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SEMINAR REPORT On PLASMONICS Submitted Vivek Singh TaruMahajan E.C.E. B1 Lecturer, E.C.E. Department 327/08. PREFACE This Seminar report deals with the different aspects in the development of new technology called Plasmonics.The term plasmonics is derived from plasmonsquanta associated with collective excitation of free electrons in metals. This Seminar report provides the basic knowledge necessary to understand the basic concept involved in the fields of plasmonics. This seminar report covers firstly the introduction about plasmonics,itstechnology,disadvantages of present modes-electronics and photonics and how plasmonics can bridge both these modes. The application part by:Submitted to:-

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where plasmonics can be used for making superfast computer and its use in many other applications is also discussed.In the last, a brief conclusion and future aspects is discussed. The plan of this seminar report is to present the detailed information in simple language. This seminar report is suitable for the self-study by engineers and scientists who need to acquire the basic knowledge of Plasmonics.

VIVEK SINGH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the preparation of this seminar report, I am grateful to the Principal and H.O.D. of E.C.E. Dept. of MIET, and specially to Lect. TaruMahajan, E.C.E. Dept., who have left no stone unturned for the successful completion of my seminar and other respected faculty members. My special dept. of gratitude to my grandfather Sh.HarnamSingh,father Sh.RajinderSingh,motherSmt.TaraJamwal and sisterMs.Natasha and other respected family members.

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I have received help and encouragement for which I am deeply grateful to my friends- Rajat Sharma,Rameshwar Sharma,Rahul Lakhanpuria, Sourab Sharma, RajatBasotra, SahilDogra,Varinder Singh,Ankush Sharma and Zorawarsingh.

VIVEK SINGH

1.
based

INTRODUCTION Currently, on communication electronicsor quest for systemsare photonics. transporting

either the

However,with

hugeamounts of data at a high speed alongwith miniaturisation, both these technologiesare

facing limitations. Due totheir mismatched capacities and sizes,it is very difficult to cobble them to geta high bitrate with
Fig. 1 Practical visualization of Plasmons

miniaturisation.So researchers are pioneering

anew technology called plasmonics.Due to its frequency being approximatelyequal to

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that of light and abilityto interface with similar size electroniccomponents, plasmonics can act as abridge between photonics and electronicsfor communication. The term plasmonics is derived from plasmons (Fig. 1)quanta associated with collective excitation of free electrons in metals.Plasmons are a physics phenomenon based on the optical properties of metals;they are represented by the energy associated with charge density waves propagating in matter through the motions of large number of electrons.Whenlight falls on a metal, owing to the electric field component of light, the conductionelectron cloud of the metal shifts and results in the deficiency of negative charge on the opposite side. Due to coulomb attraction, the electron cloud rebouncesto its original position, but owing to inertia it gets overshot resulting in a oscillation frequency called surface plasmon resonance frequency, which is equal to the frequency of irradiated light as shown in the fig 2. Electrons,in a metal,screen an electric field.Light of frequency below the plasma frequency is reflected.Surface plasmons as shown in fig3are associated with surface charge oscillations. These oscillations are also known as plasma oscillations.These are rapid oscillations of the electron density in conducting media such as plasmas or metals.Plasma is a state of matter similar to gas in which a certain portion of particle are ionised. Heating a gas may ionise its molecules or atoms,thus turning into plasma,which contain charged particles,positive ions and negative electrons.The presence of a non-negligible no.of charge carriers makes the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields.The frequency of plasma oscillations is almost equal to that of light,optical frequency of todays electronic microprocessors.So light can be used to excite them on the surface of a material in localised regime. The energy required to receive and send a surface plasmon pulse can be less than for electric charging of a metallic wire. This could allow plasmons to travel along nanoscale wires (called interconnects) carrying information from one part of a

Fig. 2 Electron Cloud Shifting 3 Vivek Singh 327/08 ECE B1

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microprocessor to another with a high bitrate.Plasmonic interconnects would be a great boon for chip designers, who have been able to develop ever smaller and faster transistors but have had a harder time building minute electronic circuits that can move data quickly across the chip.Surface plasmons can be excited on a flat nano-film, nanostrip or other shaped nanoparticles such as nanosphere, nanorod, nanocube and nanostar.When nanoparticles are used to excite surface plasmons by light, these are known as localised surface plasmons.Silver and gold are of particular interest due to their high field enhancement and resonance wavelength lying in the visible spectral regime. The speed of these surface plasmons is almost equal to that of light with wavelength of the order of tens of nanometres.

2.

