Raman intensity of Rhodamine B (RhB) is enhanced by inserting a thin high k{appa} dielectric layer which reduces the surface plasmon damping at the gold-graphene interface. The results indicate that the Raman intensity increases sharply by plasmonic resonance enhancement while maintaining efficient fluorescence quenching with optimized dielectric layer thickness.
Tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy and -imaging, such as tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL), tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS), and others, have become indispensable from materials science to single molecule studies. However, the techniques suffe
r from inconsistent performance due to lack of nanoscale control of tip apex structure, which often leads to irreproducible spectral, spatial, and polarization resolved imaging. Instead of refining tip-fabrication to resolve this problem, we pursue the inverse approach of optimizing the nano-optical vector-field at the tip apex via adaptive optics. Specifically, we demonstrate dynamic wavefront shaping of the excitation field to effectively couple light to the tip and adaptively control for enhanced sensitivity and polarization-controlled TEPL and TERS, with performance exceeding what can be achieved by conventional tip-fabrication and optimal excitation polarization. Employing a sequence feedback algorithm, we achieve 4.4$times$10$^4$-fold TEPL enhancement of a WSe$_2$ monolayer which is >2$times$ larger than the normal TEPL intensity without wavefront shaping, as well as the largest plasmon-enhanced PL intensity of a transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayer reported to date. In addition, with dynamical near-field polarization control in TERS, we demonstrate the investigation of conformational heterogeneity of brilliant cresyl blue (BCB) molecules as well as the controllable observation of IR-active modes due to a large gradient field effect. Adaptive tip-enhanced spectroscopy and imaging thus provides for a new systematic approach towards computational nanoscopy making optical nano-imaging more robust, versatile, and widely deployable.
We synthesized three-dimensional nanoporous graphene films by a chemical vapor deposition method with nanoporous copper as a catalytic substrate. The resulting nanoporous graphene has the same average pore size as the underlying copper substrate. Our
surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) investigation indicates that the nanoporosity of graphene significantly improves the SERS efficiency of graphene as a substrate as compared to planar graphene substrates.
Spectroscopic analysis of large biomolecules is critical in a number of applications, including medical diagnostics and label-free biosensing. Recently, it has been shown that Raman spectroscopy of proteins can be used to diagnose some diseases, incl
uding a few types of cancer. These experiments have however been performed using traditional Raman spectroscopy and the development of the Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) assays suitable for large biomolecules could lead to a substantial decrease in the amount of specimen necessary for these experiments. We present a new method to achieve high local field enhancement in surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy through the simultaneous adjustment of the lattice plasmons and localized surface plasmon polaritons, in a periodic bilayer nanoantenna array resulting in a high enhancement factor over the sensing area, with relatively high uniformity. The proposed plasmonic nanostructure is comprised of two interacting nanoantenna layers, providing a sharp band-edge lattice plasmon mode and a wide-band localized surface plasmon for the separate enhancement of the pump and emitted Raman signals. We demonstrate the application of the proposed nanostructure for the spectral analysis of large biomolecules by binding a protein (streptavidin) selectively on the hot-spots between the two stacked layers, using a low concentration solution (100 nM) and we successfully acquire its SERS spectrum.
We exploited graphene nanoribbons based meta-surface to realize coherent perfect absorption (CPA) in the mid-infrared regime. It was shown that quasi-CPA frequencies, at which CPA can be demonstrated with proper phase modulations, exist for the graph
ene meta-surface with strong resonant behaviors. The CPA can be tuned substantially by merging the geometric design of the meta-surface and the electrical tunability of graphene. Furthermore, we found that the graphene nanoribbon meta-surface based CPA is realizable with experimental graphene data. The findings of CPA with graphene meta-surface can be generalized for potential applications in optical detections and signal processing with two-dimensional optoelectronic materials.
Many classes of two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged as potential platforms for novel electronic and optical devices. However, the physical properties are strongly influenced by nanoscale heterogeneities in the form of edges, grain boundaries,
and nucleation sites. Using combined tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) and photoluminescence (TEPL) nano-spectroscopy and -imaging, we study the associated effects on the excitonic properties in monolayer WSe2 grown by physical vapor deposition (PVD). With <15 nm spatial resolution we resolve nonlocal nanoscale correlations of PL spectral intensity and shifts with crystal edges and internal twin boundaries associated with the expected exciton diffusion length. Through an active atomic force tip interaction we can control the crystal strain on the nanoscale, and tune the local bandgap in reversible (up to 24 meV shift) and irreversible (up to 48 meV shift) fashion. This allows us to distinguish the effect of strain from the dominant influence of defects on the PL modification at the different structural heterogeneities. Hybrid nano-optical and nano-mechanical imaging and spectroscopy thus enables the systematic study of the coupling of structural and mechanical degrees of freedom to the nanoscale electronic and optical properties in layered 2D materials.