及表面增强拉曼光谱等领域有广泛的应用前景,这些功能和金属纳米结构与光相互作用时产生的表面等离子体共振密切相关.本文简单回顾国际上该领域过去十来年的一些重要研究进展和当前发展的前沿动态,重点介绍我们课题组近年来在金属纳米颗粒和纳米结构的表面等离子体光学理论和实验研究上取得的一些成果.同时还介绍了我们课题组目前在表面等离子体光学研究方面的若干新思路,包括表面等离子体共振放大、紫外波段光学天线、纳米天线光学双稳态、表面等离子体辅助的量子相互作用等.通过这些经验和教训的介绍与讨论,期望能够达到抛砖引玉的目的,与国内同行来共同探讨表面等离子体光学结构是如何在纳米尺度上实现对光的各种性质的调控和利用的,并向等离子体光学的未知领域开拓进取.
Plasmonics have found wide applications in the areas of photo-catalytics, nano-photonic integration, optical sensing, biological labeling, biomedical imaging, solar cells, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, etc. Most of the applications are closely related with the properties of surface plasmon resonance that occurs when light and metal nanostructures interact. This article briefly reviews some of the important research progresses, as well as several new frontiers, in the areas of plasmonic engineering and application in the past decade. Specifically, we will introduce some of our theoretical and experimental progresses as well as experiences in studies with both metal nanoparticles and planar metal nanostructures. Moreover, several new regimes of plasmonics will be further discussed, including surface plasmon amplification, ultraviolet optical nano-antennae, optical bistability of nano-antennae, surface plasmon-assisted quantum interactions, etc. With the introduction, experiences and discussions, this review is aimed to boost national focus on the intriguing ways that enable metal nanostructures to manipulate and make use of light in nanoscale, which could be useful for the exploration of unknown frontiers and applications of plasmonics.