Limitations of present modes Presently, electronics plays an importantrole in communication. In

laboratories,though, photonics has started replacing electronics where a high data transfer rate is required. Electronics deals with the flow of charge (electrons). When the frequency of an electronic pulse increases, the electronic device becomes hot and wires become very loose. Hence by the principle of the higher the frequency,the higher the data transfer rate, a huge amount of data cannot be transferred.On the other hand, when the size of an electronic wire reduces, its resistance (inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area of the wire)increases but the capacitance remains almost the same. This leads to time delay effects. In photonics, optical fibres (cylindricaldielectric/non-conducting waveguides) are used. These transmit light along their axis by the process of total internal reflection. The fibre consists of a core surrounded by a cladding layer, both of which are made of dielectric materials. To confine the optical signal in the core, the refractive index of the core must be greater than of the cladding. The lateral confinement size of the optical cable is approximately half the wavelength of the light used signal passing through it and is called diffraction limit.Although, thedata transportation rate is high in photonics,owing to the diffraction limit, the size of optical fibre is in the order of hundreds of nanometres much larger than the present-day nano-electronic devices.In the increasing quest for transporting huge amount of data at high speed along with miniaturization, both

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electronics and photonics are facing limitations. It is difficult to cobble them to obtain a high bit rate along with miniaturization owing to their mismatched capacities and sizes. Researchers are promoting plasmonics as the future of wave communication.The confinement of light wave on the dimensions of metal below the diffraction limit forms a major part of the application.

3.

Plasmonics can bridge microscale photonics and nanoscale electronics Based on the data presented above, it seems that the propagation lengths for

plasmonic waveguides are too short to propagate SPPs with high confinement over the length of an entire chip (~1 cm). Although the manufacturability of long-range SPP waveguides may well be straightforward within a CMOS foundry, it is unlikely that such waveguides will be able to compete with well-established, low-loss,high-confinement Si, Si3N4, or other dielectric waveguides.However, it is possible to create new capabilities by capitalizing on an additional strongpoint of metallic nanostructures. Metal nanostructureshave a unique ability to concentrate light into nanoscale volumes. This capability has been employed to enhance a diversity of nonlinear optical phenomena. For example,surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is widely used in the field of biology. This technique makes use of the enhanced electromagnetic fields near metallic nanostructures to study the structure and composition of organic and biological materials. Enhancement factors on the order of 100 have been predicted and observed for spherical particles. Even greater enhancements can be obtained near carefully engineered metal optical antenna structures that basically resemble scaled-down versions of acar antenna. Recently, such antennas have even enabled single molecule studies by SERS and whitelight supercontinuum generation.

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Fig. 4 Nanoscale antenna

Despite the numerous studies on antennas in the microwaveandoptical regimes, their application to solve current issues in chip-scaleinterconnection has remained largely unexplored. The fieldconcentrating abilities of optical antennas may serve to bridge the large gap between microscale dielectric photonic devices and nanoscale electronics (Fig.4). This diagram shows a detail of a chip on which optical signals are routed through conventional dielectric optical waveguides. The mode size of such waveguides is typically one or two orders of magnitude larger than the underlying CMOS electronics. An antenna can be used to concentrate the electromagnetic signals from the waveguide mode into a deep subwavelength metal/insulator/metal waveguide and inject it into a nanoscale photodetector. The small size of the detector ensures a small capacitance, lownoise, and high-speed operation. By using metallic nanostructures as a bridge between photonics and electronics, we play to the strengths of metallic nanostructures(concentrating fields and subwavelength guiding),dielectric waveguides (low-loss information transport), and nanoscale electronic components (high-speed information processing).

4.

COMPONENTS OF PLASMONICS There are two main components ofplasmonics: (i) surface plasmon (SP) polaritons

and (ii) localized surface plasmons (LSPs) (Fig.5). SPs are associated with surface charge oscillation having frequency almost equal to light. The energy required to receive and send a SP pulse can be less than that needed for the electric charging of a metallic wire. This couldallow the plasmons to travel along nanoscale wires (called

interconnects) to carrying information from one part of a microprocessor to another with high bit rate. Plasmonic interconnects would be a great boom for chip designers, who have been able

Vivek Singh 327/08 ECE B1 Fig. 5Localized surface plasmons

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to develop ever smaller and faster transistors that can move data quickly across the chip. Plasmon-based waveguides are not only a mode by which light can be guided on nanoscales, but also promise a path for chip scale device integration. Here, we provide a qualitative discussion on the factors that manage plasmon excitation by different methods along with a brief description on some theoretical aspects of plasmonics. The article ends with aconcise dialogue on promising applications of plasmonics in communication. It is hopeful that this will inspire detailed study of plasmonic devices in the field ofcommunication.

5.

Surface plasmon excitation

Plasmonic structures can exert huge control over light waves at the nanoscale. As a result, energy carried by plasmons allow for light localization in ultra-small volumes, far beyond the diffraction limit.To generate the SPs, it is necessary to excite the metal dielectric interfaceas shown in the fig. 6which the dielectric constantof the metal is a function of frequency and possesses a negative real part.The plasmon losses are lower at the interface between a thin metal film and a dielectric than inside the bulk of the metal film because the field spreads into the nonconductive materials,where there are no free electrons to oscillate,and hence no energy
Fig. 6 Surface Plasmon Excitation

Fig. 7 Plasmon Excitation

dissipation owing to collisions. This property naturally confines plasmons to the metallic surface neighbouring the dielectric; in a sandwich with dielectric and metal layers.

