Materials Research Lecture

Metal nanostructures concentrate optical fields into highly confined, nanoscale volumes that can be exploited in a wide range of applications, from sensing to imaging. However, their broad far-field optical resonances increase in width as the particle size increases. To narrow these resonances while maintaining desirable near-field properties, we have developed unconventional procedures to organize the nanoparticles into arrays with spacings on the order of hundreds of nanometers, where narrow lattice plasmon resonances can result. This talk will describe a range of new optical phenomena that can emerge from nanoparticles arrays, from programmable and reversible plasmon mode tuning to superlattice plasmons to achromatic flat lenses to dynamic, real-time tunable nanoscale lasing.