Active Plasmonics with Responsive Hydrogels

This project embraces the fields of materials research and nanophotonics. It focuses on new hybrid metal - hydrogel materials which can rapidly collapse and swell upon an external stimulus and can be functionalized with biomolecular recognition elements. These materials are hypothesized to open new routes in plasmonics of which potential is locked in many fields due to the lack of efficient actuating of (mostly) passive plasmonic structures and components. In particular, development of new tunable integrated plasmonic elements for actuating of surface plasmon beams will be pursued and active control of plasmon-mediated fluorescence will be investigated. Moreover, responsive functionalized hydrogels carrying biomolecular recognition elements will be explored in order to efficiently manipulate and collect of molecular analytes on metallic nanostructures with plasmon characteristics. Combining of these will be carried out in order to provide biosensor platforms with improved sensitivity and analysis time for detection of molecular analytes relevant to important areas such as medical diagnostics.

No additional funding sources recorded.