6.

Communication with plasmonics Plasmonic structures can exert huge control over electromagnetic wavesat the

nanoscale. As a result, energycarried by plasmons allows for lightlocalisation in ultra small volumesfar beyond the diffraction limit of light.To generate surface plasmons, it isnecessary to excite the metal-dielectricinterface in which the dielectric constantof the metal is a function of frequencyand negative. At the nanoscale,the electromagnetic (EM) field of theEM wave displays the electron clouddue to its well coupling, which is not

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possible in the case of bulk matter.Hence plasmonics is frequently associated with nanotechnology.Investigators have found that by creatively designing the metaldielectric interface, they can generate surface plasmons with the same frequency as the electromagnetic wave but with much smaller wavelength.This phenomenon could allow plasmons to travel along nanoscale wirescalled interconnects in order to carry

Fig. 7 Operating speed of microprocessor to another. Fig system information from one part of the data transporting and processing 7 shows different operating speed of operating and processing system.

7.

Methods Plasmonic waveguides are gaining much attention owing to their abilityto operate in

various parts of the spectrum-ranging from visible to infrared region.A plasmon could travel as far as several micrometres in the slot waveguide (dielectric core with metallic cladding)far enough to convey a signal from one part of a chip to another. The plasmon slot waveguide squeezes the optical signal, shrinking its wavelength.Metallic nanowires can provide lateral confinement of the mode below the diffraction limit. Nanowires have larger attenuation than planer films but light transport over a distance of several microns has been demonstrated.A chain of differently-shaped nanoparticles(such as spheres and rods) can be used to transport EM waves from one nanoparticle to another via the nearfield electrodynamic interaction between them. If the second particle is situated in the near field of theother and so on along the chain, EMenergy can be propagated within the lateral size confinement less than the diffraction limit. In a chain of closelyspaced nanostructures, the propagation distance depends upon the shape and nature of materials, separation between them as well as the dielectric constant of the host medium.

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Optical regimes-applicable size and speed scale-forplasmonic and other devices. Plasmocom team took a novel approach, developing what they called dielectric-loaded surface

plasmon polariton waveguides (DLSPPW) as shown in fig 9. By patterning a layer of various polymer (polymethyl methacrylate) dielectic onto gold film supported by a glass substrate, they were able to achieve waveguides that were only 500 nanometres in size while extending the signal propagation. Using this approach, the researchers built a variety of

plasmonic devices, including lowloss S bends, Y-splitters and a waveguide ring resonator, a crucial part of the add-drop multiplexers (ADM) in optical networks that combine and separate several streams of data into a single signal and vice versa. Fig. 9Dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguides

Imaging :

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In order to study the propagation of SPPs, a photon scanning tunneling microscope was constructed (PSTM) by modifying a commercially available scanning near-field optical microscope. PSTMs are the tool of choice for characterizing SPP propagation along extended films as wellas metal stripe waveguide. Figure shows how a microscope objective at the heart of our PSTM can be used to focus a laser beam onto a metal film at a well-defined angle and thereby launch a SPP along the top metal surface

Fig. 10Schematic representation of the operation of a PSTM

A sharp, metal-coated pyramidal tip (Figure 10b and 10c) is used to tap into the guided SPP wave locally and scatter light toward a far-field detector. These particular tips have a nanoscale aperture at the top of the pyramid through which light can be collected. The scattered light is then detected with a photomultiplier tube. The signal provides a measure of the local light intensity right underneath the tip and, by scanning the tip over the metal surface, the propagation of SPPs can be imaged The operation of the PSTM can be illustrated by investigating the propagation of SPPs on a patterned Au film (Figure 10d). Here, a focused ion beam (FIB) was used to define a series of parallel grooves, which serve as a Bragg grating to reflect SPP waves. Figure (10e) shows a PSTM image of a SPP wave excited with a 780 nm wavelength laser and directed toward the Bragg grating. The back reflection of the SPP from the grating results in the standing wave interference pattern observed in the image. From this type of experiment the wavelength of SPPs can be determined in a straightforward manner and compared to theory.

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9.

Close to market technology

While current commercial optical ring resonators have a radius of up to 300 micrometres, the plasmonic demonstrator built by the Plasmocom team measured just five micrometres. The devices performed almost 100 percent as we had modelled them, and showed very good characteristics overall, Zayats says. Such devices need to keep getting smaller if we are to continue to see performance gains in new applications, he adds. Crucially, the Plasmocom technology can create plasmonic devices using existing commercial lithographytechniques. Other groups of researchers have achieved similar or better propagation or smallerdevice sizes but the processes they have used are often extremely complex and would be difficult to replicate at an industrial scale, Zayats explains. Our technology may not be the smallest... but it is closer to market. French chipmaker and project partner Silios Technologies is currently drawing up a commercialisation plan, which may involve either producing plasmonic components itself or licensing the Plasmocom technique to one of the big players in the industry. Zayats notes that interest in the teams work has been extensive within both academia and industry, evidenced by the success of a workshop in June in Amsterdam attended by representatives of several photonics and electronics firms, including NEC and Panasonic. I think that we will start to see this technology make its way into commercial applications over the next five to ten years, Zayats says. A key breakthrough will be using plasmonics for inter-chip communication, making it possible to transmit data between one or more chips at optical speeds and eliminating a major bottleneck to faster computers.

