Dr. Tony Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, and group has been highlighted in the Nature Materials journal on their work in ‘molecular plasmonics.’ Plasmonic systems that can manipulate and guide light at subwavelength scales should prove useful for developing nanoscale photonic integrated circuits. To realise molecular active plasmonics, a reversible shift of localized surface plasmon resonances of nanostructures by changing the interactions between molecular resonances and surface plasmon resonances is required. Tony Jun Huang and colleagues now show that a gold nanodisk array coated with rotaxane molecules and exposed to chemical reductants and oxidants exhibits reversible plasmon-based switching. This molecular plasmonic device can be operated by switching the extinction properties of a bistable rotaxane and the reversible switching correlates with the chemically driven mechanical switching observed for surface-bound rotaxane molecules. This correlation, supported by controlled experiments and a DFT microscopic model, suggest that nanoscale movement with surface-bound molecular machines can be used as the active components of plasmonic devices.

For more information, please visit the following web site.
* Source: Nature Materials Journal