Plasmonics in Biology

Plasmonics, Optical nanoantennas are metallic nanoparticles of 10 to 200 nm in size which find wide application in the engineering of light at nanoscale. Particularly nanoantenna do localize and enhance light fields at the nanoscale. Emitters in close proximity are driven to high emission rate in controlled directed. Both the enhanced sensitivity and resolution open a variety of applications in biology.

The group works on two approaches:

• Surface antenna arrays: tuning the antennas into resonance very efficient detection of single molecules is achieved both by enhanced excitation and quantum efficiency. Low efficiency systems such as light-harvesting complexes can be made to emit brightly.
• Scanning resonant antenna probes: resonant antennas have local enhanced hotspots with

For more information see the BioNano@ICFO website.