10. APPLICATIONS: 10.1 Graphene:

On the one hand graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms (fig 11) in a honeycomb pattern, can move electrons (electricity) very fast and efficiently. On the other hand graphene is lousy at absorbing energy, specifically from sunlight; only about 3% is absorbed. Sounds like graphene, a wonder material in many accounts, isnt cut out for solar cells or photonics (such as communication by light). Well by itself its not, but graphene is such a tempting material that clever minds are set upon making it do all kinds of things it doesnt appear to do. In this case, among the clever minds are the two fellows
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who won the Nobel Prize for their work with graphene, Andre Geim and KostyaNovoselov plus their team at the University of Manchester, and Cambridge University (UK). Their newest work, published in the journal Nature Communications [ Strong plasmonic enhancement of photovoltage in graphene] advances the use of graphene. Their approach to making graphene part of a photonics system, where it contributes higher speed transmission, is to put closely-spaced nanoscale metallic wires (nanowire)on top of the graphene layer. The wires, called a plasmonic nanostructure, can take on a large variety of shapes with exotic names such as nanoshells, nanomatryushkas, and nanorice. The shapes (structures) of wire are significant because of what they do to incoming light energy they, in effect, bend, reflect and transform it so that, in this case, far more energy is absorbed by the graphene layer. In fact, it boosts the absorption efficiency by about twenty times, a rather remarkable figure. This increase makes it realistic to look at the graphene-plasmonic nanostructure combination as a potential material for use in all sorts of optoelectronics such as solar cells and photodetectors for high-speed optical communications. Whether this approach will ever be put to industrial use, that is, can be manufactured in quantity, quality and competitive price is a big unanswered question; but graphene solutions like this one have a big advantage. It might be called concentrated attention, that is, so many people are working on so many aspects of graphene production and utilization that new techniques and processes appear with great regularity. So its possible that even if graphene isnt the best possible material, it may turn out to be the one that is practical. This effect is seen all the time in the way in which industry has used silicon and silicon chip manufacturing, where limitations are constantly overcome by brilliant new techniques. Whats at work is a critical mass of research, manufacturing know-how, and a willing market that will pay for the improvements. Many, including some of the worlds big electronics corporations, are betting thatgraphene will reach that kind of critical mass.

10.2 Nanoparticle inspire solar cells

As demand grows for greener power generation and energy conservation, how can renewable technologies take on the might of goliaths of the fossil fuel industry? In the

Fig. 11 Structure of Graphene

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case of thin-film solar cells, the weapon of choice comes in the diminutive form of metallic nanoparticles. Thanks to a combination of the resonant plasmonic properties of metallic nanoparticles with thin-film photovoltaic technology, a new generation of plasmonic solar cell (fig 12) has evolved with similar performance to silicon cells but at potentially a fraction of the cost. Today, plasmonic solar cells are emergingas promising candidates amongst many solar energy technologies spurring continuing research to improve device performance.One leading

research group in thisarea is based at the Centre for SustainableEnergy Systems at the Australian NationalUniversity (ANU) who are working alongside Fig. 12 Plasmonic Solar Cells other principal groups led by

HarryAtwater and AlbertPolman at Caltech, California, US and the FOM-Institute, AMOLF,

the Netherlands, respectively. The group at ANU measured an enhanced photocurrent attributed to the increased trapping of light scattered into a thin-film silicon cell by silver metal nanoparticles excited at their surface plasmon resonance. Now, leading scientists in the field are looking to drive plasmonic solar cells out of the science of the small into the next big thing in the photovoltaics industry.

10.2.1 A thin slice of the solar industry The global photovoltaic market as a whole looks set to ride out the economic downturn with a predicted growth hitting $2.4 bn in 2011 and $7.5 bn by 2015, according to arecent report by NanoMarkets. In spite of this fact, photovoltaics will only outshine existing methods of generating electricity if they can genuinely compete with currentfossil fuel technologies in terms of cost and performance. This requires at the least halving the price of current solar cells.Thin-film cells are made from a thin semiconducting layer usually of amorphous or polycrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride or copper indium diselenide deposited on a cheap glass, plastic or stainless steel substrate.Now, researchers believe that thin films will succeed as alternative energy sources by eliminating the need for thick and expensive silicon wafers. The thickness of the thin-film silicon solar cell is only 1 or 2 m compared with the 200 m for the wafer cells, Kylie Catchpole, research fellow at the ANU, told OLE.

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That can dramatically reduce your materials cost as it reduces the amount of high purity semiconductor that you need.However, while thin-film silicon solar cells are a cheaper alternative to silicon wafers the poor

absorption of near-bandgaplight remains a severe limitation on their performance. When you decrease the thickness that much, you also decrease the absorption, said Catchpole. So for thin-film solar cells you really need to increase the absorption. For wafer-based solar cells there are already quite good ways for increasing the absorption but not for thin-film solar cells.In line with this, the solar cells need tobe structured so that light remains trapped inside to increase the absorption. For thin-film cells, the thickness range of a few microns is too small to support surface texturingcommonly used in the wafer-based silicon cells where pyramids in the range of210 m are etched into the surface. Thishas prompted several research groups tolook to alternative methods, one of which was to use the scattered light from the surfaceplasmon resonance of metallic nanoparticles on the surface of the thinfilm cell. According to Catchpole a texture on the surface of the thin-film solar cell can also reducethe maximum voltage produced by the cell through increased electronholerecombination at the surface. Metal nanoparticles remain independent of the structureof the solar cell itself and so increase the absorption while leaving the electricalperformance intact.

10.2.2 Silver takes first place The optical properties of metal particleshave been a subject of great interest in the last few decades, especially with the potentialapplications of plasmonic resonances in integrated optics and biosensing.At wavelengths near the plasmon resonance,metal Fig. 13 Silvernano-particles

nanoparticles are strong scatterersof light. A plasmon

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arises from the collective oscillation of the free electrons in the metal particle. For particles with diameters well below the wavelength of light, the absorption and scattering cross-sections can be described by those of a point dipole. At the surface plasmonresonance, the scattering cross-section is found to exceed the geometrical crosssection of the particle, thereby increasing the amount of light scattered into the cell. Noble metals are ideal for this purpose as they do not have many interband transitions and do not absorb much light as a result. Significant enhancements in photocurrent measurements have been found using noble metals such as silver or gold. While the dielectric functions of silver and gold are reported to be very similar,the group at ANU believes silver to be the better choice due to its lower absorption and lower cost. What you want is for the light to comein, scatter from the nanoparticle and gointo the solar cell. You really dont want the light to be absorbed in the metal particle itself, described Catchpole. Silvernanoparticles(fig 13) is by far the best for that. Other metal particles tend to absorb the light just because of their atomic structure.While there are many techniques and materials for plasmonic solar cell fabrication,the group at the ANU uses borondopedsilicon solar cells and evaporates a layer of hemispherical silver nanoparticles close to 100 nm in size on the surface.Starting with the silicon cell, an oxide is grown on the surface in an oxygen furnace at high temperature. The metal nanoparticles are then deposited on the thin-film silicon cells by vacuum evaporation. This process initially involves evaporating a thin silver film onto the cell surface and then heating the sample to 200 C. Even though this is below the melting point of the metal,the layer is thin enough so that little blobs form under surface tension. This creates roughly evenly sized, evenly distributedparticles on the solar cell surface.In this way it is possible to cover any desired area with these very tiny particles.This would otherwise be a very difficult and expensive process were each individual particle to be made via techniquessuch as electron beam lithography.This process also has the advantage of having no effect on the electrical performance of the solar cell and has no influence on the fabrication process of the solar cell itself (as metal evaporation is performed after the thin-film solar cell is made).One of the main challenges that the group found, however, was getting the nanoparticles close enough to the surface of the cell. Putting the nanoparticles extremelyvclose to the silicon surface turned out to be very important for getting a good enhancement in the absoption, described Catchpole. A difference of 20 nm makes abig difference in this situation. You need to have the metal nanoparticles really closeto the surface and so we have had to understand how the absorption
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enhancement

works to figure

out

what

we really need to

do with the

particles.Evaporating the metal particles to within the desired 20 nm of the silicon surface requires control over the thickness of the oxide layer grown on the cell surface. This can be achieved through controlling the temperature or duration of the oxidation process or by etching the oxide layer after it has been grown. 10.2.3 The futures bright? According to Catchpole, progress in plasmonic solar cells has recently been dramatic thanks to a fuller understanding of plasmonics. Plasmonics has become a big field. It is now possible to make nanoscale particles and nanoscale type structures,and so a lot of people have become interested in it. There has been work done to figure out what happens at that scale, she said.Research into plasmonic solar cells is rapidly expanding,exploiting the benefits offered by plasmonics with those of thinfilm technology.Fabricating thin-film solar cells uses a lot less material and can take place on a very large scale a big advantage for reducing the installation costs that form a significant part of the whole cost of a solar system. One of the added advantages of using metal nanoparticles is that they are generally applicable to any thin-film solar cell irrespective of the underlying semiconductor be it a silicon or organic solar cell.Its essentially all about cost in the solar industry. Whatever you can do to lower the cost, that is what is going to winout in the end, added Catchpole. Thereare a number of things that affect cost. Itcan be the efficiency of the cell or it can be the cost of the process, or how fast you can do the process. But all of these things are headed towards the reduced overall cost of the solar cells.Research is ongoing into improving the performance, which includes looking into how differences in particle size and shape influence the photocurrent measurements.The group expects a coZayats and his team reported an advance toward developing optical components for superfast computers and high-speed Internet services, which they say could revolutionize data processing speeds by transmitting information via light rather than through electric currents. The scientists have designed an artificial material similar to a stack of nanoscale rods that allows light beams to interact efficiently and change intensity allowing information to be sorted by beams of light and very high speeds, solving the difficulty of light beams interacting with one other while they travel through a material. This metamaterial reportedly could be incorporated into existing electron chips or it could be used to build completely new all-optical chips that could revolutionize data processing speeds. The scientists showed that closely spaced plasmonic gold nanorods
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produced an ultrafast transmission change when they were illuminated with a low-energy optical pulse The main discovery is that nanorod material exhibitsnonlocalityof the optical response, which has an unusually strong linear dependence on incident light intensity.

10.3

Superfast computers However, to date, plasmonic properties have been limited to nanostructures that

feature interfaces between noble metals and dielectrics. Now, researchers with the US Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that plasmonic properties can also be achieved in the semiconductor nanocrystals known as quantum dots. We have demonstrated well-defined localised surface plasmon resonances arising from p-type carriers in vacancy-doped semiconductor quantum dots that should allow for plasmonic sensing and manipulation of solid-state processes in single nanocrystals, says Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos, who led this research. Our doped semiconductor quantum dots also open up the possibility of strongly coupling photonic and electronic properties, with implications for light harvesting, nonlinear optics, and quantum information processing. The term plasmonics describes a phenomenon in which the confinement of light in dimensions smaller than the wavelength of photons in free space make it possible to match the different length-scales associated with photonics and electronics in a single nanoscale device. Scientists believe that through plasmonics it should be possible to design computer chip interconnects that are able to move much larger quantities of data much faster than todays chips. It should also be possible to create microscope lenses that can resolve nanoscale objects with visible light, a new generation of highly efficient light-emitting diodes and supersensitive chemical and biological detectors. There is even evidence that plasmonic materials can be used to bend light around an object, making that object invisible. The plasmonic phenomenon was discovered in nanostructures at the interfaces between a noble metal, such as gold or silver, and a dielectric, such as air or glass.

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Directing an electromagnetic field at such an interface generates electronic surface waves that roll through the conduction electrons on a metal, like ripples spreading across the surface of a pond that has been disturbed by a stone. Just as the energy in an electromagnetic field is carried in a quantised particle-like unit called a photon, the energy in such an electronic surface wave is carried in a quantised particle-like unit called a plasmon. The key to plasmonic properties is when the oscillation frequency between the plasmons and the incident photons matches, a phenomenon known as localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). Conventional scientific wisdom has held that LSPRs require a metal nanostructure, where the conduction electrons are not strongly attached to individual atoms or molecules. This has proved not to be the case. Prashant Jain, a member of the research team, says: Our study represents a paradigm shift from metal nanoplasmonics as weve shown that, in principle, any nanostructure can exhibit LSPRs so long as the interface has an appreciable number of free charge carriers, either electrons or holes. By demonstrating LSPRs in doped quantum dots, weve extended the range of candidate materials for plasmonics to include semiconductors and weve also merged the field of plasmonic nanostructures, which exhibit tunable photonic properties, with the field of quantum dots, which exhibit tunable electronic properties. Jain and team members made their quantum dots from the semiconductor copper sulfide, a material that is known to support numerous copper-deficient stoichiometries. Initially, the copper sulfidenanocrystals were synthesised using a common hot injection method. While this yielded nanocrystals that were intrinsically self-doped with p-type charge carriers, there was no control over the number of charge vacancies or carriers. We were able to overcome this limitation by using a room-temperature ion exchange method to synthesise the copper sulfidenanocrystals, Jain says. This freezes the nanocrystals into a relatively vacancy-free state, which we can then dope in a controlled manner using common chemical oxidants. By introducing enough free electrical charge carriers via dopants and vacancies, Jain and his colleagues were able to achieve LSPRs in the near-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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The extension of plasmonics to include semiconductors as well as metals offers a number of significant advantages, as Jain explains. Unlike a metal, the concentration of free charge carriers in a semiconductor can be actively controlled by doping, temperature and/or phase transitions, he says. Therefore, the frequency and intensity of LSPRs in dopable quantum dots can be dynamically tuned. The LSPRs of a metal, on the other hand, once engineered through a choice of nanostructure parameters, such as shape and size, is permanently locked in. Jain envisions quantum dots being integrated into a variety of future film and chip-based photonic devices that can be actively switched or controlled, and also being applied to such optical applications as imaging. In addition, the strong coupling that is possible between photonic and electronic modes in such doped quantum dots holds exciting potential for applications in solar photovoltaics and artificial photosynthesis. In photovoltaic and artificial photosynthetic systems, light needs to be absorbed and channelled to generate energetic electrons and holes, which can then be used to make electricity or fuel, Jain says. To be efficient, it is highly desirable that such systems exhibit an enhanced interaction of light with excitons. This is what a doped quantum dot with an LSPR mode could achieve. The potential for strongly coupled electronic and photonic modes in doped quantum dots arises from the fact that semiconductor quantum dots allow for quantised electronic excitations (excitons), while LSPRs serve to strongly localise or confine light of specific frequencies within the quantum dot. The result is an enhanced exciton-light interaction. Since the LSPR frequency can be controlled by changing the doping level, and excitons can be tuned by quantum confinement, it should be possible to engineer doped quantum dots for harvesting the richest frequencies of light in the solar spectrum. Quantum dot plasmonics also hold intriguing possibilities for future quantum communication and computation devices. The use of single photons, in the form of quantised plasmons, would allow quantum systems to send information at nearly the speed of light, compared with the electron speed and resistance in classical systems, Jain says. Doped quantum dots by providing strongly coupled quantised excitons and LSPRs and within the same nanostructure could serve as a source of single plasmons.
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Jain and others in the research group are now investigating the potential of doped quantum dots made from other semiconductors, such as copper selenide and germanium telluride, which also display tunable plasmonic or photonic resonances. Germanium telluride is of particular interest because it has phase change properties that are useful for memory storage devices. A long-term goal is to generalise plasmonic phenomena to all doped quantum dots, whether heavily self-doped or extrinsically doped with relatively few impurities or vacancies, Jain says.

10.4

CURE FOR CANCER

Biochemists have engineered silica particles 100 nanometers wide which are covered in a film of gold. These particles were injected into the bloodstream of the test subject, the mice with a tumor. After discovering that this material is non-toxic, they also found that these Nanoshells tended to embed in the tissues of the tumor instead of other cells, since that is where more blood circulates due to its rapid growth. An infrared laser light was then shone onto the tumor, resulting in the plasmonic activity on the gold shells of the silica particles. The cancer tissues began to heat up from 37C to around 45C, where the photothermalenergy killed the cancer cells while leaving the surrounding healthy cells unharmed (fig 14). All signs of cancer on the mice was gone within 10 days, while the control subjects continued to be plagued by the disease. Houston Nanospectra Biosciences is currently requesting permission to conduct clinical trials of "nanoshell therapy" on cancer patients; we are very close to finally Fig. 14 Plasmonic Therapy of Cancer getting a real cure!

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10.5

INVISIBILITY: On a lighter note, plasmonics also allow the futuristic technology of invisibility.

Many physicists theorize that this is highly possible. The results, as for now, yields invisibility for certain colours,or certain range of frequencies. To achieve total invisibility, allfrequencies of the visible light must be covered; that will only take time. The basic idea is to make the structure's refractive index equal to air's; it would not bend or reflect light, like the classical ways of invisibility, but instead absorb the light. When it's laminated with a material that produces optical gain, the increases in intensity would offset the absorption losses, making the object invisible (in a certain selection of frequencies, for now).Fig (15) shows the working of a cloaking device.

onics research

11. Plasmonic Researches

The possibility to confine light to the nanoscale and the ability to tune the dispersion relation of light have evoked large interest and led to rapid growth of plasmonic research. The parallel development of nanoscale fabrication techniques like electron beam lithography and focused-ionbeam milling has opened up new ways to structure metals surfaces and control surface plasmon polariton propagation and Fig 15 Cloaking Device dispersion at the nanoscale.In 2000, Mark L. Brongersma et al (and others) proposed that EM energycould be transported below the diffraction limit with high efficiency and group velocity greater than 0.1c along a wire of its characteristic length 0.1 .In year 2002, Maier et al experimentally observed the most efficient frequency for transport to be 3.191015 rad/sec with a corresponding group velocity of 4.0x106 m/s for longitudinal mode of plasmon waveguide having an inter-particle distance of 75 nm. The achieved bandwidth was calculated to be 1.41014 rad/sec. Dionne et al in year 2006 constructed slot waveguides. Slot waveguides can support both transverse electric and transverse magnetic photonic polarisation. The loss in slot waveguide can be minimised by using a

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low-refractive-index material; for example, a 100nm thick Ag/SiO2/Ag slab waveguide sustains signal propagation up to 35 m at wavelength of 840 nm. In 2007, Feng et al observed that field localisation could be improved by introducing the partial dielectric filling of the metal slot waveguide, which also reduces propagation losses. The channel in metal surface waveguides supports surface plasmons at telecommunication wavelength with very low loss (having propagation length of 100 m) and well-confined guiding. In this experiment, surface plasmons are guided along a 0.6 m wide and 1 m deep triangular groove in gold material Thin metallic strips can support long-range surface plasmonsa particular type of surface plasmon mode characterised by electromagnetic fields mostly contained in the region outside of the metal, i.e., in dielectric medium. Jung et al in 2007 experimentally confirmed that long-range surface plasmons could transfer data signal as well as the carrier light. In a demonstration, a 10Gbps signal was transmitted over a thin metallic strip (14nm thick, 2.5 m wide and 4cm long gold strip). Furthermore, to reduce the propagation loss, Jin Tae Kim et al fabricated a lowloss, long-range surface plasmon polariton waveguide in an ultravioletcurable acrylate polymer having low refractive index and absorption loss. A 14nm thick and 3 m wide metallic strip cladded in acrylate polymer material shows a loss of 1.72 dB/cm. Rashid Zia et al obtained the numerical solution by using the full-vectorial magnetic field finite-difference method for 55nm thick and 3.5nm wide strip on glass at a wavelength of 800 nm and noted that surface plasmons are supported on both sides of the strip and can propagate independently. Alexandra et al in year 2008 suggested that triangular metal wedge could guide surface plasmons at telecommunication wavelength. It was experimentally observed that 1.43-1.52 m wavelength can propagate over a distance of about 120 m with confinedmode width of 1.3 m along a 6 m high and 70.5 angled triangular gold wedge.

12. Future directions

In the field of plasmonics, studying the way light interacts with metallic nanostructures will make it easier to design new optical material devices.One primary

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goal of this field is to develop new optical components and systems that are of the same size as todays smallest integrated circuits and that could ultimately be integrated with electronics on the same chip.The next step will be to integrate the components with an electronic chip todemonstrate plasmonic data generation,transport and detection.Plasmon waves on metals behave much like light waves in glass. That means engineers can use techniques like multiplexing or sending waves.Plasmon sources, detectors and wires as well as splitters and even plasmonsters can be developed. Applications mainly depend on controlling thelosses and the cost of nanofabrication techniques. Enhanced and directed emission of semiconductor luminescence(quantum dots) may well find commercial application in plasmonassisted lighting in the near future.Finally, plasmonic nanocircuits combine a high bandwidth with a high level of compaction and make plasmonic components promising for all-optical circuits. Plasmonic wires will act as high-bandwidth freeways across the busiest areas of the chip. Plasmons can ferry data along computer chips.Plasmonic switches required for this are under development.Rotaxanes molecule is being used for the purpose. Change in the shape of the molecule is the principleof this molecular switch.

13. DISADVANTAGES
A major disadvantage of using metals in plasmonics and metamaterials is their inherent absorption losses. Bringing the technology from the research labs to applications requires that the losses be reduced considerably. On the other hand, plasmonic nanostructures can be of considerable help in extracting light out of devices such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).A serious obstacle to the widespread use of this technology so far has been that plasmons tend to dissipate after only a few millimeters of propagation, making them unusable on most computer chips. Under the EU-funded Plasmacon project, a team of European researchers has reported they have now overcome this obstacle, demonstrating the first commercially-viable plasmonics devices. The researchers' approach was to develop a so-called "dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguide" (DLSPPW), a layer of dielectric that was patterned onto a gold film with a glass substrate. Using this structure, they were able to achieve waveguides only 500 nanometres in size and extend the signal propagation, opening the way to further advances.

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Unlike previous results obtained by other research groups, the technology developed by the team can create plasmonic devices using existing and low-cost commercial lithography techniques, and while some issues still need to be tackled, it would seem that one of the main obstacles has just been overcome.

14. Challenges remaining

Despite many advances in the field ofplasmonics, several important open questions and problems remain. For example, how can plasmons be efficiently excited with nanoscale resolution?Surface plasmon polaritons are usually excited using far-field optical techniques, which have a higher resolution than plasmonic phenomena under investigation. However, for true nanoscale plasmonic studies, a surfaceplasmon-polariton point source with nanoscale dimensions is required.What are the fundamental processes thatdetermine the losses of surface plasmon polaritons? is another important question. Practically, plasmon experiments are performed on poly-crystalline surfaces, and the limits to the losses due to surface roughness,grain boundaries, etc. are not known.Surface plasmons propagate along the chain of nanoparticles, but the losses are high. On the other hand,propagation losses are low in the case of nanowires, which leaves open the possibility of surface-plasmon optical devices.The dream of making all-plasmonic devices requires further research. In order to realise advanced active circuits,there is a need for active modulator and switching components operating at ultra-high bandwidth and low power utilisation.To used. For manipulate true surface plasmon polaritons on a surface,reflectors are needed. So far, macroscopic Bragg reflectors structured into the surface have been nanoscale integration, nanoscale surface

plasmonpolariton mirrors are required. Oncethese are realised, nanoscale cavities to confine surface plasmon polaritons can also be designed. The limits to the mode volume and quality factor of plasmonic cavities are not yet known.Finally, the use of a particle beamrather than a light beam to excite surface plasmon polaritons raises questions and novel opportunities regarding the selectivity with which surface plasmon modes with different symmetry can be excited. Fig. 16 Advanced Plasmonics

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REFERENCES Plasmonics Promises Faster Communication by Jagmeet Singh in Electronics for you magazine. 1. Fundamentals and applications of Plasmonics by Dr. Stephen Maier. 2. www.en.wikipedia.org 3. www.howstuffworks.com 4. www.motortrends.com 5. www.worldchanging.com 6. www.post-gazette.com 7. www.bnet.com 8. www.digitaldaily.allthingsd.com 9. www.singularityhub.com 10. www.future.wikia.com 11. www.asia.cnet.com 12. www.hackingtheuniverse.com 13. www.techpin.com

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